
Reid Hoffman on the relationship between employers and employees - jrs235
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/22/8639717/reid-hoffman-the-alliance
======
patmcc
Loyalty is such a ridiculous thing for most companies to expect. It needs to
be earned, and it's not even that complicated. Here's how you get loyal
employees:

1\. After some probation period, fire only as a last resort or for really
terrible behaviour. Have a plan to correct behavior in all other cases.

2\. No layoffs unless the firm's very existence is threatened. It's a tough
year? Too bad, that's part of the risk involved in being the owner.

3\. Keep pay up to market/replacement rates. If someone is 20% more valuable
with his new knowledge, pay him 20% more. 4\. Have good benefits/vacation
policies.

5\. Make sure there's lots of interesting and challenging work to do. Allow
people to switch roles/teams on a regular basis if they're interested.

6\. Hire good people.

That's a company I'd be loyal to, and I think a lot of others would be too.
Sure, you'd get people who would leave for their own thing, or a dream job, or
because their husband/wife got a job 2000 miles away, but I don't think you'd
see people jump ship nearly as often.

The other stupid thing is companies trot out how much it costs to hire a new
person, but never want to invest in just retaining their employees.

~~~
kevinskii
Let's say you are working for a for-profit company that operates like you
describe, and the business hits a rough patch. The owners tell you that the
only way to prevent layoffs would be for everyone to agree to a 20% pay cut,
and they back it up with hard data.

Knowing you could get paid more elsewhere, would you accept the pay cut to
prevent layoffs or would you leave?

I'm not ashamed to say that I would probably leave. Loyalty shouldn't be
expected on either side, and that's ok.

~~~
Litost
This happened to me in my 2nd job, a long time ago. Customer went tits up
owing us £150k, we were only a small firm, around 10 employees so would have
meant significant layoffs.

So the owner asked if we'd all take 20% or so paycuts, with some of the
older/better paid staff and the owner himself taking bigger cuts. As the
business was otherwise profitable (being in a pretty niche market) we all
agreed. Something like 9months later we all got paid back with interest and a
bonus.

Smaller scale, and a bit more recently at a different (also small) place, all
the non-management staff offerred to forego the (expensive) christmas party so
one of the contractors could get paid back pay they were owed due to problems
with a difficult client.

It's obviously very situational, but in both cases it felt like the right
thing to do and both places were smallish firms where loyalty and morale etc.
at the time, were high.

------
buckbova
> "They know that employers want loyalty," Hoffman says. "They know they want
> to hear, 'Oh, I plan on working here for the rest of my career.'

When asked about where I wanted to be in my career by my boss (boss' boss
actually), I was honest about having my resume out there and looking for other
opportunities outside my current company. Now, I've heard from other sources a
promotion that was possible in my future has been basically pulled.

Honesty is not a good policy. Keep lying.

Everyone says they want the truth, but if you are told you're not doing
meaningful work, the justification for your job is vanity metrics, and the guy
with less experience than you who does terrible work makes more money than
you, how happy would you be?

If you told management, you're using the position and any promotion as a
jumping off area for a newer better job at a different company, how happy
would management be?

~~~
mentat
Promotions for loyalty are poisonous to the company. Merit / track record is
the only way to go.

~~~
sheepmullet
To an extent. As soon as you consider externals for a role though the
merit/track record approach falls apart because of the information disparity.

Its usually better to hire the internal person who you know can do a good job,
than to hire an external who looks twice as impressive on paper. Yet we often
do the opposite.

------
nwenzel
When I interview candidates I always bring up his book and ask: "If all this
goes well and you come work for us, what's next for you after that? Where do
you want to be positioned to go after you move on from here?"

It's a weird question. But it's how I know whether or not I can deliver value
to that potential employee. At big companies, salary and benefits is usually
the main "value" that they provide. So, in essence, they provide the higher
comp package necessary to make up for the fact that an employee is not going
to learn as much as they would at a smaller company. A small company or an
early stage startup is full of opportunities to learn. If your goal is to
start your own company someday, I can make sure you're leaning the things that
will help you get there. If you want to be a race car driver, I don't have
much for you.

