I have an example. In a previous role was in a position where we were negotiating a large-ish (>1M USD) multi-year contract when our client asked us to also do a proof of concept about some topic. It was just 1 week or 2 weeks so I said it would be free but because of various regulatory stuff we needed a contract in place.
I was dealing with the same purchasing lawyer on both contracts. The process was super-standard: someone sends a first draft, the other side redlines (proposes changes and makes comments), then the first team redline, etc, at some point you all compromise a bit and someone makes a clean copy of the document containing all the agreed changes for everyone to sign. So we got to the point we had all agreed and the purchasing lawyer on the other side produced the "clean copy" but he obviously thought we were a bunch of rubes so he produced a clean copy for us to sign by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes. This is a ridiculously low-integrity bush-league stunt and he did it on the zero-cost POC contract while we were still negotiating the >1m big contract.
Some people just want to win so bad it doesn't even matter to them that they are being total assholes, the prize is zero and it's outright harmful to their own interests. I bet he cheats when playing his own kids at boardgames.
Except this has been tried before and they typically end in one of three outcomes:
1) It was a mistake and it doesn't go to court.
2) It was intentional and it doesn't go to court because the attorney, while still being a piece of shit, understands what option 3 is.
3) It was intentional, it goes to court, and you produce the email evidence showing the attorney agreed to changeset N then sent along changeset N-1, and the provisions are thrown out because they were executed in bad faith.
4) Contract gets unknowingly signed and shelved, OP moves jobs and his/her replacement assumes the signed contract is legitimate.
Rare, but I've seen it happen.
FWIW I completely agree with both you and OP - it's a totally boneheaded move, but you should never underestimate how boneheaded some people (lawyers in particular) can be.
Anecdote/Sample of 1: lawyer friend skipped paying the fine for picking up his kid from the kindergarten 30mins after the closing time. His excuse was "come on what is 30mins?". Kindergarten warned "strike 1" and promised that he either paid the $10 'penalty' (textbook Freakonomics case) or be so much closer to expulsion (Edit: added the Or to conclude the Either).
He didn't pay and promised to sue. His wife was then told that if he sues the kid is out the door. She paid. She never told him. He still thinks "he won". I know many people of all professions can be dicks, but it feels like Lawyers have a greater concentration.
In a twisted way, he “won”. The world adapts to his ways.
Don’t think about in terms of money, but protection of his fragile ego. In this case, he was enabled by his wife.
I can imagine similar things could have happened in his childhood, people raking for him behind the scenes. (Incredibly entitled behaviour, “rules don’t apply to me”)
Civil lawsuits come down to just one thing in this country: MONEY.
Not the law, not what is right or who has been virtuous. Just money. Or more specifically: who has the money.
If you are poor and you sue someone who is rich, they control that outcome. If you are rich and you sue someone who is poor, they (by default) control that outcome; there's nothing there. If you are both poor, a judge will often decide based who looks and sounds the less poor. If you are both rich, then (the equivalent of) actuaries decide the outcome.
Criminal lawsuits are similar. I do not care how much you fuck up in this country; The amount of time you spend in jail will be inversely proportional to the amount of money you can spend to fight it.
It is supposed to be an international forum, but in practice it is a local group for San Francisco Bay Area. Consider how often articles about housing issues in Bay Area make it to the front page, compared to Vancouver, London, and Tokyo. HN is international in the sense that anyone can access and participate in it. But in practice, mostly SF Bay Area residents do.
I see participatants from all over the world here all the time. They usually qualify things with phrases like "where I'm from" or "in [insert country here].
It's only the Americans that think they're the center of the world.
I used to watch this Japanese show "Why did you come to Japan?" where a camera crew hangs out at Narita Airport and ambushes unsuspecting foreigners with that question and try to tag along on the journey of people they think are there for an interesting reason. When everyone introduces themselves they say the country they are from, except Americans who always say which state they are from and never the country. I found that particularly interesting. So, I just assume it's a deeply ingrained cultural thing to treat "America as default".
As an American expatriate I'm always shocked or bemused by the US-centric comments I get from family.
I live in East Asia, which is by no measure a cultural or technological backwater, and was surprised to hear my mother say, two days ago, "you must get YouTube over there...".
For some more perspective, I'm the most successful member of my family (from a financial pov) and from the condo I live in to the car I drive, I have nicer things than my parents ever did. I'm the first in the family -- and this is something I only considered just now -- to sends his kids to a good / expensive private school.
Though I don't lord it over them, my life is way more advanced / cushy than theirs. But from their point of view I'm not in the US and therefore don't have access to what they consider the gold standard of civilization.
And this point of view has not changed even though my parents have experienced my life in Asia first hand. Truly bizarre blind spot.
When I first moved to China ~10 years ago, I mentioned to whomever I was on the phone with back home that I needed to go grab some cash and that I might lose the call when I got in the lift. They asked where I planned to get money in the middle of the night, and were surprised to learn that ATM technology had indeed made it to "the Orient."
These days most people just ask if I've eaten a dog.
I obviously wasn't around back then, but even today the pace of modernization in China is astounding; I can only imagine what it must've been like in Deng Xiaoping's later years.
I usually cut them slack unless they're jerks about it. A lot haven't even got a passport. That's usually fine as well: The USA is a big place. Not even talking just actual size. There are a lot of people with diverse ways of living and circumstances. But the place is so physically huge you could spend your entire life exploring it and still not run out of places to find new things and people to see and meet.
If it helps, think of every US state as if it was a european country. You might lazily think they are all the same but scratch the surface and there's a lot of difference.
So yeah, its fine for someone to say they're from California. You already know they're from the land of High Fructose Corn Syrup so why be nasty about it?
It really isn't so diverse though. Same language, same retail and restaurant chains, same cars, same TV channels, same currency, same political system, same sides in war back to 1800s (and even that is a large portion of remembered history).
Compare it to Europe, where a 3 hour drive gives you different food, language, holidays, religion, festivals, type of beer, different political system, different history going back 1000+ years... and another 3 hour drive does it all over again.
But still, I think it’s easy to cut murricans some slack. Their country IS one of the most interesting ones. If I weren’t living in my dream country I think I’d want to live in California.
For those downvoting this comment: this conclusion (that HN's reader base is predominantly based in the SF Bay Area) should be entirely unsurprising given that HN is itself the product of Y Combinator, an accelerator based in the SF Bay Area that (last I checked, and from what I recall back when I worked for a startup that applied) specifically requires its incubatees to relocate (if they're not already there) to the SF Bay Area during said incubation.
Yes, not all of us are in the SF Bay Area, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that most readers are.
> requires its incubatees to relocate (if they're not already there) to the SF Bay Area during said incubation.
Not sure "relocate" is the best word. I've been freelancer for 8 years and one of my client is a YC startup that is and has always been in Paris, France.
If the founder (implicitly the leader or one of the top leaders) has to relocate, even for three months, then I fail to see how "relocate" is anything but the best word, especially when a company is still in a stage that would benefit from incubation.
It's a fair assumption that a lot of people on HN have SF viewpoint or views at least that partially align with them. Even those of us on the other side of the planet.
As for your downvoters: plenty of people believe they should downvote when they simply disagree. Others believe that downvoting without a comment is fine. These two groups make HN less interesting.
I actually want to know the reason why. Too many people hide behind a downvote and contribute nothing. Meanwhile they are making interesting posts disappear for no good reason. And other comments that are blatantly rubbish are not touched at all.
> It's a fair assumption that a lot of people on HN have SF viewpoint or views at least that partially align with them. Even those of us on the other side of the planet.
Totally agree with you ! But maybe some people misunderstood what you wrote.
I'd rather say that the crowd here is technically fit and policed enough to try to understand elaborate and forward-looking viewpoints, sometimes contrary to the doxa [0]. That makes comment so enjoyable to read. And it's also reassuring, that we can agree on some things on both sides of the planet .
edit : and some people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers and live in SF by design or accident, will not like to see their opinions qualified as "SF" opinions. Works equally well for any part of the world.
> As for your downvoters
+1. This mechanism is a rather raw moderation system, people will abuse it to disqualify competing stances. There are options to refine it.
To clarify, I think this comes down to: can you afford your lawyer. Maybe you find a lawyer willing to work on contingency? Most of the time you won't (unless its a big case like a class-action - as far as I'm aware).
Could you perhaps explain how it works in your country or other countries, in such matters? I'm not necessarily knocking any non-US or non-UK judiciaries or jurisprudence(s); in fact if anything I find US or UK systems poisonous too - as you describe it - to a high degree in some cases.
But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?
To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.
> But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?
