My experience so far( early 30's) has been exactly the opposite, most people/bosses I've meet that were successful in business were complete assholes, with several nice people working for them exclusively for the money.
That has in fact made part of my life very miserable because I really don't expect anything from anybody anymore. If been tricked/robbed/scammed so many times by people I trusted that my trust is mostly gone for now, and I only expect bad things from people when I depend on them for something. (If something good happens it's awesome, but I don't count on it)
Maybe I trust people more than I should have done, maybe it's the place I live... I don't know.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if everyone you are encountering is screwing you...you have some hard questions to ask yourself.
My experience has been that when someone "only expects bad things from people when they depnd on them" it means one of 3 things.
1. They have a hard time accepting responsibility and taking ownership of their own problems.
2. They are running with a really bad crowd, and need to go to the library to make some new friends.
3. They project an image that lets people walk all over them.
Everyone has problems that come up in their life, but if you haven't experienced nice people as being the norm... there is a better that 66% chance its something YOU ALONE CAN AND MUST CHANGE.
Not taken, but don't get me wrong. I don't mean friends/family/coworkers. I've got plenty of those that I can and have trusted.
I mean Bosses and people that I've done business with on a you pay me level. In those cases there was almost nothing I could do besides filling a lawsuit and spending large amounts of money, time and sanity. I settled with the understanding that they had the upper hand and I was a fool for trusting my money/time to them.
One case:
Owner "Shit you are leaving??? Who is going to do XXX? Can't you stay at least until xxx so we can deliver xxx and save our asses? That is our only client right now."
Me
"Hum... I really need to start next week, but I will do my best"
I stayed for one month more that I needed in contract, my new employer was pissed but agreed with it. In the end the Owner didn't pay me my leave that was due and was agreed to be paid and delayed the pay of that last month for 15 days. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit to get that last month payment.
That sucks. I thought I was the only guy who had to have those kinds of experiences. :-)
In my case it was years ago, and since then my situation has improved dramatically. The things that seemed to help were:
1) Identifying the kinds of people I worked well with in the past and pitching those kinds of people on projects (I did some of this by learning the Meyers-Briggs function stack, which unfortunately doesn't have an axis of evil but is otherwise helpful in finding new clients who are somewhat similar to clients I liked in the past; ENFPs are a perennial favorite)
2) Identifying non-profits and other less rip-offy types of clients and showing them how I could help them
3) Saving enough money that I didn't have to work with any given client
4) Establishing firm policies like "You will pay 100% down if X and Y conditions are not met or do not apply, or if the total is below $N; otherwise 50% down and 50% prior to delivery"
5) Doing background-checking on all new clients, especially if they have fired one of my kind before (I usually call up the fired guy).
#4 really rides on your reputation, so you may wish to have references on hand to give to potential clients.
I'm celebrating my ninth year as a solo freelancer in rural California and things couldn't get much better, so I hope this helps you somehow.
> I settled with the understanding that they had the upper hand
Sounds like #3 is your primary concern. While some situations are beyond your control, you should put some effort into understanding perception and how you can manufacture the perception that you have the upper hand, not them.
The simplest example of this is Dan Kennedy's takeaway selling technique..Basically you make it seem like you are unavailable to work with them, and because people want what they can't have, they stop thinking about whether they want you but rather how to get you. This puts you in the drivers seat.
I worked in an industry which was tightly squeezed by government regulation. Every business I know which was run honestly and reputably had to close.
Those that remain are exclusively run by people who are willing to break any rules and any laws as it suits them and are intelligent enough to do so when they can get away with it. I feel very jaded by this experience. Is this what people really mean when they talk about 'hustle'? Is it not possible for an honest person to run a business?
In another context you would call these people sociopaths. They are happy to screw employees - and the conditions are currently just right for them to do that.
Good people who have skills or personal interest in that industry now have to work for that kind of person. They have no realistic choice.
You alone can and must change - we can agree - but your three options are not true to life.
This is actually really great advice - albeit a bit harsh. #2 makes sense, but any advice on solving #1 and #3? Is this yours or did you read about this somewhere?
#1 - Go through psychotherapy until you root out your self defeating behaviors.
#3 - There is a ton you can do to foster and project and image the leads to more positive results. I would recommend reading up on human perception and branding to better understand how to project the right image. Robert Ringers, "Winning Through Intimidation" is a good anecdotal strategy... Dan Kennedy's takeaway selling is another..As is Jay Abrahams Law of Preeminence.
The basic idea is to not care that much about the end result. When you raise VC money when you don't need it, you are in a much stronger position to negotiate. So too with Image, create the impression that you don't need the opportunity, deal, or whatever you are getting screwed out of and you will be in a position to demand the protections you need.