Employment is a two-way agreement. It's true that employers have the upper
hand because they typically represent 100% of that person's income. The
employee, on the other hand, is 1/N of the workforce. Switching costs are also
likely higher for the employee.

For many people, I would imagine that a transparent and honest assessment is
preferred to a pretend make-believe world where we imagine that an employee
will spend their entire career in one place.

~~~
analog31
Do you expect a non-bullshit answer? For better or worse, this sounds to me
like one of "those" interview questions, and expecting a company to care about
what I do next makes about as much sense as expecting the company to treat me
like family.

~~~
xrange
Maybe he's self-selecting for sociopaths/people who are good at telling him
what he want's to hear? I've always wondered about an organization consisting
of psychopaths. You disguise it as a consulting firm, at which point it
severely cripples the target company as they infiltrate and demoralize. Then
the evil mastermind covers his short positions/options. Seems like it could
make for a good book or movie anyway.

~~~
twic
I don't get it. What do you think he "wants" to hear?

I think this is a great question, that's honest about the nature of a skilled
employee's relationship to an employer. I don't think it's at all about the
employer pretending to care about the employee - it's a straightforward way to
find out what the prospective employee wants (other than loads of money, which
this employer doesn't have), so that the employer can try to offer it to them.
It's classic SPIN selling.

~~~
nwenzel
I do spend a fair amount of time letting the person know why I ask the
question, where it comes from (Reid Hoffman's book), and why I'm asking. I
also position the question as being about a time pretty far in the future (and
leave that vague so that it's far enough out for either of us to not make it
one of "those" questions).

As far as what I want to hear... I don't have some "right" answer in mind. The
question also helps me understand the person a little better than a typical
interview question might. If I know their long-term goals, I can have a better
idea if they'll be happy with us and we'll be happy with them.

------
Udo

      Employers may want to believe their workplace really is 
      like a family, and, in that moment, they may convince 
      themselves it actually is like a family.
    

When I was an employer, I pretty much embodied this sentiment. To me, work was
this great place where smart people meet every day to have fun and solve
interesting problems. I couldn't fathom that employees were just there to make
money and then forget about everything when they got home. In retrospect,
there are two aspects to this:

1) An employee can actually do a 9-5 job _AND_ have a good relationship with
their colleagues, have fun at work, and apply themselves - fanatical devotion
is not required and should not ever be a criterion for judging performance.

2) However, the "bad" employees I hired (which was totally my mistake in the
first place) did _all_ have in common that they didn't care about their work
at all. Some even consistently lied, about the work they had actually done,
about how much they cared (unprompted), and about how they dealt with
customers.

There is a fine line between utter disinterest and having a healthy work-life
distance. I'm not surprised so many managers have problems categorizing this.

------
ChuckMcM
I find Reid's prognostications quite fascinating. Mostly because they take
similar inputs that I have experienced and pull out a different conclusion.

For example I see small companies as much more 'family like' than he does.
However my understanding of the word 'family' is not 'fruit of my loin' sort
of family, rather of a group with a higher than average social awareness of
the peer members. Mostly I want people to treat each other "like family"
because if someone is going through a painful divorce and their work output is
suffering, I'm not inclined to kick them to the curb. Especially if they were
a solid performe before.

------
cma
>[Hoffman is a] capitalist who made early investments in everything from
Facebook to _Airbnb_

>I was at an _Airbnb_ board meeting and I ran into two former LinkedIn
employees who walked up to me and said, 'Hey, how's it going? I'm working here
now. I'd love to tell you about some of the stuff that I'm learning.' They
know the way that we operate, is not, 'Oh, you've left LinkedIn, so you're no
longer part of our tribe.' We continue to be allies.

So he has ownership interests in both companies, and an employee moved between
the two. He's like chief of one tribe and minor chieftan of another. He feels
righteous because he can be allies with someone who left his major ownership
to work under a different company in which he has less-major ownership?

This is the exemplification he is choosing for his earlier quote, "and that
the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves?" Come on.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Our CEO has a really great policy about workers moving on. He doesn't chastise
them but welcomes their move forward and wishes them the best of luck. He
makes it a point to have managers do that as well.

The end result is that many people that have moved on from the company help
promote the company and its services at their new place.

