rodhilton

I honestly think this kind of hits the nail on the head. The industry (in my opinion) is far too tolerant of asshole behavior for many reasons, and it's basically just created a safe place to be a jerk without any repercussion. I largely wrote up what I did because I'd like to see this change, we should treat rude and annoying behavior the way that most other industries do by making it something we culturally don't accept. The same folks who realized they could be jerks and it wouldn't hurt their careers will simply figure out that now it will and knock it off.

>Another terrible habit that I had in the past was a tendency to respond while still fuming, which never ends well; usually it ends in both sides of an argument escalating while others grab the popcorn.

Right there with you and I'm the asshole who wrote this post. I know I have a tendency to want to strike back when I feel struck and I also have a tendency to go way overboard, in that "don't throw the first punch but throw the last" kind of way. Honestly I think everyone has asshole behaviors every now and then, a true asshole doesn't know or doesn't care when they act like a prick. The fact that this is something you're consciously aware of and working on I think means you're fine.

One book I might recommend though is 'Nonviolent Communication' by Marshall Rosenberg. It definitely feels a little hippy dippy at times and the skeptical asshole in me occasionally rolls my eyes at it, but I think it's really helped me understand some of my own communication tendencies and given me a lot of tools to help curb my own shit.

I linked to as much hard evidence as I could but I'll agree that it's a little light. My hunch, just based on my own observation doing this for 20 years, is that an asshole is like a black hole of productivity, draining it from everyone else to such an extent that they're simply not worth having around, and that no matter how Brilliant they are, the rest of the team can figure out their areas of expertise with the morale boost they get after leaving (or drastically changing their behavior, though sometimes the bridges are burned too much for recovery).

Again this is mostly anecdotal, from what I've seen teams do when the Resident Jerk was fired or left. I've never in my 20 years as a professional software developer seen a single person leave a team and then see the team immediately fall to pieces because that person really was the critical lynchpin that people thought. I've seen lots of people stick around far, far too long because folks (management usually) were WORRIED that's what was going to happen, but it never actually seems to.

Thanks!

I think it's hard to unasshole someone who doesn't want to be unassholed, or who simply doesn't value it. But I think if you really call out every single behavior that's assholey (in private, so they aren't embarrassed and defensive) then eventually people do start to get it and, if they want to change, can.

It could be one of those fake it 'til you make it deals. Someone is an asshole internally still but puts on a veneer of nonassholeishness because they are operating in an environment where it's not tolerated, and over time kind of mellow out. At the time of writing this comment, there's only one comment on my post and it's from someone who says s/he indeed was an asshole and it took this kind of incessant badgering to figure it out.

I mention a question really similar to that in the article itself and yeah, I think that question and similar ones are probably the first tools we reach for... but while I think those might suss out some obvious assholes, or unintentional assholes, I think it's too easy for self-aware or intentional assholes to answer "what they want to hear" and pass the question. I'm definitely glad you sidestepped this for-sure asshole in your interview process but I think the fact that everyone on your team wanted to avoid him or her kind of supports my "only the world's biggest assholes get weeded out this way" theory.

That's why what I advocate for instead is to genuinely build a culture where asshole behavior isn't tolerated, and then warn candidates that you've successfully done this and take it seriously. Self-aware assholes will just bullshit through these kinds of questions, but if you can truly impart how seriously you take this sort of thing to them, they'll weed themselves out of your process.