In a utopian world you would be right...But in the real world, even the good guys might screw you if it ever turns into a situation of You Vs. Them.
Ultimately, if having to choose between feeding my family or feeding yours, the choose is obvious even to nice guys.
Especially when you consider that sometimes being nice to one person is being cruel to another.
The key is to protect yourself...when dealing with bad people you know where you stand, so you have strong motivation to demand contracts, etc...
When dealing with genuinely nice people, whom you would never dream could possibly screw you, thats were you are most vulnerable, because you are less likely to demand the contract and protections you need, and when it comes to them vs. you, they will often choose themselves...
Semi Related - I read a quote from Warren Buffet that really resonated with me, "Honesty is an expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people."
I hate when people make it like its a feed my family choice like they live in a hut somewhere. Above a certain level of income the "feed my family" excuse is simply that. An excuse for otherwise inexcusable behavior.
Just be nice to people, its not that hard. The world especially the tech world isn't a zero sum game.
I used to work for a guy who cared deeply about all his employees to the point where he bought me a car when mine broke down.
Than the recession hit, times got tough, he had triplets, got a divorce and even had to lay off half his company.
He made promises to me when times were good that he couldn't keep when times were tough.
He cared about me, and yet, for a long time I thought he screwed me when he went back on a deal he made with me.
Lots of people are nice, but back them into a corner (even only in their own minds) and their survival instincts will kick in.
It is simply naive to think otherwise.
Protect Yourself, especially with Nice people who you trust.
> But in the real world, even the good guys might screw you if it ever turns into a situation of You Vs. Them.
Then I guess the "good guy" in your world is only a seemingly good guy (as PG may state it) in my world, since it would be at the core of my definition of a good guy to be fair even in a "you vs. them" situation.
> Ultimately, if having to choose between feeding my family or feeding yours, the choose is obvious even to nice guys.
It is rarely as easy as that. How about feeding your family involving you screwing me over vs feeding my family involving nobody screwing anyone?
Again, in a utopia you would be right, but in the real world, there are legitimate conflicts of interest, and times where its a question of who to screw not whether to or not.
Even the nicest guys when backed into a corner will kick into survival mode.
Like I said, sometimes being nice to one person is being cruel to another.
I would imagine no one ever does this unless they feel they have no choice.
I am not talking about opportunistic jerks waiting to screw you...I am talking about good people in bad circumstances... It is a very rare breed that can maintain perspective when their home is in foreclosure, etc...
That you're still saying things like "survival mode"† suggests that you're not absorbing what's being said. Call it maintenance mode (as in, "to maintain(2)"‡) if you want, and I'll buy that. But survival mode is far, far off.
You got me on a semantics issue... I think my point is still valid though.
Even really nice and good people might act in their own self interest when faced with a conflict. The perception of the magnitude of that conflict is relative, and a nice and good guys self-interest mode might be different than a jerks, but...
I still believe it's naive to think that when someone truly FEELS like they are backed into a corner, they will rationalize acting in their own self-interest, even if from someone elses perspective they are screwing them over.
We all have priorities, where we draw the line might be based on how good or bad we are... but everyone has a breaking point.
As of this writing, there are three responses to the comment of yours that I first replied to, each of them posted near-simultaneously with respect to each other. It's important to point out that all of them are calling you out on the same thing here.
(You downplay the issue when you throw out the "ah, semantics!" style resignation. This kind of comment is almost designed to frame it as if you were engaged in a debate over something and I caught you on a minor technicality that doesn't have any real importance to the actual topic at hand.)
Look, I'm not interested in "winning", or points-scoring, or something juvenile like that. What I am interested in is seeing the feeding-my-family "move" eliminated from honest discussion among reasonable people. This is precisely because the "I have to feed my family" refrain is dishonest and–as I said before–an unworthy tactic.
I don't know how to make you to understand this if you don't by now.
> I don't know how to make you to understand this if you don't by now.
I feel the same frustration as you :)
> This is precisely because the "I have to feed my family" refrain is dishonest and–as I said before–an unworthy tactic.
One last time I will try to explain my point. I agree, This argument might be dishonest, and should be eliminated...
but... That doesn't change the reality on the ground that many people, when feeling like they are about to lose something important will view it as a You vs. Them Scenario.
I have a problem with your point 3. With all respect but I think I heard that argument before in the context of women being sexually assaulted and the way they dress being to blame...
The correlation to this instance would be..."If someone is constantly sexually assaulted to the point where they EXPECT EVERYBODY to sexually assault them..."
In that case, I would offer this same advice... ask yourself if you are projecting an image that leads everybody to sexually assault you.
I am not justifying the behavior of walking over people (or assaulting people...)
I am simply offering a strategy to improve your lot if people are screwing you constantly.
There is a definite correlation between the image you project, how you are perceived and ultimately how you are treated.
