
No filter: the meanest thing Paul Graham said to a startup - brandonb
http://brandonb.cc/no-filter-the-meanest-thing-paul-graham-said-to-a-startup
======
bjourne
This post is very gladwellesque; presents an anecdote then draws a very
general conclusion based on it (being honest is good).

Reading it, it doesn't seem that what made an impression on you was PG's
objective criticism of your idea that made your change your mind. It was that
he was upset and _said something mean_. I think that because what you quote of
what PG said and therefore must have made the most impact on your decision is
his expressions that basically can be translated to "you are fucking stupid":
"Moments like these make me glad we invested in sixty-four startups!", "If you
want to drive off a cliff, go right ahead.", "like moths for bad ideas."

I suppose you want to be seen as rational actors and would never admit it, but
when I read your post it seems like you reacted to PG's anger, frustration,
meanness and other emotions, but _not to his honesty_. The conclusion I would
draw from your anecdote is that it is much easier to get your point across if
you are emotional, _even_ when dealing with intelligent, technical people.

~~~
pg
I wasn't angry. I was resigned. That's why I phrased what I said the way I
did. After so many cycles of doing YC, I know a certain percentage of the
startups in each batch are doomed. Some people just aren't meant to start
startups, but there's no way for them to know that for sure without trying it.

So when a startup seems determined to stay on the wrong path, I won't keep
fighting them forever. Eventually I give up. And occasionally when I do I tell
them so, because sometimes that wakes them up.

~~~
oyasumi
> "... know a certain percentage of the startups in each batch are doomed.
> Some people just aren't meant to start startups, but there's no way for them
> to know that for sure without trying it."

People are much stronger and amazing than that.

It's important not to forget that all people have unlimited potential, because
we are all the same. However, one factor that cannot be measured, is passion.
Passion can come from one or any number of factors - and passion can make the
impossible possible.

To that extent, I'd encourage comment readers to grasp that idea you love so
greatly, and grasp it with all your heart... for off that cliff lies a river
where you can pan for gold.

The other driver's cars were not designed for high altitude nose dives into
water. The car designers did not care enough to pay that much attention to
detail to handle that dive.

However, for the passionate who can make the finest car, there in that river
lies the gold.

~~~
obstacle1
Did I time-warp into a Tony Robbins seminar, here?

People have unlimited potential?

We are all the same?

The impossible is possible?

There is a fine line separating rational optimism from potentially dangerous
delusion, and your post crosses it.

Stick to science and knowledge. Our potential is finite, we all have very real
differences (biological and otherwise), and "the impossible is possible" is an
obvious contradiction that renders both terms meaningless, so you're really
saying nothing at all.

~~~
cfontes
you toke the words out of my hands :D +1

------
llamataboot
OH: "People interested in being brutally honest often seem more interested in
the brutality part"

There's nothing wrong with creating a culture (especially a non-hierarchical
culture) built around trust, good intentions, and honest criticism. But
honestly, I see a lot more damage in almost every community I am apart of (not
just tech communities, art communities and political communities suffer from
the same things) from people hitting people over the head in the name of
"honesty" than from bad ideas or bad practices being allowed to continue
because no one bothered to point them out.

~~~
orky56
"Brutally" not only refers to the force applied during the conversation but
also the lack of escalation in communicating the sentiment. There is a
difference between being passive/aggressive or subtle and giving constructive
criticism in an unemotional way. The former is easier and ineffective whereas
the latter is an exercise in empathy and self-control.

~~~
wwweston
"Brutally" may be one of the poorer choices for a modifier intended to
communicate a lack of escalation.

Maybe "flatly honest" would be better?

------
joshuaellinger
It's a little simplistic.

Try having 'no filter' in a marriage and most of you would be headed for
divorce.

Instead, you need to say things in a manner that your target audience will
understand. Sometimes, it takes yelling. Sometimes, you can just be silent and
have an even greater impact.

If my kid is throwing a tantrum, I sit down and listen to what he is saying
and give him a message in terms that he is likely to understand.