------
hkmurakami
_> "YOU DON'T FIRE YOUR KID BECAUSE OF BAD GRADES"_

At huge traditional Japanese companies, even terrible, negative productivity
employees aren't fired (the kid with the bad grades). Part of this is because
of regulation, part of this is because they really behave as if they are a
family. (Kyocera's maniacal devotion to its company-wide athletics tournament
is a famous example)

The company provides you with pay, shelter (corporate dorms), a wife (there
are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different category of
employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to marry a male
employee and leave the company within some handful of years), commuting
expenses, a pension, etc. In return, you are expected to be _loyal_ to the
company. And it pays to be loyal, because (1) the upper levels of the
companies are all "propers": i.e. people who joined as new grads rather than
mid-career transfers, and (2) because pay is backloaded.

Do I think this is a good system? Well, in industries where the development,
retention, and continuity of incremental knowledge was important, this seemed
to work quite advantageously. When the economy was reliably expanding YoY,
seniority based pay and lockstep promotion was feasible since more and more
seats could be added in the pyramid structure.

But when the economy stagnates and the backloaded, highly compensated "kids
with bad grades" fill the ranks? The youth suffers, and something's gotta
give.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
> a wife (there are women hired in administrative roles who are of a different
> category of employee than the full knowledge worker who are expected to
> marry a male employee and leave the company within some handful of years)

Where can I read more about this? How wide-spread is this practice?

~~~
hablahaha
Patrick McKenzie touches on it a bit in his blog:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-
japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/). Search
for the part where it says "Don't have a wife?"

~~~
hkmurakami
_> Don’t have a wife? You might quite reasonably think “I don’t have time to
even think about that.” Don’t worry — the company will fix your social
calendar for you. It is socially mandatory that your boss, in fulfillment of
his duties to you, sees that you are set up with a young lady appropriate to
your station. He is likely to attempt to do this first by matching you with a
young lady in your office._

I can attest to this, having this very situation in action first hand.

------
xrange
>"So we'll ask, 'What's the next job that you would like to have post-
LinkedIn?' ... 'It brings some honesty to what is otherwise kind of a
collective self-deception dance.'"

...Am I the only one who thinks this guy is self-delusional if he thinks that
this brings honesty to the table? Now interview candidates are just going to
have to lie about what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Is this
going to turn into the next "tell me about your biggest failure"? Maybe we can
roll the answers to those two question into one. "My biggest weakness is that
I work too hard, sometimes forgoing sleep. In a sleep deprived stupor, I'll
probably accidentally accept a middle manager job at ResumeCo.com, when trying
to perform some corporate espionage as a double-agent".

------
euphoria83
The longer my career gets, the more I realize this to be true. This also has
the added disadvantage that the employers take the employees lightly. In a
family, the head of the family has more power than others. If employers
considered an employee's duration at the company more as a contract, then they
would also work harder to keep the other party satisfied with the contract.
Unfortunately, the relationship is tilted in favor of the employer due to the
fact that a loss of employment generally has worse consequences for the
employee that for the employer.

~~~
stephengillie
Treating an employee's duration like a contract is a terrible idea. It puts
into the employer's head that the employee is just a temporary expense, which
starts begging the question - just how temporary can I make this employee?

~~~
eropple
Have you considered that most companies--especially in tech--already _are_
doing that?

They'd be stupid not to.

~~~
stephengillie
Yes, I'm certain I've worked for more than one employer who felt that way. And
I've considered contract employees that way. It's what inspired me to write my
comment.

Of course, since I am again a contractor, I'm getting some perspective about
my feelings while at my previous employer.

------
jacquesm
Companies typically get back exactly as much loyalty as they are willing to
extend to their employees. So there's a hint if you want loyal employees.

------
datashovel
"he sits atop the largest, most data-rich hiring platform the world has ever
seen"...

How would one extrapolate the "loyalty" issue from that vast amount of data at
LinkedIn?

It seems the point is being made in order to give Reid Hoffman a segue to
explain his company's approach to hiring, instead of actually attempting to
find "the biggest lie" based on actual data.

------
cblock811
A lot of this rings true from my days working in hotels. You could work for
Marriott or Starwood and hop between brands, but still be a part of that
company. If you jump ship some people would get awkward and not know if they
should talk to you. It's the strangest thing I've seen. At the same time it
made the 6mo - 18mo tenures in startups seem super small and non-comital.
Maybe it's more of an issue with larger companies.

------
dredmorbius
"The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family."