There is no perfect society in this regard. Just because it's hard doesn't mean that such societies shouldn't strive to reduce the odiousness, and maximize the fairness in the administration of justice, regardless of the subgroup that the contending parties may belong to. Fair and equal treatment under the eyes of the law is a cornerstone of human rights.
> To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.
You've listed regions that contain some of the most heterogenous countries on earth in ethnicity, language, and culture, like the UK, France, China, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Brazil.
Some of these countries have multiple, sometimes contradictory legal systems, some sanctioned by the state, others by religious power structures.
The country that is often referred to as among the most homogeneous societies in the world, Japan, has a pretty well acknowledged dual justice system for citizens versus visitors. All societies fail at this, but if anything, the very homogeneous societies fail the most at offering equal justice.
I'm talking about diverse, complex and modern as in a jurisprudence that takes into account many ethnicities and still manages to produce a letter of the law that multinational corporations find agreeable to do business in and yet at the same time subjects those corps to tough penalties with an enforcement mechanism to back it up.
Countries with a steady inflow of new migrants of all networths.
Countries that make real attempts to be fair to native born people and outsiders alike.
A country could speak 2 or 3 different languages and still a very largely monocultural way of doing things. Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.
A country could have on paper very impressive law frameworks and yet in action be essentially meaningless since most of the population doesnt have access to fair representation.
Not mere grandiose legal frameworks with not an ounce of real world enforcement to back it up or go after bad actors in a legitimate way, without extra legal acts of justice or worse mob justice.
Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.
> Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.
Definitely not. Multiethnicity is necessary, but insufficient condition
> Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.
That's obvious. I didn't say they were perfect, just far from homogeneous. And there's not much to learn from very homogeneous societies in this regard.
The question for the complex heterogeneous societies isn't whether they fail, but rather what direction they are moving in. Arguably both China and the US have moved backwards of late.
Some legal systems are less biased towards people with more money than others. I think the ones in northern Europe tend towards that, but I don't have specific examples and wouldn't expect them to be totally fair either.
Do those outcomes hold up if the innocent party caught the mistaken/bad-faith change before signing and knowingly proceeded to sign anyway?
Everything you said makes sense if it goes unnoticed until after signing, but I'm less sure about that scenario. Probably varies by jurisdiction, at least when both parties are well-resourced and sophisticated.
> by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes
That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove their capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company.
If that genuinely happened, that lawyer needs to be disbarred, but that's a pretty damn egregious accusation.
1. Send back the document he sent with a copy of your most recent edits and ask him to confirm if his document is correct.
2. But, make note of at ONE error, and see if he fixes all of them.
3. If he only fixes only the one, then he's either really lazy or trying to keep up the deceit.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3, be sure to CC everyone involved. If he's lazy he will be ashamed and be more careful. If he's a sneaky bastard he will most likely get angry.
Not foolproof, but will sure make everyone aware of what is going on. (regardless of the motives)
Assuming there is an external person arbitrating (which is usually the case when dealing with internal politics at least -- one or two levels up from you), it's so important in these cases to stay reasonable. Virtually every single time, the person that likes to fight will cross the line in the hopes of goading you into a fight. But it's exactly at that time that you win. You send a very reasonable email to the arbitrating person saying, "I'm really trying my best to get this working, but I'm having trouble. Could you please give me a hand." Since the arbitrating person really would rather do nothing, they will look at the situation and say, "A is completely reasonable. B is not. B, you need to change."
I remember one time where I was discussing a problem with a manager in another team. Every single email he sent, he CC'd the management 2 levels up. Every single email I sent, I sent directly to him only. My colleague was panicking. He felt that I needed to show my side of the story to upper management or else I would be in trouble.
Eventually the management 2 levels up got frustrated: "Why am I getting all of these emails? Why can't you people sort out this problem yourself?" To which I reasonably replied, "I'm very sorry that you've been bothered, and I'm not sure why this person is being so difficult. Now that you are here, would you mind giving us a hand?" Problem solved.
You have a good point about CC'ing too many people. And that care should be taken when including others in a discussion that could affect their reputation.
It's not that easy to accept only your own changes though. You can accept all changes, or reject all changes, but accepting only your own and rejecting others, at least in Word, takes specific effort.
Fair point. On the other hand, I'm not much more inclined to work with a stupid lawyer than a malicious one. If he opens by screwing up this badly, what's he going to do next?
There are some cases in which granting the benefit of the doubt is too much of a risk to be worth taking.
Be careful with how you as a non-attorney assess the intelligence of attorneys.
With a sufficiently big organization, it's common for some sort of higher precedence, non-negotiable appendix to render most of this stuff moot anyway. Corporate attorneys on the sell-side, even at surprisingly big companies frequently screw this up, often when making snide comments through the salespeople.
My buddy tells a story from when he was an SE many years ago and his company's attorneys were going to kill a deal over an NDA requirement. The customer ended up getting them to agree to "blah blah blah, subject to applicable law". One problem: the customer was a city, subject to freedom of information law in that state!
Experienced salespeople usually get it but eye-roll, as they have an incentive to STFU.
Unfortunately, as with all cases of information asymmetry, I lack the tools on which to assess them. But since it's required that I do make an assessment, I am going to have to take an extremely self-defensive posture.
The attorney is the expert. I am not. If the attorney makes a mistake, I have no tools with which to judge whether it was stupidity or malice. I have to assume that it's both. My own attorney may better be able to make that assessment, and I'll respect their judgment. But until then, an opposing attorney has to be assumed to have all of the power and every reason to use it.
Oh, absolutely. Making a stupid mistake isn't necessarily better than malicious intent. I wouldn't work with either of those people, especially if my livelihood is involved.
I was just saying that I tend to err on the side of stupidity. Most people are stupid. Very few are bad actors in their day-to-day lives.
> That so feels like a mistake because that's the sort of tactic that would completely and utterly remove your capability of ever working as a corporate lawyer ever again for any company.
No, that's basically SOP for big corporate lawyers.
No, it's not. This is something that is easily proven and could be a cause for disbarment. No big corporate lawyer is risking their career over this. Maybe something like this can happen by mistake or with some idiot with an office in a strip mall, but the idea that this is a normal stunt is silly.
FWIW My wife and I were negotiating a commercial lease and we always did a diff between what they send back and what we sent them in case they pulled something like that. It may not be malicious (i.e. they updated a wrong version). They had integrity and they didn't do pull any stunts.
We called him out on it, he sent a new version and we executed. On the big contract he tried several other small variants on this (going back and post-hoc altering wording that had been agreed, delaying things for no reason, just generally being an incredible pain in the ass to deal with in a million small ways) until we got a press release from the CEO of his (global) company saying how happy they were to work with us and his demeanor instantly changed and he became super-constructive and efficient.
In spite of everything everyone on this thread thinks/says, it definitely wasn't an error. I spoke to another third-party vendor (over a beer) who were going through purchasing at the same time as us and he was doing the exact same thing with them.
How much did you call them out? Did you escalate, as in "We really want to partner with you, but your legal guy is super hard to work with, can you have a talk with him"?
His profession has some of the widest opportunities for unfair financial rewards which result from ruthlessness alone, and this has traditionally often been executable within a typical office structure not materially different from the fair dealers who actually want everyone to win.
Even if he is working for the most benevolent & generous of corporations right now, the temptation to switch to a firm or org with a significant to dominant ruthlessness component will always be there.
Maybe they made a cost/benefit analysis along the lines of "If we mess with 10 potential partners we may lose one or two, but the gains of completely fucking one over make it completely worth it".
It's something I probably wouldn't do because the risk is too high, but I wouldn't be quick to assume the contract manager decides on his behavior based on feelings towards new companies.
Ha. Our city council is dealing with that regarding a CATV franchise agreement.
The cable company’s attorneys changed several provisions that did not show up as redline changes, while intentionally making syntax and grammar errors that did show up as redline changes.
I had a famous company redline many minor changes that we had discussed, but in amongst it, they redlined a major change we hadn't discussed. They said, *we redlined it, you saw it, what's the big deal?" But I wouldn't deal with them after that.
I hope you cut that client lose. If they'll do something like that on the POC they'll do it on the big contract and in numerous other ways. You'll have to double-check everything with a client like that and not be able to trust them. Life's too short to put up with that.
It’s a common negotiation strategy to be a complete ass and wearing people down. A lot of people will give in just to keep the peace. It also works to ask for more concessions right before closing the deal. You just have to be shameless. I think that’s why sociopaths tend to do well in business.
