
A new study of rudeness in the workplace - pseudolus
https://hbr.org/2019/07/why-people-get-away-with-being-rude-at-work
======
rfrey
In 25 years of working in the software industry, I have never witnessed
somebody's assholity defended by their performance. I have also never
encountered... NEVER encountered... an asshole who was also a top performer.

In contrast, the top 7 performers I can think of off the top of my head were
to a person kind, generous with their knowledge, patient with those less
talented, and generally Good People, both to work with and to be around in
general.

So there's my anecdote to counter yours.

I will note that although I have never met an asshole who was a top performer,
I have met many who were convinced that they were.

~~~
mharroun
To be clear there are under performing assholes just they usual get the ax
quickly if management is competent.

How would those 7 top performers act if placed alone in a situation of
failure? Where its obvious the company is failing and is clear is certain
individuals? Is it not "rude" to point that out? Or are we defining being rude
or assholity differently?

I personally seen many times people who push back or raise justified criticism
of anything be labeled as "rude"/"toxic"/"assholish".

~~~
rongenre
Save it for performance reviews. Be a professional.

~~~
AstralStorm
Sometimes it's about being professional, but more often than not it is about
taking and ignoring mountains of problems. You get called for being a whiner
if you constructively point out problems, and a problem case of you try any
solutions that are smarter than whatever your middle manager(s) comes up with.
Worse, if they perceive you as a threat. Or fail to play office politics - you
will be that guy who does most of the work, or hardest work with no
renumeration. Favorite of all hiring teams until inevitably getting
psychologically damaged if you're normal in any way. (Especially crude way is
to give someone a problem insoluble by one person or overload a small team.)

------
mharroun
How do you define being rude? From what I read and experienced in my career
the real reason "rude" people get away with what they are doing is simple.

They tend to be top or above average performers who don't like when co-workers
who are sub par are treated and rewarded as their equals.

I have met many sub-par workers who love to throw around the word "toxic" to
define and attack such people. I have seen such "rude" or "toxic" people work
fine along other exceptional and/or capable co-workers and reject those who
cant perform.

"He/she is an #@$hole... but he/she is doing most the work and objectively in
the end they are not wrong in anything they have said." Are words I have heard
echoed across so many different leadership meetings at various companies.

The Pareto principle is very real in terms of workforce and what we should
really discuss is how we can focus on honest constructive conversations that
allow the successful to succeed and give critical feed back to those who
arent.

~~~
EliRivers
My experience is very different. The rudest people I've had to work with are
generally incompetent to mediocre at best, often believe themselves to be far
more competent than the evidence suggests, and end up significant drains on
the company as people go to significant inefficiencies in order to avoid
having to deal with aforementioned rude incompetents. The actual best
performers tended to be quietly polite and unobtrusively competent, getting on
with their work smoothly; given that being rude to people causes problems,
being rude isn't just a sign of incompetence - it _is_ incompetence.

~~~
mharroun
From my experience rude + under-performing = termination, if those people who
you work with are not performing why does your companies management keep the
around?

 __I didn 't put it in my original post but incompetent managers who use
"boasting" as a success metric instead of objective metrics can lead to such
an issue as well.

~~~
dvtrn
_if those people who you work with are not performing why does your companies
management keep the around?_

I'm asking this question presently as a team lead.

We have a contributor who is a drain on just about every aspect of our team's
operations. They frequently miss meetings, they don't seem to take instruction
well (example I brought up once to another team member, this person will ask
for help, cut you off constantly, suggest their way is better, or do the
direct opposite of whatever recommendation you offer and spend days on a
problem set delaying sprints), have delayed multiple projects, caused numerous
production outages so on and so forth.

All of this combined has made trying to train this person or help them improve
difficult and frustrating--very few on the team wants to work with them
anymore.

It's not a secret among the team that this person just is not the contributor
we need, and it's pretty evident from his reactions a few times that our
department head is not pleased either, but he doesn't seem interested in
letting this person go--none of us are quite sure how to have that talk with
our leader that we think this person should be cut loose and a replacement
found.