The key is that, if you are dealing with a bunch of headstrong engineers, you
might have to push them a lot of get through. If you are dealing with someone
who has a bit more sensitivity, this approach can be totally counter-
productive.

~~~
larrys
"Try having 'no filter' in a marriage and most of you would be headed for
divorce."

Agree. Most business owners as well would have little success with this unless
they have desperate employees where desperate means "can't quit for economic
reasons".

Except for celebrities (of who PG is certainly a celebrity with the majority
of people who get into YC or are on HN (although not as much)).

Jobs can do this. PG can do this. Others of equivalent stature can because
they have what others want. So those "others" will eat all types of shit in
order to get their ticket punched.

Most people who aren't desperate for their job (or an investment) will not put
up with abusive type behavior. They will walk. For the record I had done that
back when I was in college. First time it happened.

Money and tolerance for abuse are closely related.

For the record the thing that bothers me more is the tone and anger as opposed
to the words.

~~~
jamesaguilar
It's also worth noting that I believe PG's reputation is mostly even-keeled.
The incident described in this post sounds like an outlier. If you're
regularly escalating to this level of rhetoric in code reviews or meetings at
work, you're probably not using the same criteria for deciding when this kind
of talk is justified compared to Mr. Graham. I've seen more virulent language
on this site over relatively innocuous comments, which is one example of
something I doubt PG would endorse. Who knows if he would even endorse what he
said in this conversation, albeit this time it did work.

~~~
larrys
"The incident described in this post sounds like an outlier."

Would agree that was the impression I had as well.

Strictly for discussion purposes, from my experience, behavior that starts out
as an outlier (which works) ends up being the modus operandi if the lack of
kickback and inevitable positive reinforcement (in terms of compliance) keep
coming.

In the same way that a child not corrected or disciplined will continue acting
out especially if they get their way by doing so.

------
rexreed
This is nothing compared to the meanest thing a CUSTOMER has said to a
startup. Be thankful he doesn't have the power to complain to everyone over
twitter, facebook, and the web about your business and the power to sue you if
stuff goes wrong. I'll take a harsh-sounding, well-intentioned comment from PG
over a truly-mean, ill-intended customer complaint any day. But often even the
customer complaints are gems in disguise as well.

~~~
brandonb
Very true. The customers that were the biggest pain in the ass also provide
the most accurate, detailed feedback. But it can be hard to hear when you've
been up 20 hours working on something. You need to steel yourself and just try
to separate out the objective feedback from any apparent rudeness.

------
trustfundbaby
> And that has a corrosive effect on culture. Those negative thoughts don't go
> away, and when team members repress doubts, resentment builds. Passive-
> aggressive behavior starts to predominate, politics brew, and problems
> linger on without being solved. So although people may hold their tongue
> intending to be nice, the result is that a more subtle kind of meanness
> takes root

This is so absolutely true that its painful, because I have seen this first
hand.

The thing you must do is try to figure this out before you join a company,
because this tiptoeing around people's feelings seems to work really well at
shit and spectacularly average companies. So if you go into a place where this
is the accepted way of doing things and try to be the straight shooter, you'll
find yourself on everybody's shit list because that's just the way things are
done, and in short order (depending on the level of sociopathy that prevails
at your particular firm) very strange things will start to happen to your
career.

It seems to be that at companies that are doing really amazing things, with
really smart and accomplished people, this is not the case.

I also think that this might be a function of culture in the city you work, So
while a more unfiltered approach might not raise eyebrows in New York, doing
that in Texas could cause problems

------
jmduke
For reference: the B2B company Brandon stuck with is Sift Science, which
detects fraud via machine learning.

[https://siftscience.com/](https://siftscience.com/)

~~~
inthewoods
How is this different from what the credit card companies provide? Or do they
really not provide that service or only do it on the backend (post
transaction)?

~~~
brandonb
(I don't like advertising on these threads, but since somebody asked me
directly I'll reply.)

Credit card companies protect consumers, but not merchants. When you call up
your bank to report that a transaction was fraudulent, the credit card company
reverses the transaction and withdraws the money from the merchant's account.
That reversal, called a chargeback, can occur months after the original sale.
Merchants can lose thousands, even millions, of dollars per month due to
chargebacks.

That means anybody who sells stuff online needs a way to detect fraud on their
site in real time, and that's what Sift Science does.