The only time you can afford to have this behaviour is when you have leverage over the other party either by connections, dependencies or assets. People often forget that without leverage being rude will get you nowhere. Try this at work tomorrow and I bet you in no time your manager will show you the door. If both parties are on equal terms when it comes to negotiation power then it will either turn into a pissing contest or gets resolved quickly.
Once word gets around though, it starts to harm you in the long run. I worked for a company where one of the owners seemed to have a world view that everyone is trying to screw you over, so you better screw them over first.
After I left I had a friend ask about the company, because they were about to a deal with them. I gave my honest opinion and suggested they be sure to get any money up front and be very careful to reduce their risk.
I am not so sure about that. When I was consultant I had several clients that were a complete pain to deal with but they also had a lot of money to spend so it was worth it in the end. When I read business biographies I get the impression that a lot of successful people/companies like Gates, Jobs, Ellison or Walmart are really hard to do business with. They will exploit you as soon as you make the slightest mistake but if you play everything right you can make good money.
I would advise never to do business with Walmart, Apple, Microsoft as a small business. They have so much leverage over you, mistake or not things are out of your control from the start. The more work you do for them the more they take over the rest of your business. Get bigger then talk.
If the monopolist is huge enough, they control an enormous cascade of wealth transfer.
There are many points for a small business to tap into one or more of their streams in a way which everybody wins. But this usually requires that no disruption takes place. Without actually adding value (to natural resources) yourself, you are allowed to remove enough value to grow an operation having share price which can outperform the underlying monopoly.
This is a common strategy with oil & chemical companies.
They can also afford to not be a pain or make you wait until the end to be financially worth it.
This kinda seems like a just world fallacy. It might get around, it might not - I'm not sure its really known either way. But we like to hope people that regularly behave like assholes eventually get punished for it.
I've encountered two types of people who attempt the asshole strategy: A) those stick around in town and after about 10 years, eventually build a bad reputation that they can't shake, and B) those who have to move every 2 to 3 years to keep ahead of their bad reputation.
The first group finds they eventually have to move to get back to progressing in their career (hopefully learning from their mistake). I've known guys who moved and did change, running into them again and finding them to be completely different people, settled into family life, and quite happy. I've known guys who moved and didn't change, found themselves needing to move again in 10 years, all while cursing the world for being against them.
The second group just never progresses in their careers. You see them try to move into positions that seemingly fit such behavior, like "serial entrepreneur" or "SEO consultant". They never really grow, always behaving like they're still in their early 20s. By the time they hit their 40s, they can't pick up chicks at bars anymore and it hits home that they've wasted their life. Unfortunately, I've never met anyone who changed and turned it around.
It does come around. It just takes longer than internet scale time.
> A lot of people will give in just to keep the peace.
IME it works only if the party is the only way in town and negotiation is only on scope and price (i.e., the other party cannot take their business elsewhere). Otherwise they get known as "assholes not to deal with" which is a very hard thing to shake off. My 2c.
> It’s a common negotiation strategy to be a complete ass and wearing people down. A lot of people will give in just to keep the peace. It also works to ask for more concessions right before closing the deal. You just have to be shameless. I think that’s why sociopaths tend to do well in business.
For lawyers, at least, this might work...once. The second time they try it, you know there'll be no "give" in "give-and-take", so you're not afraid of going in for trench warfare. If they're assholes through-and-through, it's not unheard of for party B to ask party A to switch lawyers.
It's an excessively short-term view of "winning", and it doesn't benefit anybody in the long run.
No, I've had this happen when drawing up contracts with American lawyers way too many times for it to be mistakes. We've had lawyers try to sneak in one sided clauses after we agreed differently with business owners pretty much constantly.
It always significantly deteriorated relations with that company. But I guess Americans think that's fine because "it's just business".
IANAL, but if you have correspondence indicating that you wanted something removed and both sides agreed to it, then I'd imagine you'd have a case in court if they slipped something in. Contracts are never 'iron-clad' -- for example, you cannot legally sign away your soul. Lots of stuff can be invalidated in court.
Sure, but when they "fix" things like ticket/issue response times, SLAs, responsibilities of both companies, it can later be very hard to prove what you've agreed on a video call with a CEO/CTO. Especially when that other company decides that you'll be the one taking the blame for their internal politics.
I am saying that as an American, one that works in America, and from my subjective experience working in b2b and consulting jobs, the business culture around me is full of contractual bullshit.
Just think about the larger situation of EULAs and no-competes and arbitration clauses. Everything is hoping you don't read the fine-print, or have no energy to fight it, even to say you haven't read or were mislead and therefore it shouldn't apply.
Being an American doesn't make it any less prejudiced. It's a gross generalization. Even assuming it were true, how is this an exclusive characteristic of America?
> That's a really prejudiced and unwarranted view of Americans. If anything it says more about your biases and prejudices than it does about one nation.
I am an American citizen so you can take it from an American citizen instead. Companies have zero scruples whatsoever about screwing over others in business.
Being an American doesn't make it any less prejudiced. It's a gross generalization. Even assuming it were true, how is this an exclusive characteristic of America?
I wouldn't word it like this if it wouldn't be a very noticable pattern of behaviour comming pretty much only from US customers. Negotiations with customers from other cultures have been significantly more honest - it doesn't mean they weren't seeking an advantage, but this agreesive backstabing from legal departments right after signing up the customer was something that was very very US American.
After seeing it first-hand, I'm noticing this attitude even in fields like global politics, where burning goodwill to gain very minor advantages seems to be the policy these days.
> I wouldn't word it like this if it wouldn't be a very noticable pattern of behaviour comming pretty much only from US customers.
But that's the thing... do you have access to a representative, uniform, random sample of US customers? Do you have a similar sample of customers from other regions to compare against? Are those samples based on your actual data rather than personal anecdotes? Have you eliminated hidden variables that could better explain this behavior than simply the place they are from?
If you answered "no" to any of the above, you're suffering from availability bias.
> After seeing it first-hand, I'm noticing this attitude even in fields like global politics, where burning goodwill to gain very minor advantages seems to be the policy these days.
Sleezy as this is you wouldn't be able to show damages since you didn't sign the contract. The other lawyer can claim error and the burden of proof would be on you.
If you did accept, then you have a lengthy court battle ahead where a jury could very well rule "abide by the contract you signed you reneging moocher."
The real world isn't a school playground. Calling a teacher over is time consuming and expensive and far from a guarantee of justice. It is up to you to keep yourself safe from assholes like this by always doing your due diligence. Someone who pulls this kind of shit constantly will eventually lose their license, but many years down the road and after many victims.
ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 8.4: Misconduct: "It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: [...] (c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation..."
If it really was intentional, this very clearly meets the standard, and there's absolutely no requirement that there be damages for the lawyer to be disciplined. I'm not talking about a fraud or malpractice claim, so there's no reason this would involve a lengthy court battle, etc.
Further, Rule 8.3: "(a) A lawyer who knows that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority."
> The ABA is not a lawyer disciplinary agency and has no authority to investigate or act upon complaints filed against lawyers. Each state has its own agency that performs that function in regard to lawyers practicing in that state. Locate your state agency from the Directory of State Disciplinary Agencies.
So you're not dealing with the ABA, but the underfunded and understaffed state board.
Of course you're dealing with your local licensing authority, but they'll all have a rule substantially the same as the model rule cited.
California's state bar even has a formal opinion calling out this or similar behavior:
"Had Seller’s Attorney intentionally created a defective “redline” to surreptitiously conceal the change to the
covenant not to compete, his conduct would constitute deceit, active concealment and possibly fraud, in
violation of Seller’s Attorney’s ethical obligations."
Not a lawyer, but have family that are: according to them it's really really hard to get disbarred. Permanent disbarment is basically reserved for stealing client money. Everything else is forgivable.
I was thinking the same thing, it's the type of thing that probably should be reported to the relevant bar. I don't know if it would get him disbarred, but there might be other disciplinary actions they can take if proven or it happens constantly.
A few years ago I started a company, then raised money through convertible notes. By the time the notes were due (2 years), we weren't ready to raise a round yet, so all investors extended their notes. All except one.
The investor that didn't want to extend the note was also the CEO of the company that was our largest client, so not only did he call his note, he also ended his company's contract, making a huge hole in our revenue.
After doing that, and knowing that the company would be struggling financially, he sued, forcing the company into bankruptcy.
From the beginning we tried negotiating a payment plan or some other form of compensation, to no avail. Although at some point he did "offer" to completely take over the company and fire the founders (which we of course refused).
During bankruptcy, he took over the assets of the company while also giving us and the trustee a hard time.
Now, after having ruined the jobs of everyone that worked at our company plus the potential upside of all the other investors and shareholders, he is suing me and my cofounder personally.
