

Dealing With Jerks - mschonfeld
http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/35214129552/dealing-with-jerks

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jhuckestein
A hidden message here is "Jerks exist". For many people startups are the first
time they play a high stakes game and that's the first time they can really
get burned by jerks. You might have encountered some in school etc, but
usually you aren't put in a position where you rely on them.

This happened to me once and I found it hard to accept that someone would even
be mean-spirited at all. It can take some time to get over this, but at the
end of the day I think you shouldn't be overly cautious about this. If you
worry too much about people being jerks, the cost of missed opportunities is
likely to outweigh the benefit of working with less jerks. If somebody turns
out to be a jerk, just be nice and try to remove yourself from the situation
as gracefully as possible with as little damage to everyone as possible.

As a side note, as with most things, the jerk/not-jerk distinction isn't
binary. Most jerks will have a nice side and friends that don't consider them
jerks. Of course that doesn't help you if they're being a jerk to you, but
keep it in mind.

------
quanticle
_The details aren’t important_

I disagree. You don't have to name names, but it's hard for me to draw any
lessons from your post without knowing specifically what happened. I mean,
right now, all I have is your word that this person became hostile and was a
jerk. From my perspective, it's your word against his, and you're basically
saying, "Trust me, this guy was a total jerk." Well, it's hard for me to
believe you without your saying what sort of actions this person took to be a
jerk.

~~~
Ataub24
but that's the point. the post wasnt about a specific experience. The
experience led to the post- but the experience isn't worth calling someone out
on.