Ignoring that reality is just being naive.
We are also talking about someone who is constantly being screwed, not someone who was assaulted once.
Robert Ringer, in his book "Winning Through Intimidation" postulates that the result you get from a negotiation is inversely proportionate to how intimidated you are."
just think about the last time you had to talk to a big VC or someone you were initimidated by, and consider whether you stood up for yourself or whether you were too scared to stand your ground.
Branding and image building is all about exactly this. Creating a deliberate impression on people before they need your product.
I suspect, as someone early in his career, what you interpret as "asshole," pg interprets as niceness. From pg's perspective, those whip-cracking middle managers are getting the productivity they need to make his or Ron's investments increase in value. You're on the receiving end of some harshness, but the money-men don't care. Why should they?
Its amusing when we play the moralism card in business. I'm fairly personable and I'm sure would be considered nice, but if tomorrow I opened the worst sweatshop in Vietnam and turned $10,000 into $1m I would be praised. pg or my investors wouldn't care about the social issues of the young people working in my sweatshop, or if they cared, it wouldn't be enough to deem me a villain. They get to meet a fairly nice guy who can turn a little money into a lot. I'd brand myself a fashion entrepreneur, write some pretentious blog postings careful to never address labor concerns, and be done with it. The nitty gritty isn't on a level where investors and other money-men care about. They care about my workers as much as they care about the electrons in my CPU that powers my website. Its works, right? It makes money? Fine. You're "nice." No, I am absolutely not. I own an abusive sweatshop.
This is one of the problems of judging people by their forward facing personality. Its easy to be personable and charismatic when you have money or social capital. I have people below me who have to be mean. I don't need to be. The same way Putin kisses babies and tells jokes on TV while his troops murder civilians and annex land in Ukraine with impunity.
There's a meta narrative here that's concerning as well. Programmers tend to be INTJ males. We have bad social skills and are often naïve. What does this say about charisma and those who can use it effectively? Are we easy to game? I think so. pg's essays are usually top notch except when they're about soft social skills. These last two are questionable, at least to me. I feel the niceness question is a bit more complex than pg suggests, and often it fits not only into a hard game-theory framework but also a soft social skill framework that encompasses everything from salesmanship to how we talk to power or act when we are the ones with power.
Mine was more like:
Owner
"Shit you are leaving??? Can't you stay at least until xxx so we can deliver xxx and save our asses?"
Me
"Hum... I really need to start next week, but I will do my best"
I stayed for one month more that I needed in contract, my new employer was pissed of but agreed with it. In the end the Owner didn't pay me my leave that was due and was agreed to be paid and delayed the pay of that month for 15 days. I had to threaten them with a lawsuit to get that last month payment.
I've had harsh managers and 2 of them are my friends now. That is nothing related to that is about being a scumbag.
> Mine was more like: Owner "Shit you are leaving??? Can't you stay at least until xxx so we can deliver xxx and save our asses?"
Dude, you gotta learn to say no. I would categorize this as letting people walk over you.
I understand the desire to do a good job and help out others as much as you can but keep in mind that when you help someone the overall net outcome needs to be positive. If your helping someone results in more harm to you than help to the other person, you need to walk away.
I got the impression from your post that you made a commitment to your new employer that you're going to start on a particular date. And your old employer wanted you to break that commitment because they had some deadlines of their own to meet.
At this point you if stay longer at your old job, you're inconveniencing two entities: (a) yourself because you're not going to look professional to your new employer if you make a commitment (or even give the impression of a commitment) to join at a particular time and then not deliver, and (b) your new employer because they may have made certain plans based on your availability.
In theory, it's possible that the work you were going to do at your old place is so important that this situation could result in a net positive even if you broke the commitment you made, but I think it's unlikely. And in any case, even if your old employer really really really wanted you around, they need to compensate the new place too, not just you!
The way I would've dealt with this would be to tell my boss something like this: "I can't stay longer because I've made a commitment to the new company and they have made plans based on my availability. However, if you think that having me around is very crucial, let's bring them into the loop as well and we can work out some terms under which you can compensate them and me for being more flexible in my leaving dates."
At this point, my guess is that a scumbag will backpedal because any stunt they pull will now be documented by multiple people.
If your boss says "Before you quit, stay and do X at the usual pay rate", this is probably a boss that doesn't respect your decision to quit in the first place. (Probably you quit because you don't want to continue doing Xs at the usual pay rate). The correct answer is either "No" or "Sure, but it will cost you $TEXAS".
For what it's worth, I know exactly the type of thing you're talking about. So I wanted to chime in and say "No, you're not crazy, even though everyone else in this thread seems to be trying to convince you that you are."
Getting To Yes, if you haven't read it, might be a good read for you. It's specifically about negotiating, but in general, the theme of the book is mutually beneficial arrangements are vastly superior to one sided arrangements.