The company closed 2 years ago and it looks like this new lawsuit will take another 2 years. Also no one knows if this guy is going to stop at that.
Be very careful about doing business with assholes, especially if they have a lot of money and you will be taking any type of potential liability (e.g. debt) in their favor, even if it's not personal liability, they might still try to go after you and make your life miserable.
Another way put this is that he lent you money to build your company and then paid you money every month as a customer. When the note came due, you couldn't pay.
One possibility that they cancelled their contract not to screw you, but because they felt you were not getting the job done and the future wasn't there for your company. Given that, it would make little sense to extend the note or continue the contract.
As both customer and investor, your vision is not their problem.
Lest you think I'm being to hard on you, I've worked at one startup which went bankrupt in a similar situation (most of the engineering team ended up at working for our biggest customer) and another in which the board fired the CEO, liquidated the bad bits and sold the good bits to one of our customers. In both those cases the founders saw themselves as victims of unscrupulous sharp players, but the reality was that they took other peoples money and were seemingly oblivious to the obligations that entailed.
You are right. There are always multiple sides and stories for the same situation.
It is perfectly possible that it could be that way, and I wish it was that way because then it would only be a money issue, which could (in theory) be rationally resolved.
Things that somehow contradict that, is how unwilling to resolve the issue the investor has been. The company was profitable at the time he ended his contract and called the note. At that time he said he didn't care about his note, that he'd just write it off as a loss and he'd get 50% back in taxes. He could also have gotten his money back by taking a payment plan. Additionally we offered up the assets as payment so we could avoid bankruptcy, but he refused. Then he abandoned the assets after acquiring them in bankruptcy.
To me it doesn't make any sense, but I hope you are right, that this is only about his money and that we can somehow reach an agreement that puts a definitive end to this mess.
Ohh, if he was actively looking for a loss then he might've been on the hook with some bad people who were lending him the money and he was laundering them. You see, laundering is all about loss and looking bleak in the eyes of IRS (or equivalent). In the end he might not been an active asshole but just another victim.
As a side note. If you are considering raising money through convertible debt:
1) Make sure the contract protects you personally if the company cannot pay the note. For example, make it so the note automatically converts to equity instead, or so a certain % of note holders can force the conversion.
2) Make sure there is nothing in there saying that you or your company have to pay the legal fees of the investor.
3) Get legal services / liability insurance for the founders of the company. This will help ease the financial burden in case of legal issues.
Usually, investors that lend you money have a lot more (legal) ways to go after you than equity investors (shareholders). With good actors this is usually not a problem, but when assholes are involved, you never know.
Also, bankruptcy is expensive. There are 2 types of corporate bankruptcy, Chapter 7 and Chapter 11. Ch 7 will cost you about $20-50k in legal fees, depending on the complexity of the case - bear in mind that after the company files for Ch 7, you have to pay for your own legal fees. Ch 11 is about $100k+ - most lawyers will advise against it unless you have pretty deep pockets.
You can also unwind a company outside of court, but it is a bit risky legally and something you definitely not want to do when there's a potential conflict or a bad actor involved.
As user volkk said, unfortunately it would be legally risky for me to disclose the identity of the investor. Which is pretty frustrating, because then you realize that when someone does something bad to you (legally/morally), there are very few (legal) ways to remedy it, especially if they have a lot more money than you.
I can say that he's not based in the Bay Area, so if you are raising money there it is very unlikely you will run into him.
I can also say that our best investors were RightSide Capital, based out of SF. They supported us throughout the whole ordeal with the company and even offered to buy out the other guy. They also said that, out of 600+ investments they had done at the time, they had never seen another investor act the way ours did.
Why didn't this happen? That seems like an obvious outcome of the situation, unless losing the big client is enough to effectively destroy the company.
But does that matter? The other guy didn't have shares, he was owed money. If the investor provides money, there's enough money to pay the other guy off...
i'm going to guess that giving his name out in a public forum combined with the contextual knowledge we now have will make it very obvious who OP is. and then its possible for that asshole investor to further sue him for slander or whatever else
You are correct. He most likely would have gotten his money back, even without renewing the note, had he accepted a payment plan.
Instead, he chose to start a (very costly) legal fight.
So far he's probably out $100k+ in legal fees and looking to spend $100-200k more in the new personal lawsuit. The original note was for $250k. I don't think he's ever going to recover the full amount of money he's put into this (not to mention also his and everybody else's time as well as opportunity costs).
This actually seems to support the article’s thesis then: doing business with an asshole hurt you, but being an asshole didn’t help the asshole. It cost him money, attention, and precious irreplaceable time.
Exactly. The asshole hurt me, my cofounder, several people who lost their jobs, several people who lost their investments and many people who lost valuable time in their lives. It's unclear if it helped him in any way, maybe that's my problem and I don't understand the game he is playing.
It seems like the only ones that have benefited (because they got paid to put their time on this), are the lawyers involved, and the people running the courts.
Great question. We are still trying to figure that out.
We've consulted with multiple lawyers and therapists to try to fully understand the situation.
Two guesses so far:
1) When he "offered" to take over the company, he said he would fire me and keep my cofounder running sales. This whole ordeal also coincidentally started a couple of days after my cofounder said she would be stepping down as CEO (even though he had previously told her he would extend the note). We have the impression he wants to "own" my cofounder somehow (according to an expert in psychopaths that we consulted with, the investor fits the profile - my cofounder is also very pretty and she's had to deal with stalkers multiple times in the past)
2) After the conflict started, we found out this investor apparently had defrauded some people to fund his own company (he currently has open lawsuits about that). If this is true, he might be projecting, believing maybe we did the same to him (which we did not)
But those are just guesses. I wish he would just pick up the phone and we could talk to reach some sort of agreement to end this madness.
> 1) When he "offered" to take over the company, he said he would fire me and keep my cofounder running sales. This whole ordeal also coincidentally started a couple of days after my cofounder said she would be stepping down as CEO (even though he had previously told her he would extend the note). We have the impression he wants to "own" my cofounder somehow (according to an expert in psychopaths that we consulted with, the investor fits the profile - my cofounder is also very pretty and she's had to deal with stalkers multiple times in the past)
This sounds like the basis. The saying goes, "Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned," but let's not be sexist, it applies to men as well. And no less to men who had no pretense of legitimate courtship.
You might get over the legal case by showing it's a vexatious lawsuit, for instance by showing that the monetary motivation is not rational because he turned down offers that would have remedied his loss completely.
That the contract was cancelled because the product wasn't worth it?
That the note wasn't extended because he thought the company was a money sink which would not be profitable? That he thought trying to liquidate the good bits was a better way to get his money, rather than a payment plan from a value destroying enterprise?
That he sued personally because he felt they might be trying to hide assets of the firm?
I could be wrong, but there are other angles to see the picture from.
You would be stunned at how often the reasons for events like this are driven by simple narcissism and spite. That's not cynicism speaking, it's reality, and something well worth keeping in mind in any business endeavor.
It is possible, and I'm hoping that's the case (that it is not a personal issue).
Replied to another comment of yours with more detail on why it looks like a weird situation.
To add a bit more: our investors, the lawyers that we've worked with so far and even the bankruptcy trustee's team, have all been surprised by the way this guy has been handling the situation and seem to agree that it doesn't make sense to proceed that way in terms of getting a return on his money.
Isn't this a one-sided story, though? Maybe that person believes you didn't make good use of the money (i.e: diverted company funds for your own gain) which is way you weren't able to pay him back.
He might be an evil ass-hole but also he might be thinking that he is the one getting screwed here.
The most common difference between us peasants and the people of means is that those other people ASK more often. Ask for more money, ask for a bonus, ask for lower rent. And then it adds up.
The one thing that holds most of us back is shame. But shame is a good thing in general. It's the glue that keeps societies together, preventing them from spiraling down to the lowest common denominator.
Questionable if this still works nowadays. But, anyway, the trick is to uncork some of that shame is small doses and be a little bit selfish every once in a while.
I often ask people who are complaining about their salary whether have asked for a raise. Most of the time the answer is “no” followed by reasons like “I am afraid to get fired” or “they will make my life miserable” or “they should just do the right thing”.
Exactly. 9 out of 10 managers will give you more money. They are not going to offer it to you, normally, because they are not a charity. They want to give you the least amount of money that you will except.
Secondly, who ever gets fired for asking for a raise? I mean, that is not normal. And if that does happen to you, it's most likely of some other underlying factors, where asking for a raise is just the last drop.
> They are not going to offer it to you, normally, because they are not a charity. They want to give you the least amount of money that you will except.