If you run a web site with a payment form, give it a shot:
[http://siftscience.com](http://siftscience.com).

~~~
inthewoods
I appreciate you not overly pitching - I'll check it out. Separately, why
aren't you mentioned on the team page? Are you still involved?

[https://siftscience.com/about](https://siftscience.com/about)

------
DanBC
> Actively fostering a culture of "no filter" is painful at first. But like
> exercising, the more you do it, the easier it gets. And it's better than the
> alternative—death.

No.

You say that people tried to tell you what was wrong, and that you didn't
listen.

Better communication doesn't mean "start with being blunt", just as better
communication doesn't mean "dance around the issues but never talk directly
about them for fear of offending people."

Or, let's see how this works:

You're an idiot if the lesson you get from this is that 'no filters' are a
good idea. Only a dumb-ass would reach that conclusion. The same kind of
fuckwit who would ignore all the smart people trying to give them information
and who only gets the point when someone is exasperated enough to fall into
rudeness.

~~~
andrewflnr
I see your point, but different sides of the communication need to hear
different things to make things better. Whatever side you're on, you can only
change what you do, not what other people do. He's talking to the "tellers" in
this case, based on his experience as a recipient, telling them what works.

I totally agree with you on the stupid false dichotomy that comes up in all
these discussions. It's difficult but possible to get your point across
efficiently without being rude. If people _think_ you're being rude, well,
sometimes that's a listener problem and there's nothing you can do about it.

------
dllthomas
"Crocker's Rules"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Daniel_Crocker))
seems relevant.

------
mhartl
It's possible to be honest and tactful at the same time, but doing so requires
developing quality real-time filters, which is hard and takes lots of
practice. One hypothesis is that powerful people have the luxury of not
developing such filters because they can better get away with alienating the
targets of their (often, to be fair, dead-on) criticism. Mistaking correlation
for causation, people then conclude that operating without such filters is the
_cause_ of such power, rather than an effect.

As a thought experiment, consider the Jobs quote from the OP:

 _We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I
am full of shit and I can tell them the same._

Now, what would you guess was the rough ratio of brutal honesty directed _to_
Jobs to the brutal honesty coming _from_ Jobs? In physics parlance, I'm
guessing it was << 1\. Jobs was human, and even an advocate of brutal honesty
would probably rather hear "Steve, I need to talk to you about a delicate
subject..." than "Steve, you smell like shit and need to take a shower." [1]
Considering that Steve could fire you at will, which tack would you take?

[1] I once had the pleasure of hearing Mike Scott tell me and a group of other
Caltech grad students about his first duty as Apple's first president: tell
Steve that, contrary to his belief, a "fruitarian" diet does _not_ result in
zero body odor. If memory serves, Mike was wisely oblique and tactful when
bringing up the subject.

------
WestCoastJustin
Personally, I would much rather someone be brutally honest with me, rather
than beating around the bush or talking in innuendos hoping that I will figure
it out. PG is an expert in his field, and there is no point for him to waste
either parties time participating in this charade. Being blunt likely
accelerates the learning curve by gutting the conversation of red tape.
Getting to the meat and potatoes of the conversation.

p.s. This is also why I respect Linus.

~~~
DanBC
I genuinely do not understand why every discussion about this has people
presenting the same two extremes - "Fuck off you idiot" on one end and an
inability to give any useful information on the other.

In between those two extremes are a wide range of responses that can express
anger at having your time wasted, through gratitude for something but
inability to use it because of $REASON, through all sort of other stuff.

~~~
diminoten
No one's defending the "fuck off you idiot" extreme, I don't believe. Linus,
PG, no one successful gives that kind of criticism very often. It's usually,
"fuck off for reasons x, y, and z. You're _acting_ like an idiot."