I've been in similar situations to the one you described and I wish I had some of the knowledge and skills I have now. I could have helped the dude out and negotiated for some more money while doing it.
> pg or my investors wouldn't care about the social issues of the young people working in my sweatshop
I think it's rude to accuse people of hypothetical malfeasance. If there's evidence that someone is callous, show us the evidence. If you think you know of scenarios in which they would be callous, then just tell us what evidence led you to that conclusion instead.
Considering pg praises Ronco's investing background without even mentioning his controversial high-profile political background, I think its fair to say that pg probably isn't too concerned with the social issues at play here. None of his essays seem to address labor rights either. I'm certainly using him in a hypothetical for my argument, but its not an entirely fictional and unfair strawman. I think on the investor level, at least from my personal experience, skill workers are just cogs. They are part of a money making machine, and their concerns are very much at the lower end of importance. This is why we can have things like secret deals not to poach engineers and the H1B problem.
I think by the standards of casual internet commentary, my comment is perfectly acceptable and appropriate and using high-profile characters in hypotheticals to make a point is fine. If NVIDIA did something displeasing to the FOSS community and someone wrote, "Oh man, Linus is going to full asshole on them tomorrow," I doubt you would be white knighting him. Lets maybe turn down the pg fandom a bit, eh? He's certainly not above criticism.
The recent support pg gave to expanding the H1B program is arguably prima facie evidence of this "hypothetical malfeasance" behavior. Except I wouldn't characterize it as malfeasance. It is human nature to shy away from fractally complex issues, and supply chain ethics are very fractal. It would be a sufficient nightmare to validate the ethics of a lead pencil supply chain (cf., classic essay, "I, Pencil" [1], leaven with healthy critiques [2]), not to speak of programmer labor markets and laptop manufacturing supply chains.
It is counter-productive to use a binary evil/not-evil bit switch here. Rather, once you realize we all value our time, and an "I can't be bothered with those details" is an expression of that time preference (albeit in a manner that can be interpreted as malicious), it becomes easier to understand why we see this behavior. This doesn't mean you have to condone it and throw your hands in the air; understanding is the first step in debugging.
The line-crossing and bit flip can happen when someone else performs the dogged time-consuming legwork, assiduously gathers the evidence, and presents it on a silver platter, and the response is still a reflexive "I can't be bothered with those details". When that happens, at the very least Upton Sinclair's pithy observation is at play, and yes, at the very worst the basest of human nature is on full display.
There are nuances beyond all this of course, but that's a wall of text I shan't inflict upon you.
[3] It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! From I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935), ISBN 0-520-08198-6.
And we are being conditioned to think of niceness in the personal level, and even worse judge with superficial BS like nice clothes, clean appereance, etc.
A well behaved rich person will immediately strike as "nicer" (with the meaning of "good" too) than a poor guy on the street or a homeless person, even if the latter has a heart of gold and the first is a huge negative for society. If the rich person is also famous, it's as if people lose their mind to its "aura".
This is probably because as a species we were "evolved" to look for immediate personal threat (attack etc), which looks more probable with a homeless person than with a well dressed oil baron or ruthless businessman. But the glitch is that we use that to also judge for "goodness" and morality.
Our entire economy is predicated on the notion that people get money by doing good things for society and the money is their reward. In that sense more money should correlate with more service to society. (Whether it does....)
We're also selfish, "good" is subjective. A homeless person can be as kind as they want but how much can they do for you? A rich person can benefit you in many ways and it may not cost them very much.
>Our entire economy is predicated on the notion that people get money by doing good things for society and the money is their reward.
Yeah. It's an idea of protestant origins (initially: wealth is a kind of reward for the fair from God), and one that, as someone from a non-protestant country, abhor.
>A homeless person can be as kind as they want but how much can they do for you? A rich person can benefit you in many ways and it may not cost them very much.
People are more often screwed in the large by rich persons than by homeless persons. For starters, homeless persons don't start many wars, nor do they get trillion dollar bailouts for collapsing the economy...
pg's theory is that transparency and unpredictability is what is supposedly making nice investors successful in startup-land. Maybe your industry is not sufficiently transparent or unpredictable to help the nice people rise to the top.
My experience so far( early 30's) has been exactly the opposite, most people/bosses I've meet that were successful in business were complete assholes, with several nice people working for them exclusively for the money.
That has in fact made part of my life very miserable because I really don't expect anything from anybody anymore. If been tricked/robbed/scammed so many times by people I trusted that my trust is mostly gone for now, and I only expect bad things from people when I depend on them for something. (If something good happens it's awesome, but I don't count on it)
Maybe I trust people more than I should have done, maybe it's the place I live... I don't know.