An alternative perspective from my time managing: That reflects the viewpoint of the business, not necessarily the viewpoint of the manager.
Getting an out-of-band raise approved triggers entire internal processes, outside of the control of the immediate manager requesting it.
Triggering one proactively as a manager with no impetus other than "this person deserves it" is likely to get denied or a token amount approved. As you said, the business wants to pay the least amount of money an employee is willing to accept. If the employee has given no indication they have issue with their current pay, the business has no reason to presume there's a need to pay them more.
However, once someone asked for one, I could take that and use it as leverage. If the employee has brought it up, there's evidence of doubt on whether the company is still meeting that minimum threshold. Denying the raise outright increases the risk of attrition, so the business takes it seriously compared to the proactive request from the manager. Then I can use what I know to work the system in the way that results in a far more favorable raise.
> Exactly. 9 out of 10 managers will give you more money.
I don't know - man. I've worked at a lot of places and this doesn't seem to be a common thing. It could be I've just worked at a lot of bad places but still. Asking for more isn't enough. It has to be the threat of leaving in order to get them to give more. At which point - the advice now for managers is, if they're threatening to leave unless you pay more then just let them leave.
I've always thought a "threat" of leaving is a meaningless concept. It's either a bluff or it isn't. Most straightforward way to handle it is to find another offer that you will legitimately take if you don't get a sufficient salary bump, and communicate that there aren't any hard feelings, you just need what the new employer will pay you. If your manager refuses, you move, and if he bumps your salary or counteroffers, you can reassess. This is really the only way to handle it if you want to keep things simple. Or, you can bluff.
(Citation needed) I read recently that shopping for an offer, leveraging it for a raise, and then staying was actually the wrong move.
It essentially started a countdown to them letting you go.*
* If you’re indispensable, the rules may not apply to you
Yeah, as a rule of thumb. Ultimately it's all about leverage over time. If you're temporarily indispensable and now more expensive, but still replaceable for cheaper in the medium term, that's not a great situation for you to be in. On the other hand, if you really do have that other offer, you have a signal that that might be what you're worth in the open market. And if everyone starts getting more expensive, then employers simply have to adjust over time.
Every manager I've ever had I've ask for a raise and everyone of them have given me the option to show up Monday or find a new job. This is fanciful thinking in a priviledged industry and doesn't represent most employment relationships.
The reason I ask this is because every time I've asked for a raise I've been underpaid relative to the market and known it, and been able to walk into a meeting with a list of numbers recruiters have sent me and credibly state that I'll have to consider other options soon. I would be surprised to find this hadn't worked for someone else, and even more surprised to find they hadn't left.
> 9 out of 10 managers will give you more money. They are not going to offer it to you, normally, because they are not a charity. They want to give you the least amount of money that you will except.
It's not charity to pay people what they are worth, it's a good business strategy. Paying them the least they would accept is a sure way to have a high turnover and frustrated employees. Bad strategy. At least in a workers' market (so in IT for example).
Asking for a rise is awkward, many people have problems doing it, so they postpone it. In IT the expected salary growth is pretty fast, especially early in the career, and it's also the time when junior developers are the least used to negotiation with their bosses. So people are routinely underpaid until they talk with their friends and realize switching companies gives them automatic 10-15% rise and some new learning opportunities.
When you have a job applying for a new job is actually pretty stress-free, and it's a good idea to do this from time to time just to see what technologies are hot and what questions people are asking. Then you get offered 15% more than in your current job and a new project that always seems better than the project you're currently working on :)
So companies that don't give rises without being asked to - will have to deal with a high developer turnover and all the associated costs.
Perhaps in the tech industry where there is a lower supply of workers, but not everywhere. Plenty of managers will say no because they know you can be quickly replaced.
True, but it's not a foolproof strategy. I'm shy about asking for more money, too. Instead, when I want a raise, I just line up a new job with the raise and switch.
If you're underperforming, and have the gall to ask for a raise closer to someone that isn't, that could be indicative of issues grasping reality/fit into the team.
A company I worked for had a down year, and so I asked for paternity leave. They wouldn't give it to me, but I did get a maxed out PTO accrual rate. It was a stressful experience.
You can also ask creatively. I've had a few occasions where I told friends about how I've done things like... if their final offer salary range isn't as high as I would have liked but still acceptable, ask for a signing bonus to help make up a difference. The response I've gotten (from a couple of friends) has approached the level of shock, or (from a female friend) almost anger at the realization that they would have never even thought of that. Unsure whether to conclude it's privilege on my part, or conditioning on their part that they wouldn't have thought of it, probably a mix of both.
> The one thing that holds most of us back is shame.
This is condescending. If you ask, you have to be prepared for the other side saying no. Sometimes, the very act of asking can be construed as offensive and deteriorate relations, resulting in premature termination of either the negotiations or the relationship altogether.
It only makes sense to ask if you have leverage. You have leverage to ask for a raise if you can afford to be unemployed for a while while you look for new work. You have leverage to ask for a reduction in housing rent if the housing market is liquid enough that you are reasonably certain that you can find another place to live that offers you roughly the same utility per dollar that you are already paying.
By definition, people with means are more likely to have leverage than people without means. The question, often enough, is how to get people to realize the leverage they already have, or at least to come up with a strategy to develop leverage where they had none before.
I worked at Goldman Sachs for many years. There was a particular, successful, sales md there. I realized that one of his 'skills' was to ask everyone for something. Not some kind of exchange, or quid-pro-quo, just "can you do X for me", "can you give me Y". If you were gullible enough to do it for him, good for him. You could expect no consideration in return. It's one of those behaviors that worked out well for him, but I found it incredibly unctuous and couldn't bring myself to do it.
In a related way, I remember reading that "hustlers/fraudsters' strategy is to make the situation such that it's impolite for you to say 'no'" Similar idea to the above.
Kinda off topic but other side of the coin, befriending the asshole:
At my first job there was this grizzly old engineer who was known for being pretty surly, but knew the code base almost as if by memory, and the behavior of the code. He was bothered by anything and everything and really just wanted to run out the clock and go home and work in his wood shop.
I was in support and nobody wanted to go to him for help, but man you had to sometimes. I read something about guys like that being really particular about things so I just made a long list of what he was annoyed that people didn't bring him (information wise) and how they brought it to him when people or I did go to him.
Most importantly I'd make a point that he would see that I brought him information (about customer problems) based on his past feedback.
Eventually over the course of months he warmed to me and I could get his help bringing him virtually nothing and he wouldn't complain. Dude was still annoyed for not getting a mountain of information from other techs, but not so much me. People there for 10 years would get a "Have Mark look at it first." talk from him... I had been there for 9 months.
For him it was about getting to know people and trust that they would bother to get him what he needed, once you proved that, he didn't so much care.
> At my first job there was this grizzly old engineer who was known for being pretty surly
There is a VAST difference between "surly" and "asshole".
"Surly" is the result of dealing with legions of idiots for 30+ years. Someone who demonstrates "not-an-idiot" is likely to find the "surly" person quite reasonable and trustworthy.
"Asshole" is someone who engages in behaviors to your detriment and simply CANNOT be trusted. You either need to avoid these people or actively destroy them before they get rolling.
Unfortunately, it seems that standard corporate politics is unable to distinguish between the two.
You're confusing "asshole" with "brilliant jerk"[0]. The latter is high maintanance and finnicky, but worth it if you can keep them in their high-performance operating regime. The former are toxic parasites that are actively trying to screw you. TFA is talking about the "asshole" group specifically.
0: Or at least that's the terms I've seen used on HN for those archtypes; obviously Y[vocabulary]MV
I don't think he is an asshole but rather a not very social person. He can't deal too much with people. (the wood shop thing) But once you figured out how to become his friend, it didn't bother him to help you out.
If you go by the dictionary, "grizzled" and "grizzly" both have the same meaning; having grey hair.
In common use, though, "grizzled" is generally used to imply "old" or even "unkempt", and "grizzly" is generally used to imply "bad-tempered" (probably alluding to the behaviour of the "grizzly bear")
..in this case, according to the story, either word would apply!
I appreciate this concise framing. I do think it gets more complicated than this though.
Defining the pie gets really complicated. Sometimes you make one pie bigger and another smaller. Companies like Lyft certainly decreased the taxi pie but then made a new one altogether.
I believe there are fair ways to extract value from what already exists by creating a better version in a competitive market. Ultimately I think the value should be defined at the customer and societal levels. The tangents and levels in between make things messy.
I've met plenty of assholes. They're rich and getting richer.