Suggestions on broaching that topic?

~~~
mharroun
As team lead are you the persons manager? If so you should have every right to
go to hr to either terminate or start a performance improvement plan.

If your a team lead with no hire/fire power you need to go to your department
head (and rally those whoa agree with you to do the same) and be blunt. "X is
is not performing to expectations on top of that the way X is not performing
is disrupting, impeding, and alienating other members of the team and its now
become not just a performance issue but one of employee attrition".

This makes it about X vs the rest of the team/department and allows him to
clearly see what is actually at risk. Its very unlikely 1 person is so valued
that a manager would accept major turnover in their department.

------
cateye
It doesn't make a lot of sense to discuss things that are totally subjective
and can't be defined with a certain specifity.

\- What is the definition of rudeness?

\- How can rudeness be quantified and measured?

\- What did the interviewee perceive as rudeness?

\- Is the shown behavior correctly observed and classified as rudeness?

------
caminante
_> Notably, those employees who reported being victims of rudeness were
largely perceived by their managers as perpetrators of rude behavior._

The article and research abstract [0] doesn't appear to address the most
interesting point. I want to know why the victim blaming persists.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30640491](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30640491)

~~~
chroma
My guess is that it's related to the saying, "If you run into an asshole in
the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you
are the asshole."

------
insickness
I'm generally friendly with people at work but I've noticed that there is a
strange inverse in kindness to people's response to my kindness. When I'm more
terse, they respond kinder. When I'm kind, they tend to be more terse.

For example, if they ask a question and I give a longer, more friendly
response like, "No, I don't know the answer to that question. That's not
really my department." They may just respond with, "Ok." But if I respond with
something more terse like, "Don't know," they will respond with, "Ok, no
problem. I'll figure it out."

~~~
quakingaspen
Huh that's a cool observation. I think there might be more ambiguity there
though. For example, I could (and in my case would probably) also interpret
the second response as not being "friendly" exactly but as defensive and
irritated. Only someone who is worried about being regarded as inferior or
believes that you're acting superior would make that kind of overly
demonstrative response. A peer would probably just echo your tone and just say
"Ok". Not saying you should psychoanalyze too much or that your interpretation
is wrong but be on the lookout (especially via written communication) for when
kindness isn't actually kindness, but deference or defensiveness.

------
guitarbill
This study falls a bit short. Where does the rudeness come from? They've
already identified that rudeness leads to lower engagement and more burn out.
But does lower engagement or more burn out lead to mode rudeness? What happens
if the leaders themselves know the environment they're creating leads to these
things?

Context is key. I've seen fake, high-pressure environments created by
management too often. It isn't a life-or-death situation, it's your shitty
incentive structure.

I refuse to believe most people are intrinsically rude (in a workplace
setting). Because almost nobody is rude directly after you hire them (if they
are, your hiring process sucks). No, it's more likely the environment or team
is dysfunctional and rudeness is a manifestation/poor coping mechanism.

In that way, it's unsurprising management is unable to gauge the performance
of individuals accurately, rude or not. It could even be a root cause.

~~~
singron
> Almost nobody is rude directly after you hire them ... No, it's more likely
> the environment or team is dysfunctional and rudeness is a manifestation

I think this can be true, but new hires might just behave differently because
they are new, and any changes are reversion to the mean. E.g. new hires are
excited to start their new job, don't have responsibilities yet, are trying to
impress their colleagues, etc.

~~~
guitarbill
What stops anybody from fostering that attitude further into their careers?
People should be given opportunities for new project and be excited to do the
work... unless they already know it's going to be a shit show (impossible
deadlines, clueless management, etc). If switching jobs induces such good
behaviours initially, what does that say about the previous job?

Again, not trying to defend people who are truly rude. But I'd like to think
the vast majority of people aren't like that.

~~~
zingermc
People can inhibit their negative behavior when they are trying to get people
to like them and gain social status. If they feel empowered by having some
status or a promotion, they may begin to "punch down".