~~~
buckbova
This goes two ways. Oftentimes employees act like entitled children as well.
You are not "owed" anything for your loyalty to a company other than a
paycheck for services rendered.

~~~
zo1
Well, would you not feel entitled to something if you were told "do this, keep
at it, and surely you will be rewarded with X".

Quotes to look out for in that regard: "You're going places", "You have a
future in this company", "Your work is so valuable".

------
ArkyBeagle
"I order you to stand around and drink beer until you're as loyal as Kif
here." \- Zapp Brannigan, "Futurama"

------
yellowapple
"You don't fire your kid because of bad grades"

Hoffman seems to underestimate how dysfunctional some families are :)

------
ilaksh
Wage work is simply a variation on slavery where the 'employee' finds his own
food and lodging. Money is just a simple technology for officializing and
perpetuating class.

------
hkmurakami
_> And now he wants both workers and employers to begin having honest
conversations with each other — conversations that admit employment isn't for
life, that loyalty only lasts so long as it coincides with self-interest, and
that the relationship doesn't have to end when the worker leaves._

I read this and immediately thought of McKinsey as the best company that
manages the relationship between the firm and the individual throughout the
latter's professional career.

------
zxyzzxxx
For me the biggest "lie" is that companies want employees to settle at their
company and at the same time they don't offer contracts that don't expire.

------
brazzledazzle
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Netflix since they've seemingly embraced
something similar to this honesty as an integral part of their company
culture.

------
geggam
You work to get paid. If you are well enough off you don't need to work to get
paid you aren't working any more.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
Some people actually find meaning in work and would continue to work beyond
their financial necessities.

------
bootload
Employees and employers lie/deceive each other (point two), so assertion in
point number four, _" employers put too much weight on interviews, and too
little weight on references"_ is questionable.

------
joesmo
I disagree with his point about references. They tell you nothing and are a
hundred percent of the time only going to tell you positive things about the
employee, regardless of reality. No one with half a brain would ever give a
reference out that wasn't going to be positive. Even if you don't have one
positive reference, asking a friend to pretend to be one is easy and I don't
doubt it happens even when people have qualified references. I'd much rather
interview a potential employee than have to use references. The mere thought
of references making _any_ difference whatsoever in a hiring decision is
rather angering in its stupidity.

~~~
sgustard
The article specifically says to check references other than the ones given by
the candidate. I wish Reid would expand on that. If I interview at LinkedIn,
is he going to blab to my boss and the world that I'm looking for a new job?

I've been cold-called to give references on people I found weak. Frankly, I'm
not going to blurt out a lot of negative data to a stranger. It's either a
legal or ethical liability, and what's in it for me to trash a colleague?

~~~
sokoloff
I've also gotten those calls, and I don't think it's nearly the legal
minefield that people claim. I'll make my point clear enough if it's
warranted.

I've also gotten a reference call for someone I terminated and gave them a
positive reference, conditioned on the fact that the new company wanted
someone with exactly the skills my ex-employee had. I was very clear about why
it didn't work out with us, but thought that that it was a very good fit for
the new place, given how they described the role and responsibilities. Ex-
employee was hired and is (as far as I know) doing very well and happy there.

I think the "I'm only allowed to confirm dates of employment" is a terrible
drain on the mobility of good employees and allows higher mobility than should
be the case of poor employees, so I don't participate.

------
mikerichards
That whole "we're a big, happy family is annoying". The company I previously
worked at it was big into it.

It seemed to work for them when they were small (<= 50 employees and before I
was there), but once they got to a certain size it just became annoying.

They used to have these monthly "before work hours" meetings that turned into
bi-monthly meetings that were especially annoying. They would trot out some
executive to say this and that and also had this weird group of employees that
would dress up in costumes and put on these weird little skits.

But the final straw for me was when we were acquired by another company and
they started trotting out the new executive team. One lady was showing
pictures of her family riding 4-wheelers. That was it.

"I'm sure you're a nice lady, but I don't care. We have our own families".

I told my boss that I wouldn't be attending these anymore and I would give my
resignation if he wanted. He grinned and said he understands..it was annoying
to him too.

I think I left a couple months after that. The whole sappy-happy family wasn't
the main reason, but it sure was annoying.

------
SilasX
Could we replace the LinkBait title with a more informative description like
"LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman on the biggest employer lie: the company is like a
family".