Being an asshole is like emitting a poison: at certain doses other people are fine. As it increases they become more transactional* until they shut down or let the relationship die. But this doesn't stop a lot from getting rich.
Assholes do get "handled" however. Often it is used against them. But does this matter to them? Probably not to the extent you would expect. A lot of assholes hide their ways until they pounce.
Being an asshole pays well. Does that make it ok? No. Does it matter to them? Likely not: they're assholes.
The real lesson is to learn not to include assholes in your inner circle. And make it hard for them to join or get too close. There are benefits to not being an asshole.
All that said, there are benefits to having an asshole. Shit needs to go through somewhere. And particular people are well suited to it. Let them. Some deals go better when done between assholes.
* Or they're like a hot oven. We will tolerate the heat because we like cookies. But won't leave our hands in there too long or unprotected. We will turn the oven off completely when we don't need cookies. Transaction complete, cut ties. We might come up with ways to reduce exposure down to minimal levels. We'll wear gloves. Less time spent. Or we'll find a better oven with a better door and insulated handles.
In the context of business, I would frame being an asshole as doing things that benefit yourself at the expense of others. Not being an asshole is doing things that benefit yourself and others.
Let's say you sell some Saas tool. You're an asshole if you try to sell to anyone even if you think it won't help them. You're not an asshole if you truly believe your service will benefit your customers. You're an idiot if you're selling to someone and you can't tell the difference.
I agree that my definition was certainly lacking but I hope this clarifies my intent to separate true assholery with simply being unpleasant to be around.
That’s way too general. If I’m a start up raising money from a VC and I counter with an offer of a lower percentage of equity for an investment, I’m doing something that benefits me at the expense of others.
I would say you’d need to layer on top being deceitful or underhanded in your actions.
The goal is that everyone enters into an arrangement with full knowledge of the terms.
It doesn't matter. The point is the same either way. If you screw other people to get value for yourself it's a short term play. From office politics to corporate agreements, you should avoid the temptation to fuck others for your gain. It will probably hurt you in the long term.
That is true in the way that PG uses it , but in this article its pretty clear what constitutes an "asshole" in business -- assholes are parasites. If you continually enter into deals that are exploitive of the other party, rather than mutually beneficial, you're an "asshole".
Even if you could come up with a good definition, it would still be a silly assertion. He’s wrong: not being an asshole won’t make you more money. Being an asshole will also not make you more money. How nice or not nice you are to other people is almost entirely unrelated to how much money you make.
It's not a silly assertion, it's just that you've taken silly things away from this article. He's asserting that if you're too self interested / lack empathy you will hurt yourself in the long run.
"Recover any and all actual, incidental and consequential damages to XYZ, including but not limited to actual or estimated loss of profits and sales and costs to cover, attorney’s fees and costs.."
I wrote back: "Nice try but yeah, no. ;-) "
(My lawyer fixed all these overreaches and they were a great client.)
As an aside my lawyer told me that when you a drafting a contract with someone you want to work with, its best to be fair. If you don't, you're starting the relationship where the counter-party doesn't trust you. After all, you tried to screw them the very first chance you had.
When you have they whole email, there isn't any ambiguity. :-)
This is the whole email:
"Hi Guys,
Who signs these “standard contracts”?
4.2. In the event the Provider is in breach of any of the representations or warranties set forth in Section 4.1 above, in addition to any other remedies IPG may have under this Agreement, IPG, at its sole option and without incurring any liability, may:
(d) Recover any and all actual, incidental and consequential damages to IPG, including but not limited to actual or estimated loss of profits and sales and costs to cover, attorney’s fees and costs;
Nice try but yeah, no. ;-)
If I can strike out the unreasonable parts we can probably come to some agreement.
I don't see any evidence to support the assertion unfortunately :)
Also, the huge difference between emotional/perceptive aggression, and actual aggression.
There are loud, crude people who like to push for a fair deal, or who are not aggressive terms.
There are 'nice', cunning manipulative people who seek excessive terms.
There are actually truly nice people, who push for assertive terms, not realising how far they are going.
And of course, there's mostly tons of misinterpretations: people who have totally different needs, perspective, expectations with respect to how to go about a situation. A founder seeing aggression might actually be an investor taking a perfectly normative demand.
But yes, I've seen utter stupidity in deal making.
Relationships do matter, and you need a working agreement with whoever you're working with, investors included.
Not necessarily, but good point. I think many people become assholes once they get anywhere to protect what they have. The risk equation flips once you've "made it". People optimize for minimizing loss rather than maximizing for expected value.
If you're going for maximizing ev, I believe my thoughts hold true.
That is the point of the article, yes. But it doesn't offer evidence that that is a financially better strategy.
It is self-evidently morally better, of course. And it may be financially better too. But the article just flatly claims it in a number of single-sentence paragraphs without communicating any real data.
From The Godfather Part II: "Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners. One by one, our old friends are gone. Death, natural or not, prison, deported. Hyman Roth is the only one left, because he always made money for his partners."
Don't respond to emails from random people trying to buy your business. They're all scammy.
If you respond to these, or offers to re-fi your house, or help someone move their royal fortune out of Nigeria, you're indeed going to be dealing with assholes.
If you want to sell your business, take charge and run a competitive bidding process. But ignore unsolicited offers.
It's tough when someone in your industry with a big name reaches out but in general, you're right. Very rarely do people come to you with good intentions. You generally have to seek out good people.
The term asshole is very subjective; some people will perceive being candid and telling it how it is as being mean while others love the straightforwardness. Bosses have to put emotions aside to think more logically and that comes off as unsympathetic when talking to employees or partners. Steve Jobs was known to not have been the nicest guy yet he’s praised all the time.
You're talking about being nice, not being an asshole. Assholes are people who come in and shit all over everything instead of trying to play fair. People who are not nice can be fair. Take as an analogy the difference between social class and economic class, and how people can have a social class that's different from their economic class.
Being apathetic and selfish are some attributes that both assholes and top billionaires exhibit. I'd say it’s not so black and white and people will perceive what being nice means to them differently depending on their social economic status since people of lower economic status tend to be more susceptible to emotions than a business person.
I don't own a business, but I have encountered these behaviours at a smaller scale.
Now I think about this situation as a variation of the prisoners dilemma. If both parties play nice, each one gets a smaller payoff. If one is an asshole and the other is nice, the asshole gets a bigger payoff (by shafting the nice party). This article proposes that being nice is beneficial for all parties in the long term. That holds true also in the prisoners dilemma, if the game repeats over time.
Now, why do people still act that way? One option, as this article presumes, is that people are simply not aware that is the best option in the long term.
The second, most insidious option, is that they are aware, and do it in purpose. Maybe the world is still big enough that you can play a first game with different people until your fame catches up. Maybe the payoff for being an asshole is so high that a single win is enough to retire.
Sometimes I feel like humans do not understand that we're the prisoners and nature is the police.
Nature does not care about killing us. The universe will feel no remorse if an asteroid kills us all or we do it ourselves with nukes. Corona doesn't feel shame.
We're prisoners in so many ways. When are we going to start cooperating to try to escape our death sentence? Or are we content to fight each other over scraps while we await our fate?
> Sometimes I feel like humans do not understand that we're the prisoners and nature is the police.
Understanding that cooperation provides higher benefit to players compared to competition requires prior education among the players. It is literally part of any Introduction to Economics course.
The problem is a) under-education b) irrational players.
You assume that all parties have same IQ, same previous experience, equally informed, share same moral values, and share same goal. In this case, yes, they are doing wrong.
Most of the billionaires are assholes and/or criminals with a couple of noteworthy exceptions. So maybe not being an asshole will get you ahead in the middle but it won't get you all the way to the top of the foodchain.
So this is solid advice, but unfortunately the role models are exactly those people that didn't follow this sort of advice. Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Apple, Google and Facebook all would not have been as large and would not generate as much money for their founders if the founders had been nice guys. Fortunately we also have Woz and a couple of others like him to balance things out a bit.
Can anything actually realiably get you to that top though? Even though a lot of asshole are there, I would doubt that being an asshole is a pre-req, and that in fact it's extreme luck - these people are > 6 sigma outliers when it comes to a lot of things. And it could very well be a learned behaviour of being that rich. Either way, it's pointless to aim to be one of those people - you just can't without the stars aligning in so many ways you can't control. Instead you're just an asshole who wants to be a billionaire, which probably makes you more of an asshole.
Every time someone brings up people being self-made the discussion turns into post hoc justification. It seems that we can't simply accept someone's immense success and we must find some excuse for why they made it. Yes, luck and the people around them play a role in any success (and equally, in any failure) and that must be accounted for, but that's not nearly enough to automatically discount the actual person.
