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What to say when someone is being an asshole

by karenxcheng on 3/2/14, 6:05 AM with 135 comments

• by mrkurt on 3/2/14, 7:30 AM

  This is a good thing to do when you think someone is being an asshole. It gives them a chance to recognize if they are, and you a chance to recognize if they're not.

• by brador on 3/2/14, 7:39 AM

  Question is, does pregnancy affect viability of an investment?

  In my opinion, yes. Sleepless nights, days off taking the child to medical appointments. This isn't magic and you can't wish these things away. It's hard to run a startup, it's even harder when you're not sleeping well. Just my opinion.

  Edit - I covered post-pregnancy here, which also applies to fathers, my bad. The women only part would be the hormones and lack of sleep from around t-6 months.

• by jgrahamc on 3/2/14, 7:50 AM

  I've seen a co-founder get pregnant and have a baby while running a successful start-up.

  I think people take an unnecessarily negative view of pregnancy and child rearing. Sure you can enumerate distractions (such as sleepless nights). But how about enumerating positives: for example, what if having a baby made a founder, man or woman, happier and more fulfilled? That would have a positive effect on the start-up.

• by chomp on 3/2/14, 7:36 AM

  But having a child is a -huge- commitment- I don't think I'd be able to have one, and run a business at the same time. Sleepless nights devoted to the baby, medical concerns, etc. all of those are large factors that weigh on the effectiveness of a leader.

  I do agree that most of this stuff is ingrained behavior that most people know is wrong, asking for a clarification usually can snap them out of it.

• by abalone on 3/2/14, 8:17 AM

  I'm a founder with a young child. It's awesome. You can't do it alone obviously but with a partner and a support system it's totally doable. Even the sleepless night thing is mostly contained to the first couple months.

  "What do you mean" is a nice easy response. I like it. It's not going to stop all assholes but it will filter out the ones are are ashamed of themselves, which is probably a lot. What it won't stop is the ones with pernicious superficial rationalizations for excluding women.. the "short people shouldn't be firefighters" crowd.

• by taspeotis on 3/2/14, 7:43 AM

  What to say when someone is being sexist^

  If someone's being a dick to piss you off saying these magic words might inflame the situation.

  Best to keep them to examples of sexism.

• by millstone on 3/2/14, 8:13 AM

  Was the first investor an asshole for thinking what he did, or for voicing that thought?

  If it was for voicing the thought, is there a more delicate way he should have phrased it? Or should he have just kept his mouth shut, denying her useful (if insensitive) feedback?

• by DanBC on 3/2/14, 9:47 AM

  I'm always surprised in threads like these that people express ideas that leave them open to legal action in the future.

  I hope those people have rigorous documentation for hiring people and that reasons for rejection are kept on record.

• by Mz on 3/2/14, 9:42 PM

  I am not a fan of the framing here. This is not about someone "being an asshole." This is about someone opening mouth and inserting foot. Okay, so when men unthinkingly default to stupid assumptions and phrasing, it can seriously hurt women. The fact that women get hurt doesn't mean the harm was intentional, malicious, etc.

  What the investor said was probably just the uncomfortable truth coming out. IIRC, Paul Graham has made remarks not terribly unlike that. A lot of investors are leery of investing a woman of child-bearing age. Is that "unfair" to women? Perhaps. But I don't think saying it after the fact is "being an asshole." He did invest in her company. Now she needs to preform, baby or no baby.

  This piece is not about "people being assholes." It is about men opening mouth and inserting foot, probably fairly innocently in both cases cited. A lot of remarks of that ilk are not intended as hostile. I think the phrase "what do you mean?" is probably a good one to use in such situations but I really think this article with this ugly title rooted in ugly assumptions does women more harm than good.

• by wavefunction on 3/2/14, 7:56 AM

  Don't finance people (at least Wall Street) pride themselves on being big swinging dicks? I'd give them a chance in private to fix things, then I'd put them on public blast. By that I mean go to their partners or whatever.

  I don't know, I'm just a simple country programmer, your big city ways frighten and confuse me!

• by bifrost on 3/2/14, 7:53 AM

  As someone who's recently had a child, and who's been through several startups; I think this is excellent.

  I've made the offhand comparason of having a child to working for a variety of 1990's startups, I'm an ops guy and craptastic perl code made my sleep schedule less than ideal. I optimized and my life got easier.

  The training from that made dealing with the wakeups a lot easier, and my wife and I worked out a schedule.

  Working for a startup, like having a baby, requires good partners. If you don't have a good partner(s), life becomes significantly more complicated and I am not sure I'd recommend it.

  Ask me about my ops strategy, stuff I design generally can do 99.999 uptime.

• by cgriswald on 3/2/14, 7:53 AM

  This is a very useful and adult tool for dealing with these types of situations, but the child in me will always want a witty retort, usually in the form of a quote from The Princess Bride.

• by lazyjones on 3/2/14, 4:35 PM

  Perfect example of a dumb investor who thinks he has a better idea of how to run the company than the founders themselves. I'm quite certain that bad influences of such investors have broken more startups' backs than pregnancies.

  Founders, please choose your investors well.

• by gcb0 on 3/2/14, 8:34 AM

  the only difference is that male founders can try to hide their "pregnancy". an investor would shun both a male if he knew a baby was on the way.

  of course not saying said investor is right, but that is probably what happen. not really a sexist thing though.

• by nipponese on 3/2/14, 8:26 AM

  She knows what they mean...

• by peteforde on 3/2/14, 8:13 AM

  I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard.

  Warren Buffett figured out that hiring women was all-win long before most. Kudos to him.

• by angelortega on 3/2/14, 9:56 AM

  tl;dr

  Stop being an asshole.