~~~
dang
We replaced it with a phrase from the first sentence.

First paragraphs often contain a more accurate and neutral description of what
an article is about. It's as if, having baited you in with the title, they
immediately start walking it back.

~~~
alexqgb
In publishing, it's the editors who compose the titles, not the writers. This
is why the writer's lede is so frequently a more reliable point of entry to
the story.

------
sdalfakj
Clickbait on HN. Great.

tl;dr "The biggest lie is that the employment relationship is like family,"
Hoffman says.

~~~
galago
Of course CEO of a company that coordinates credential evaluations between
employers and employees thinks that this is more important than interviews.
His business depends on it.

~~~
fsk
It seems that every post on "how to fix hiring" was written by someone who has
a product that claims to fix hiring.

------
yegor256a
I wrote something similar a few months ago:
[http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-
rea...](http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/02/team-morale-myths-and-reality.html)

------
michaelochurch
_Frequently employers are so casual about references they either a) don 't
check them, or b) only check the ones the prospective candidate gives them._

See, that's a problem. That stands out more than any of the good things that
he might say. People talk and things come out and shit happens, but
deliberately going behind someone's back for back-channel references is just
plain unprofessional, if not unethical. This is the kind of behavior that has
the rest of the country (in which ethical standards aren't seen as old-fart
ideals to be "disrupted" but are actually considered important) thinking that
we, in tech, are a bunch of immature psychopaths.

The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like
waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any
information out of it (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete
strangers). What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your
colleagues are more loyal to me than to you". There's _a fucking reason_ why
people outside of tech consider it unprofessional and borderline unethical.

~~~
SamReidHughes
> People talk and things come out and shit happens, but deliberately going
> behind someone's back for back-channel references is just plain
> unprofessional, if not unethical.

It's not unprofessional or unethical.

> The back-channel reference check is an unprofessional show of power-- like
> waving a gun around at work-- because it takes social access to get any
> information out of it

For it to be a show of power, such an action would have to involve "showing"
something. It's actually an attempt to avoid hiring bad employees -- that's
the benefit people get.

> (people don't just offer candid opinions up to complete strangers).

This merely raises the threshold of badness before they might offer negative
information. If their coworker was bad enough, they would. And do.

> What's communicated by the back-channel reference check is "your colleagues
> are more loyal to me than to you".

The miscommunication is on your end.

(Also, your former colleagues don't owe you _or_ some potential employer
"loyalty.")

~~~
fsk
Michael O Church once lost a job due to a "back-channel reference check", so
that explains why he's so hostile to them.

Also, in the USA, there are rules limiting what you can say about a former
employee. By giving a negative back-channel reference, you and your employer
might be susceptible to a lawsuit. However, actually suing a former employer
for something like that is probably a bad idea, because (1) it'd be hard to
prove it (2) it would make you even less employable when other people find out
about the lawsuit.

If I ever am in a position to do hiring, I probably wouldn't do it, because
I'd trust my judgement more than someone else's.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Michael O Church once lost a job due to a "back-channel reference check", so
that explains why he's so hostile to them._

To tell the whole story... "you should see the other guy." :)

I did eventually get my revenge. Six months later when I had the money, I
hired a PI to figure out who gave the bad back-channel reference (it wasn't
even someone I worked under) and found out that he was sleeping with one of
his subordinates. Had the news dropped at his work, to his wife, and at his
kids' school on the same afternoon. God works through people.

 _By giving a negative back-channel reference, you and your employer might be
susceptible to a lawsuit. However, actually suing a former employer for
something like that is probably a bad idea, because (1) it 'd be hard to prove
it (2) it would make you even less employable when other people find out about
the lawsuit._

A termination lawsuit makes you less employable. I don't know that the same
holds over a bad reference, because pretty much anyone would sue someone who
damaged their careers in such a lasting and petty way. Getting fired is
something that happens to everyone and while most of us aren't fired in an
illegal way or for illegal reasons, most people will be fired in an unjust way
at least once in a 40-year career, so the prevailing attitude (right or wrong)
is that a successful, competent person will just dust himself off and find
another job. Bad reference issues are much less common and most people (the
rhetorical "reasonable man") would agree that you have to do something
permanent and brutal about that.

Wrongful T lawsuits are dangerous to your career because (a) every company or
manager will have to fire someone, given enough time, so it's far from clear
that your opponent did anything wrong (b) they bring a lot of dirty laundry
(on you and the company) into the public, and if there's no dirt on you, they
make something up, and (c) your odds of winning aren't good unless you can
easily prove discrimination.

When you sue over a bad reference, you're suing an individual (not "an
employer") and you're also suing over something that would lead pretty much
anyone to lawyer up, so the air about you isn't "he got let go and sued his
company" but "someone tried to fuck up his reputation and he fought back".