I guarantee if a the son of a middle class innkeeper with an absentee father from Greenbow, Alabama became a billionaire people would say he had an advantage because he got to experience a diverse group of people as a kid and had a loving mother who supported him. An orphan living on the streets in an impoverished town in Italy and we'd say not everyone has the opportunity to make their own way when they're only 9 years old.
The percentage of people with significant inherited wealth who becomes billionaires far exceeds the percentage of people with significant inherited wealth in the general population.
Thus, inheriting wealth has an enormous impact on the likelihood of becoming a billionaire in America.
I wouldn't count Bill Gates entirely self made and so would himself. His parents, his colleagues, and every one around him played a major role in success. If anything, I'd say luck and timing are more important than being nice.
Financially - it's possible they're middle class. I've seen plenty of professors making $150k+/yr though... That's 3x the median household income.
But, I think middle class is more than just raw finance. Educational background of the parents is very important too. If you grow up with two professors - don't you think you'll do better than two high school dropouts? (On average)
Are they self made? They might have made billions, but did they come from wealthy well connected families that or were they self made? Turning a million into a billion is significantly easier than turning a hundred into a billion because it buys you the ability to try without risking your future.
I hate that word, self-made. I think of Bezos, Buffet, Gates and all three of them had investment from their parents or had a business relationship made possible by their parents. Of the billionaires I know of, all them came from at least an upper middle class family. Certainly they are a special kind of talent and a big part of their own success, but they were raised by nurturing families with significant resources.
Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg (although I don't know how he made partner at Bloomberg at 30). Maybe Steve Ballmer. Page and Brin are special cases; they're the children of university professors.
Disagreed. Simply said, not everyone has the chops to do it, not even mentioning luck. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have a demand/supply graph for software engineers in the US so screwed up, given how much pay one can get and how few credentials are required for it, especially compared to other similarly paying jobs.
Not saying that those situations are perfectly comparable at all, just trying to make a point that "if it was so good and easy, why isn't everyone successfully doing it" isn't really a solid argument for this.
Also, if it were true that people could be "self-made", we'd see a more diverse selection of "self-made" people. Instead, we see races and genders that aren't doing anywhere near as well as other races and genders.
If you think about diversity in terms of "races and genders", then I agree with you, there could be more of that.
If you think in terms of financial upbringing, we got a lot of diversity going. US has an insane turnover in terms of wealth, with a really high number of first gen millionaires and billionaires. Also note the fact that 70% of families losing wealth just a generation or two down the road[0]. Which is imo a very good thing, as it brings more evidence and support for the "self-made" theory.
In terms of social upbringing, just look at the numbers of top-tier CEOs and founders who are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves[1].
Connections are still useful. Consider Zuckerberg, he didn't inherit his wealth from his parents, but the connections he inherited from his father, a prominent dentist in Westchester County, certainly helped.
That's what bothers me about all the adoration "billionaires" are getting lately. These guys got where they are by taking advantage of whatever they could, not by being generous or nice.
It's not even that - people venerate the results of luck. For every "self-made" billionaire, there's untold legions of people who had nearly the extra same formula, but were just a little off. Sure, a lot of them worked hard and had good ideas, but so do tons of people. Somehow it's more acceptable to think these people earned their success more than a simple lottery winner, whose long hours and hard work at their janitorial job gave them enough free cash to buy a ticket.
I think it’s also wrong to attribute everything to luck. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Zuckerberg or Gates are certainly very capable people who would have done well under most circumstances. But they were also lucky to be at the right place at the right time and meeting the right people.
I would say it leans HEAVILY towards luck. Given their background and abilities, they certainly would have done well regardless, we have to remember that "done well" can be measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. To increase that by another 4 orders of magnitude isn't going to be simply due to being capable.
They are getting this adoration because they invest heavily in building it. They now have hordes of PR people creating their reputations in newspapers, tvs, social networks and blogs.
It's better than lobbying because you don't need to convince people to do things your way if they like you.
I've noticed such activity in places as unexpected as imgur, reddit or HN. Posts boosted out of nowhere, waves of comments for a specific trend in their favor, accounts that are very quick to react to critics, etc.
It feels off, but on the other hand it's impossible to prove. You could always argue it's genuine and it would be impossible to be sure.
I think a lot of people confuse "being an asshole" and "playing the game." If you ever play poker with people who don't know they're doing, they'll often accuse you for "being an asshole" for making an optimal decision. The point of the game is to make as much money as possible, so it's a bit silly to be upset when someone is leveraging every advantage they have as long as they aren't cheating.
I'd guess that most people would be ok with not getting to the top. Most would be happy to have a few million dollars in the bank by the time they retire.
America seems to have an absolutist mindset. Being a billionaire != success/happiness in life. There's a lot of grey between the black and white.
The leaders behind those companies did not exhibit asshole behavior consistently.
They cultivated strategic partnerships with the right people at the right time, and once they got enough of what they wanted, sometimes they behaved like assholes.
They probably behaved like assholes with some employees but not their key employees.
> Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Apple, Google and Facebook all would not have been as large and would not generate as much money for their founders if the founders had been nice guys.
Possibly. How can we know for sure? Isn't this survivorship bias? Wouldn't more feasible companies, with more friendly leaders, have become leaders then? Or how about multiple companies ie. healthy competition?
As an ex-googler, Google was mostly nice and virtuous till Larry/Sergey/Eric were at helm. Things started changing when Ruth joined Alphabet, there was deeper focus on investor returns etc. Soon after that CEO role was transferred to Sundar.
However, I have to qualify this by saying that I didn't ever work in Ads. And this is a common day-to-day googler's view who didn't know anything that went on in the executive land (e.x. Andy Rubin)
As much bad rap as Google gets, they actually provide a lot of resources for someone looking for work. With Internet access, you can get email, a phone number, document editor, 15GB of storage with file sync, and probably many many more. However, unless you are savvy enough to go into your account and disable a bunch of stuff, they're going to use that data to track you.
> So maybe not being an asshole will get you ahead in the middle but it won't get you all the way to the top of the foodchain.
On the other hand, you're much more likely to get to the upper-middle than the top, so it's reasonable to optimize for that more-readily-achievable goal.
> Most of the billionaires are assholes and/or criminals with a couple of noteworthy exceptions. So maybe not being an asshole will get you ahead in the middle but it won't get you all the way to the top of the foodchain.
Or did they become assholes along the way/once they got there?
> Fortunately we also have Woz and a couple of others like him to balance things out a bit.
Except Woz ended up a low digit millionaire, and Jobs a multi-billionaire. Hard work simply doesn't pay off the way being a sociopath does in our society.
Yep, Rockefeller, Ford, etc were notorious assholes. So was Jobs, Gates, Ellison, Zuckerburg, etc. By all accounts, Trump is also an asshole and he is a billionaire and POTUS.
> So maybe not being an asshole will get you ahead in the middle
Not convinced of this either. You can't get away with being the type of assholes the billionaires are, but you still have to be a bit of an asshole to move up in the middle.
Reputation information doesn't always flow freely.
After agreeing the purchase of the site for the house I'm now sitting in, the sellers changed their asking price, tried to pull out of the sale after we got planning permission, accused us of swindling them, and the night before we fenced the property moved the boundary markers.
When it was all done and dusted one of our neighbours said "it's great to see someone getting the better of $FAMILY_X". Seems like we weren't entitled to access to their reputations until we'd started to build the house, and became true locals
Some examples of the term sheets would have been nice. But it's so true that people are often wasting your time trying to secure a win for themselves only. It makes me think about good recruiters and bad recruiters. The good ones want to find a great fit for the position and have a reputation for getting good salaries for the people they place. The bad ones want to undercut the other recruiters and try to convince the candidate to accept a lousy offer. I'm sure the candidates are perfectly able to do that themselves.
I totally agree. A business school professor of mine, Stuart Diamond, wrote a book called Getting More about using these ideas in negotiation. His theory is that you should always be leaving money on the table. If you're not, you're playing the short game.
When both parties leave a representative but not show-stopping amount of money on the table intentionally, this can potentiate exponential growth like nothing else.
Effectively each group gets to focus on efforts & shape the outcome in pursuit of mutual growth, with a non-lopsided good-faith buffer to start with, compared to predatory terms.
The reduction in risk and increase in functional leverage is phenomenal.
Alternatively, with a ruthless arrangement, there will be opportunity-sucking or destructive imbalances for operations across a financial spectrum, whether prosperous or underperforming at the time. Greedy ars'les thrive making surplus look & act like shortage.
Unfortunately, you'll find people often respect assholes. Look no further than how people are outright worshipful of successful criminals.