------
jfb
Paul can be terse, and sometimes you don't want to hear what he has to say,
and he can be wrong; but he's _never_ a bully.

~~~
hnriot
sounds to me like he was using his position to bully these guys away from
pivoting. If he hadn't been an investor his opinion, like those of their other
colleagues, would have gone unheeded. How is this not bullying? Personally I
don't even think it was a mean thing to say, it was just honesty, but the
whole drama stuff of throwing up arms in exasperation rather than just
professionally explaining why they were about to make am mistake is just bad
manners.

------
omegant
There are several factors here and I haven't seen anybody post them:

-PG has surely seen lots of mistakes like the op was going to do.

-He has seen how they end.

-he has tried persuading those founders in several ways, and probably failed too many times to be satisfied.

-probably (I don't know PG beyond his essays and concerences) he knew that giving polite advice was the best way to keep the OP on his track to failure.

-so be did the equivalent of a Doctor starting a CPR: a heavy punch to the chest. That may seem a rude behavior to a external observer, but in fact he is saving a live.

I suppose that his mean comment was studied and acted, not REALLY emotional.
But it worked none the less, it doesn't matter what other people think about
that, his role is to keep startups growing, not external people happy about
his kindness. PD. CPR (CRP in spanish) and the enter button doesn´t seem to
work on the Iphone.

------
offsky
I had a professor at Stanford who had a policy to always give positive advice,
unless you said "give it to me hot", in which case he gave you the truth. I
always asked for advice this way and it saved my butt a few times. More people
should have this "brutal honesty mode".

------
mindcrime
_Our second week in Y Combinator, we almost pivoted away from building a B2B
startup_

I thought a "pivot" was a change in target market in an attempt to find
product-market fit, OR a change to a whole new idea _in response to a failure
to find product-market fit for the current idea_. The lean startup book
defines a pivot as a "structured course correction designed to test a new
fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy, and engine of growth.".

From that little blurb this sounds more like a "I'm bored with this B2B thing,
let's do something totally different and B2C" moment rather than an actual
pivot. Or am I missing something?

------
kangaroo5383
Personally I believe that no filter communication works best in conveying
ideas clearly and directly. However, it only work if there's established trust
and respect in the relationship. In addition, no filter doesn't mean be
abrasive (like Linus). I've found that with some pretty competent people they
can shutdown in those situations. Clear, honest, no fluff communication is
essential, but it's also essential to keep the conversation about the work and
not about the person.

A combination of appropriate encouragement, honest criticism, and healthy
respect is needed to bring out the best in people.

------
adamtait
Great post, Brandon. Getting object & honest thoughts, opinions & feedback is
vitally important to both teams and each one of us. To help our team be more
open, I've tried to use regular retrospectives where we highlight aspects of
projects/sprints/teams that went well, poorly, and some that were both. I've
also tried having time away from work, but found that without the focus on
feedback, people are reluctant to offer criticism.

What practices have others used to foster critical feedback? What types of
personalities are best at bringing this out of others?

------
6d0debc071
If you want to be an effective communicator, it may be a good idea to speak to
different people differently. Brutal honesty works for some people. Other
people will just get so upset or defensive that they'll stop thinking or
choose not to associate with you.

I'd suggest that when it comes to manners and you don't know the other party
that well, you might benefit from playing your cards as conservatively as you
can given the time you have available. You can get ... blunter ... a lot more
easily than you can take back hurting someone's feelings.

 _> Actively fostering a culture of "no filter" is painful at first. But like
exercising, the more you do it, the easier it gets. And it's better than the
alternative — death._

Supposedly, old Chinese courts used to communicate with the Emperor via the
interpretation of heavenly portents. I seem to remember that the fool in some
European courts was meant to criticise the ruler too.

Whether true or not, however, in either of those cases you'd be abstracting
the filter out into a procedure and avoiding retaliation from the ruler.

If you think that the problem is that people have their egos invested in
particular solutions, then I suppose that you could take approaches liable to
lessen attachment in the generation stage too.

Anyway, I'm not really sure that the only alternative to no filter is death,
is what I'm saying ^^; (Though it seems plausible that the alternative to no
_honesty_ is.)

------
anuragramdasan
This is great. I once was a part of a startup. I had my doubts about the idea
but the other co-founder assured me that the market would work well. I was the
tech guy and had nothing else to do at that point(and also coz I love to code)
played along.

We talked to a lot of people about the idea and they all had "kinda" nice
response, too much filtered. The startup didn't work out. Those were the times
when I wished the comments were as unfiltered as the one made by PG here.

------
Jd
It's a good question to ask yourself all the time, not only when you are
working on a startup. "Am I failing? How?" The more you ask it, the more
evaluate your own progress according to whatever goals you have, the better
you get at managing your own progress towards goals -- and the less you need
other people to manage you.

That said, kudos to pg and team for being honest and to the point.

------
rubiquity
Good post until the Linus reference without any context.