~~~
spacehome
Michael, while I usually enjoy your rants, getting revenge like this is
insane, and admitting to it on a public forum attached to your real name is a
whole 'nother level of crazy. No personal offense intended, but I would never
ever in a million years hire or associate personally with somebody who did
what you did.

~~~
michaelochurch
All I can say is that I hope you're never in a position where you have to do
"insane" things to protect your own life or career. It's an experience that I
wouldn't wish on another person.

~~~
spacehome
Thanks, I hope I'm never put in the position that I would have to do such
things to protect my life and career, either.

Admittedly, I don't know much about what actually happened in your situation,
but does hiring a PI and going after someone 6 months after the fact protect
your life or career? How, exactly? You say you had money (presumably through
employment) at this point. Why not just move on and forget about that episode
of your life?

That's the sort of vindictiveness that would make me afraid to associate with
a person.

~~~
michaelochurch
The PI didn't actually cost that much. I helped out someone he cared about.
That's another story.

The person was able to hurt me because he, through a certain station, had the
credibility that made what he might say about other people (such as me)
matter. His opinions would be taken seriously. After taking a hit, I fixed the
problem. It wasn't about vengeance. It was about doing just enough to fix the
problem, then moving on. He didn't lose his job _per se_ but I made him enough
of a laughingstock that no one would take his word over anyone else's, thus
making me safe from him.

After being attacked, it's not unreasonable to think that such defenses are
needed in order to protect the future.

I wouldn't do that sort of thing after a "things didn't work out" situation,
even if things ended badly or I got fired. I'm an adult; I'll move on.
Likewise, I wouldn't retaliate against someone just for saying that I was a
jerk or that he didn't like me. (Plenty of people say that I'm a jerk. That's
fine.) There has to be a lot more, like fraudulent negative claims about past
work performance... something that sounds objective and can be damaging...
before I'm ready to fuck up someone's life. People have the right not to like
me and to say that they don't; what they don't have the right to do is to
deliberately damage my reputation with fraudulent or inaccurate claims.

This was a case where someone deliberately tried to damage me _after_ I had
moved far away from him. There was an act of war, and I fought back with
force, and I won. I don't believe in starting fights but I do believe in
ending them.

~~~
marktangotango
But how were you certain that this person gave the bad reference, since it was
back channel after all? Hell, how did you even knkw a bad reference was given?
How did that effect you? The logistics of this story make me more skeptical
than audaciousness of it.

~~~
michaelochurch
I had the luxury of other people talking too much. If not for that, I wouldn't
have known.

 _Hell, how did you even knkw a bad reference was given?_

I was able to find out what was said. Again, if all someone had said was "I
don't like him", that wouldn't have been an issue. This person made negative,
fraudulent claims about me and my past work performance in front of enough
people that it was impossible for him to hide his tracks.

People who do bad things are usually awful at keeping secrets. There are
exceptions, of course, but generally the traits that incline a person toward
malice and petty conspiracy are not traits that make a person good at keeping
secrets.

~~~
SamReidHughes
> There are exceptions, of course, but generally the traits that incline a
> person toward malice and petty conspiracy are not traits that make a person
> good at keeping secrets.

If there was ever a time for "show, don't tell"...