------
oceanghost
Workplaces are a frappe of personality disorders and mental illness. People
who were raised to be polite, people who weren't, and sprinkle in one
psychopath and one or two sociopaths per one hundred people. Think about all
the crazy people you've ever known? They all cause just as much trouble at
work as in their personal lives, and they all have to work somewhere.

Even relatively well-intentioned people are usually insufferable. To say
nothing of power politics, purposefully toxic environments, etc.

Politeness is the lubricant of social relationships, but rudeness is a
powerful signaler.

I am normally polite, but unafraid to be rude or aggressive when politeness
fails. Most often, rudeness indicates some portion of the social contract has
not been upheld (treat me fairly, and I shall do so). Is it wrong for an
employee to be rude to someone who is secretly undermining them? To a boss
whose using them?

Rudeness is simply a social signal. I think it is more stressful to be polite
all the time.

I could write a book on the crazy sh __s I 've had to work with.

~~~
yuhe00
This is fair. I don't think anyone can claim they have never been
disrespectful towards anyone in their life. People are sometimes unbearable
and sometimes you are too. Learning to deal with your own and others crazy
bullshit is a part of life and how you grow as a person.

------
badrabbit
Question: I may not verbally greet people I don't directly work with or
interact with. Is that considered rude? I am just not a good small talker,but
I am not sure if my intention with small things like this will be
misunderstood.

~~~
Gibbon1
I'll answer your question, it's not rude. But developing communication between
yourself and people outside your immediate work is helpful in getting a bigger
picture about what's going on in your workplace.

Having a bigger picture can make you more effective and useful.

~~~
badrabbit
Thanks much for the advise.

------
NPMaxwell
I'm interested that this article was posted by kungfudoi to Hacker News in the
afternoon 18 days ago (not on a Saturday morning) and garnered 2 points and
zero comments. This posting misrepresents the title/headline of the article
and acquires 33 comments and 42 points. I bumped into the article today and
was about to post it, but noticed that it had already been posted. Perhaps I
should follow pseudolos's lead, and post it anyway. My earlier impression was
"don't repost", and "don't rewrite titles or headlines."

------
siddharth-v
I've been working in a small team for a while now, and even in this small
group I've encountered rudeness in a way that I've never seen before. I'm
generally very friendly with people, but being at the receiving end of
someones rude behavior takes a toll on you mentally. Combine this with the
fact that the bosses don't know how to control their employees behavior, and
you have a toxic workplace.

------
rplst8
Rude people suck plain and simple. I was once young and overbearing, and since
then I've been on the receiving end of that and it's total bullshit.

I'm not saying we should coddle people in the professional world, but we sure
as shit shouldn't have to deal with coworkers psychological and anger
management issues.

------
trabant00
I'm quite often rude to others at work and I freely admit it.

Reason: ofc I feel I am justified to be so. Just like everybody else I feel I
am right.

I am not rude to everybody. Just people who don't want to carry their weight
but want an equal share of the pie.

I am rude to Project "Managers" who only assign story points in jira. To
product owners who always side with the external client and dump the technical
team under a bus for the smallest things. With managers that think we can
maintain full speed all year round. With hiring people who only care about
getting the head hunting fee. Etc.

I am also a 3x productivity wise. Have not been matched in any of my jobs.
(Spoiler: never worked at google or anything like that). Always on the edge of
burnout.

Am I toxic or am I just blunt? Depend on who you ask. Am I to be promoted or
fired? The same. One thing more I should note: the same people who make HR
complaints behind my back ask me to help them with things that are not in my
job description nor are documented work.

~~~
zingermc
There's really no excuse for being rude in the workplace. Please get help
instead of trying to justify it.

If multiple people have made HR complaints "behind your back", you are not
competently performing your job. (This directly affects your claimed 3X
performance because you drag down your coworkers.)

~~~
trabant00
Then why do those complaints get buried and I get a talk with management
approx: "we couldn't find anybody else for that job, try to tolerate them as
best as you can for the time being"?

My coworkers are the engineers by my side who never complain about me, quite
the contrary, they cheer when I put down middle management leeches.