Some people also seem to learn how to capitalize on their poor reputations. If you're well known in an industry, even for something bad, you can often get people to talk to you.
> Smart successful people do not want to work with people they cannot trust. It's not worth it. The world's too big. You'll only ever whittle away your reputation until you're surrounded by mirrors of yourself. It's not worth it.
This can also be said for the hiring of talent. But these hiring people aren't only aholes, plenty of them are simply plain ol' dumbasses.
Of course you're not getting the best people, you're sending up red flags like fireworks on 4th of July.
Of course it won't. Otherwise the advertising industry wouldn't exist.
More than that. In general, the market rewards being asshole and borderline fraudster. Reputation is a thing within smaller groups, but what matters is primarily reputation related to your behavior towards your peers in that group. And if your peer group is composed of assholes, then being an asshole is a positive trait as long as you're not an asshole towards members of that group.
Another thing: when you're a no-name upstart, reputation matters little because nobody knows you. When you're a large, successful business, any bad reputation can be compensated by proportionate spending on PR and advertising.
Yet another thing: in B2C, consumers often don't have a meaningful choice. An individual is juggling a lot of different priorities in their lives, not least of which is "saving money" and "buying stuff one likes". So e.g. Coca-Cola does a pretty lot of evil stuff, but people have strong taste preferences in the product category Coca-Cola sells, so nobody really boycotts them. Or, pretty much every major brand of smartphones is doing evil things, and every major telco provider is filled with assholes - yet as a citizen of the western world, I really do need to have a smartphone. So I have to choose someone. Or, a grocery store next to the place I used to live would wash stale meat with detergent and sell as fresh. This lands straight into asshole category, but I still went there, because a) it was the closest store, and b) I have no guarantee other stores don't do the same (and plenty of reasons to suspect they do).
And yet another thing: taking VC investments; when investors come knocking for their returns, plenty of startups are forced to become assholes.
--
TL;DR: The market rewards assholes. If you're not an asshole, your competitors will force you to either become one, or get marginalized. There's an excellent essay that goes into details about the mechanics of that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
As long as the fed is printing fake money, money is essentially free to those with good credit, and it makes sense to do all the things described by the OP. Someone will bite, and you may as well make the money.
One day, I hope for a society where money is a real measure of productivity and all the things the OP said will be 100% valid. This is not that day.
But, but ... nice guys (and girls) finish last - or so the saying goes. It’s been my experience that the belligerent and those that take charge and those that are just the loudest garner more attention and cash. That’s not me though.
Becoming a billionaire requires you to be an asshole by definition because the only way to accumulate and retain that (frankly incomprehensible) amount of money is through the exploitation of your employees and the surplus value of their labor at a tremendous scale.
The font is really thin, even when I zoom it's difficult to read. A thicker sans font would be easier to read. The one you're using looks nice visually, it's just hard to see.
> So many people are straight assholes in business. Especially the more you climb the ladder. As my bootstrapped business reached $3M ARR, a wave of no-name investors approached us. Some of the term sheets more than insulted me. They sought to take control of the company without any payout for the co-founders or employees. They just wanted to capitalize a company they'd now own.
> I don't understand why.
(Warning: Probably unpopular opinion for capitalistic mind sets following)
Well, big surprise, because they got corrupted (ethically) by their money and greed, or that is the way they got a hold of it in the first place. They got some, so they want more. Money buys almost anything in capitalistic society after all. They see a chance to take advantage of a fellow human being, a chance to profit! They do not care about the human in your business. They care about ways they could profit from it. You are only a means of increasing their capital. The higher the amount of money investors have, the more likely, that they got it through ethically questionable means, because that is, where the big money is made.
There might be ethical investors out there too. Haven't knowingly met any such yet, might have unknowingly met some. It is probably also quite difficult to keep a clean sheet through all the complexity of today's financial world.
(perspective change from having a company which others want to invest in, to investments being done by people)
There is a difference between working for a wage and using money to "magically" create more money, fueling turbo capitalism. In many cases that difference is an ethical one: What investments does one make? Can one be sure, that those investments are not actually investments, which flow directly or indirectly into production of weapons, climate destroying big companies, pesticide producing giants, who are responsible for decimating bee populations and starvation in third world countries?
Anyone "investing" should really think hard about it and be on the lookout for superficially nice investments, which are actually indirectly quite unethical.
Now I will admit, that there are probably still many ways to make ethical investments. Of course there are. It's just that those are not yielding the highest returns. You could invest in social projects, in green energy/technology, in research for many good things. You can even donate to a good cause (like protection of rain forest) and thereby make an investment into all our future.
Most people, who "invest" in something however, are almost completely after the returns those things yield and do not give a damn about the ethical aspect of that investment. They do not give a thought about indirectly investing in some huge company, which takes part in producing weapons or building the next big coal mine (thinking of a recent example).
Lets take a look at for example DAX (German stock index). Anyone investing in any "financial product" that invests into the top n DAX companies. There we have BASF and Bayer, responsible for producing, selling and lobbying for pesticide usage and killing natural diversity and species, starvation of people in India and forcing farmers to use genetically modified seeds, in the name of profit. We have BMW and Daimler, where at least to my knowledge Daimler is part of the diesel scandal, making people believe their cars were cleaner than they really are, indirectly guilty of dealing huge damage to our environment and health. We have Deutsche Bank and Telekom there as well. Telekom just sucks for being a monopoly (at least was) and keeping technology way behind in Germany. Deutsche bank does not have a good name, when we talk about ethics, although I do not personally know exactly what they did. Probably investments in weapons and stuff like that. And wasn't Adidas connected to child labour in third world countries?
So basically anyone investing in DAX as such invests in these at least partly evil players, knowingly or unknowingly. But people are being scared by people working in banks and other places, who tell them that, if they do not invest into something with more risk, they will not be able to take advantage of those precious percentages at the stock market and then those scared people stop thinking and become investors. Notice also how usually the people, who are consulting you at banks and insurances try to steer you into the direction of stock market backed investments. Usually they will make other options simply look worth, simply based on percentages. That is often, because when you invest into such products of theirs, their company gets more flexibility of investment itself and can do more unethical investments, yielding higher returns for them.
In my opinion anyone investing into anything has a responsibility. That responsibility is not to increase their own riches, but to look out (not only superficially) for any ethically questionable consequences of their investment and even the responsibility to try to make the world a better place with their investment.
Looks like Deutsche Bank enabled Donald Trump after his dealing had proven to be less-than-honest and he was too "toxic" for regular US institutions to touch any more.
I want to see stats for this. There's an evolutionary reason why ass holes exist and they exist because the ass hole strategy is viable. Good people exist too, also because there is viability in the good strategy as well.
I think this is being naive. You can wreck your career this way. You can be very talented but get screwed over if you are not aware of the people around you. In sense you need to have an “asshole” radar on at all times and be ready to respond in kind. Personally, this is exhausting.
You can't change an asshole but you need to be more asshole to an asshole in order to inspire respect among peers and people around you. In my career before i get promoted i was already a go to guy among my peers because people knew i don't expect sympathy from an asshole and push their ideas if i see merit in it.
I'm almost certain that Putin makes tons of money for those immediately around him and as soon as he stops, he'll be replaced. That's generally how dictatorships work.
I've heard that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. That doesn't mean you should be irrational though. Or if you do, understand that it's a short play. Rationality generally wins.
An assholes can be completely rational, become incredibly rich and still be an asshole.
It doesn't mean being an asshole it's the best strategy to become rich, it isn't enough to become one and generally I think being good decent human beings is much better for society and for themselves, but the numbers shows that very rich people are usually not among the best people in this world.
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Paul Graham, Jack Dorsey, all of AirBNB and Uber's executive staff, Mark Benioff, Larry Ellison and Donald Trump would all beg to differ.
I was dealing with the same purchasing lawyer on both contracts. The process was super-standard: someone sends a first draft, the other side redlines (proposes changes and makes comments), then the first team redline, etc, at some point you all compromise a bit and someone makes a clean copy of the document containing all the agreed changes for everyone to sign. So we got to the point we had all agreed and the purchasing lawyer on the other side produced the "clean copy" but he obviously thought we were a bunch of rubes so he produced a clean copy for us to sign by backing out all of our changes and only putting in his changes. This is a ridiculously low-integrity bush-league stunt and he did it on the zero-cost POC contract while we were still negotiating the >1m big contract.
Some people just want to win so bad it doesn't even matter to them that they are being total assholes, the prize is zero and it's outright harmful to their own interests. I bet he cheats when playing his own kids at boardgames.