~~~
brandonb
Do you think it's bad because you disagree with the point of the Linus
reference, or because you didn't understand it without context?

~~~
phpnode
You imply that Linus was overdoing it, he wasn't.

Mauro wasn't _asking_ for feedback, he _acted_ in a way that resulted in
strong negative feedback, that's why it's not really relevant to the rest of
your post.

------
205guy
Minor distracting nitpick: the post title is misleading. I thought PG was the
one who said "No filter." I realize the title has no quotes, but missing
quotes seems like a smaller mistake than requiring the reader to decipher what
it's supposed to mean ("PG has no filter against speaking his mind, which led
him to saying the meanest thing he ever said to a startup").

Better title: "Paul Graham dares to criticize, and why you should to." Or just
drop the "No filter:".

Also, for the first half of the article, I thought "no filter" referred to the
founders who switched focus on a whim, ie "no filter against other alluring
ideas."

------
harrisreynolds
This was a great post. Honesty/Transparency/Bluntness is just critical.
Related to this, it requires a culture where people don't have an emotional
attachment to their ideas or work (at least during the development stage).

------
workhere-io
We shouldn't aim for "brutally honest", we should aim for "honest" (meaning
telling the truth, but trying our best not to hurt the other party's
feelings).

Also, the author seems to assume that the person being brutally honest is
always right in his/her criticism. But what if he/she isn't? This is the
situation many employees find themselves in: Their boss lacks the
qualifications to bring valuable input to the table, but still thinks he/she
should be allowed to be "brutally honest" (which in those cases basically
means being dumb and a loudmouth at the same time).

------
zw123456
I enjoy reading HN very much, Most start ups that HN invests in are started by
a group of very young people and from what I understand, the amount of money
invested is relatively small, which is probably wise. But as someone who has,
let's say been around awhile, let me just say that it probably would have been
really helpful to have a resource like YC when I was making all my mistakes
(ahem, several fails, leave it at that). I agree, PG sounds like he knows when
to shake you up a little, I wish I had had a little guidance like that back
when. YC'ers, pay attention.

------
guard-of-terra
Off topic, but Linus is my hero after reading that e-mail.

After that story which uncovered sheer idiocy of glibc developers who break
user code between two minor releases. Was it Drepper who broke memmove?

------
jaredstenquist
Was this recent? If not, how did the advice turn out?

~~~
brandonb
This was two years ago, and so far PG's advice is turning out well: we were
able to raise a seed round, series A, get a bunch of customers, and hire an
awesome team.

You can never be exactly sure where the other road would take you, but one of
our employees, who was very encouraging about the local events idea, told me
after he decided to join: "There's no way I would have joined if you were
working on local events. A user, maybe, but joining you, no."

And in the same period of time, I've seen a lot of startups focus on some
variant of local events, and most have pivoted or failed completely.

~~~
brandnewlow
Local events is one of those ideas PG says he outright hates. I remember being
surprised when you guys said you were working on it during YC and happy when I
heard you moved into fraud detection.

------
brymaster
What's with the double standard? There seems to be a disconnect between what
people agree can be said to someone's face and what people can say on a public
internet forum.

I see defense of language in the article and that doesn't add up with what
people refer to as 'fatuous vitriol' and are up in arms about on HN comments.

I guess there are no hellbannings in 'real life.'

------
candybar
But whose honesty are we talking about? I agree with the heart of this, but
very often leaders being "brutally honest" to the point of being rude and
inconsiderate have the effect of causing others to become too afraid to speak
their minds, lest they trigger an angry response.

------
blackaspen
TIL: Paul Graham is one of the nicest people on earth if that's the meanest
thing he could say.

------
johngalt
Never compromise on clarity.

Nothing wrong with the proper application of a filter. Filter out words that
don't improve the message, or criticism that isn't constructive. The problem
with your filter is that you had it tuned to filter out anything that
disagreed with you.

------
fnordfnordfnord
It is so hard to get some people to understand that criticism is not always
meant to be an insult.

------
melvinmt
Just curious: what was the idea of the mobile app for local events?

~~~
nameiscarl
I'm interested in that, too.

I go out a lot (in my home town, and even more so in holidays), and I'd love
to have an app to give me suggestions of events (special nights, museums,
openings, and such).

Why was it a bad idea ? Have brandond and al. research the market ?

~~~
tonyarkles
Having worked on a local events app in the past (which I ended up abandoning),
I have a few thoughts. These aren't necessarily unsurmountable, but they were
sticky points:

\- Event database curation doesn't scale very well. If you want high quality
and accurate content, you're either going to need to have people double-
checking stuff or come up with some nice algorithms to pre-filter it.

\- Event entry is a hassle. At the start, you're going to be entering a LOT of
the content by hand. This is pretty normal across a lot of different types of
product, but with event data, the data has a very definite shelf-life. As soon
as the event is over, you've lost a piece of data and you're going to need to
replace it with something else.

\- Chicken & egg: when you haven't grown to be _the_ place to search for
events in a city, you're not going to have people entering events for the city
(e.g. people who work at venues who want to advertise their events). There are
so many different apps that advertise events for you, and putting events into
all of them is going to pretty onerous.

\- Facebook: for a venue, or a band, Facebook is a super easy captive
audience. I follow venues I like on FB, and they advertise all of their coming
events right there. That's your competition.

\- Reasonably high cost to drive traffic. If I recall, we were paying
somewhere around $0.25/user that came to our site. We got decent inbound
traffic, but almost no sign-ups, and even fewer self-posted events.

\- How do you monetize it? Your two big competitors are Facebook (free for
posting events) and posters stapled to telephone poles (25¢/poster to print
it).

~~~
nameiscarl
Thanks for your feedback. This is very interesting.

> Your two big competitors are Facebook (free for posting events)

Facebook is not exactly a competitor because it's a walled garden. So you have
to be part of the _right_ groups or be suscribed to _official pages_ to get
events.

It don't know about you, but all this facebook overhead is starting to bore
me. I love salsa, hip places and fancy. I want the best events for me NOW. I
love dive bars, cheap beer and sweaty rock. I want the best events NOW.

> \- Chicken & egg: If you can't populate your event base with pre existing
> data, you may have a chicken/egg problem.

Unless you have some magic crawler technology...

I'd love to have a access to a event central database that curates events for
me matching my taste and previous choices.

I could pay a flat fee for a mobile app that could do that. And I wouldn't
mind it having ads for other places/events that could suit my taste.

I have a hard time imagining that events curating is not a real problem.
Finding new places and fun events to go to is actually a pain.

Is it a monetizable pain ?

The linked article implies that Paul Graham thinks that this is not worthy of
a shot (or a second shot). Is it not monetizable enough ? Is it a nut too
tough to crack ?

I wonder what the reasons are (I wish I have more research on the subject).

Well, this problem got me thinking.

If you want to keep talking about it, here's my email name.is.carl (@) gmail
(you know what)

------
general_failure
"I want to design something my mom can use".

Ahhh, remind me again where I have heard this before. Thank god, pg shot the
idea down.

------
qwerta
There is saying that people will always say nice things. You need good friends
or pay small fortune to hear bad things.

------
JohnsonB
So what was the terrible B2C idea?

~~~
jdminhbg
From the OP: "So we pivoted to a mobile app for local events."

~~~
brandonb
Yep. That's it.

------
mvkel
Not a good sign if you pivot twice before you even get to the top of the hill.

------
lnanek2
Heh, good for them. I know so many companies in local events it's silly.

------
a8da6b0c91d
American society is way too polite and "sensitive" now days. Go read Mencken
and Twain, and editorials in general from 90 years ago. You couldn't write
invective like that anymore; people would freak out and demand apologies. It's
sad.

Seems to me the most effective organizations don't pussy foot around stark
language. Read about Bill Gates back in the heyday calling people idiots and
yelling at them.

------
michaelochurch
My thought on this: a "no filter" policy is good, but it requires sensitivity.
Paul Graham can shoot down a bad idea (that's a service, not a slight) but not
a person, which is an important skill because good people come up with bad
ideas all the time and someone has to do the culling. Few people have that
ability.

Paul Graham is not (from the sounds of it) an asshole. Constructive criticism
is good, but assholes are toxic. They shoot down bad ideas, but also good
ones, and generally make people insecure. They aren't taken seriously after a
while, but they inject random, highly visible, embarrassment that can
effectively target anyone and it has a chilling effect.

People create and refine these filters and then go too far in the other
direction. They know they aren't assholes, but they don't even want to _look
like_ assholes.

Additionally, most people spend most of their organizational lives as
subordinates, in positions where there is literally no upside (and
considerable downside) to being a bearer of bad news.

