[rs186]

> If you have to, blame stupidity not malice

> No one is out to get you; they’re just out to get through the week.

The author seems to be too naive. I don't have first-hand experience, but just hearing my friends who work at a certain company talking about what's happening, I know how terrible some people can be. And that's a widespread issue (otherwise I would not hear about similar things happening to people in different organizations).

One example: people take credit for other people's work in front of higher management. You think someone would accidentally make a mistake and forget what they actually did themselves? Is that even possible? No, they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing that. They are not trying to be friends with you.

[everdrive]

I would imagine that the author is young, very intelligent, and just really starting to pick up real-world career experience. What the author points out is true, but I cannot imagine most HN readers are thinking "I'm expecting my workplace to be totally fair and merit-based, just like school was."

This statement is pretty interesting and revealing; school is very much not like that for a lot of people, and I suspect this means that the author was in a strict STEM curriculum where there can really be said to be correct vs. incorrect answers. (vs. something like English, social sciences, etc.) As noted, this likely also means that the author is just recently out of school, and is just figuring out how the real world works and how few people are capable of stepping back and judging objectively. (alternately, maybe the author has known this for years and is just writing for a younger audience)

[em-bee]

"I'm expecting my workplace to be totally fair and merit-based"

i don't know where you worked, but i have been working for a few decades now, and i still expect exactly that. even more so than school was. the point is, even if my expectations do not match reality everywhere, not expecting that would be like giving up. instead, because of this expectation, i do my best to create a work environment where this is actually true, and i do not allow others unfair behavior deter me from my belief and expectation of fair treatment of everyone around me.

[everdrive]

I'll bet we agree more than you think. Understanding reality isn't the same as capitulating to it. Correct expectations can help you push back more effectively than constantly having your (overly-optimistic) hopes dashed. ie, I'm not just saying "everything sucks, be cynical."

[potato3732842]

I don't take issue with the fact that he's naive or that his ignorance of corporate dysfunction has been shattered. You don't know what you don't know until you do.

What I take serious issue with is that there's a whole ecosystem of not identical but comparable dysfunction in academia and yet he didn't spot it or is ignoring it. That to me is indicative of bigger problems.

[xivzgrev]

He's got a program to sell you, he's focused on the problem he addresses.

He's not helping people solve toxic workplaces, he's helping people shift their thinking as they move higher in org

[lumost]

That kind of behavior is far less successful than many would expect. Higher ups are pretty aware of who does what, at least at 1 year+ time frames.

That being said, I’ve seen many outrun their own incompetence. Getting incentives right in large organizations is difficult.

[apwell23]

Being aware is totally irrelevant. Their incentives are not about rewarding the right person. Their incentives always are to protect themselves at all costs.

You are screwed if a higher up perceives you as threat. real or imaginary. you won't even know about your status till you get laidoff.

[graemep]

It depends who you work for and what they are like.

One of the nicest things a boss has done was when it looked like I was getting the blame for something was to email everyone connected with it saying he had done it, not me.

I have worked with a lot of people like that too.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

That was my management philosophy.

If things go good, the team gets the credit.

If things go bad, it's my fault.

Management 101. It's shocking how few managers know this simple motivational technique. The team appreciates it, because they know you have their back, and your managers appreciate it, because it's easy to fix the blame, and they [may] respect you, for doing it.

[BinaryIgor]

It's just it's stupidity or incompetence more often than malice; but, of course you should judge on the case-by-case basis and if somebody repeats certain (evil) behavior it's malice

[nick486]

"sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from stupidity."

[yoyohello13]

Yeah I think “don’t attribute to malice what can be explained be stupidity” is applied too broadly these days. There is absolutely malice behind some decisions/actions, and it’s dangerous to just shrug it off. Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

[andy99]

> Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

yeah a lot of people that get ahead seem to be intentionally ignorant (to the point of fooling themselves) to provide a kind of plausible deniability. It's obviously put on because you see they are shrewd political operators and and "errors" are always in their favor. But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.

[aleph_minus_one]

> But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.

The people who are actually hard to ascribe any malice to are often politically very inept, i.e.

- (nearly) "everybody" knows these people are not malicious

- but since people want to be manipulated, such people don't make any career

[Joel_Mckay]

It is not mutually exclusive, as people can be both pernicious and stupid if they choose to be...

https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi...

Engagement is mostly derived from upset people, and thus algorithms or clowns behave in unsustainable ways to make millions of pennies.

Academic bias arises from the ivory tower phenomena in a walled garden, and if some naive kid is often told they are the best-of-the-best special... they tend to truly believe the rhetoric as they slowly indenture themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Most HR folks quickly tire of entitled peoples petulance, as no matter how conventionally "smart" a applicant may be... no office wants to deal with drama everyday. =3

[pixl97]

This said, most HR folks are head deep in their own ass with their own drama, so there's that.

[Joel_Mckay]

External staffing agencies are a set of problems unto themselves.

One usually exchanges Faustian contractual consistency with creative talent that drove initial success.

Politics is rarely about the technology itself, and there are always skeletons next to pirate treasure boxes. lol =3

[superfrank]

I don't know. I agree with the advice even if they are not 100% correct.

Yes, there are shitty people at work who take action out of malice and actually are out to get you, but in my experience, that's a small minority of the time. It's fundamental attribution error.

[righthand]

Agreed. For example, if 90% of C-Suite at corporation are only interested in extracting capital from their subordinates and riding trends, then it’s malice, not incompetence.

[Joel_Mckay]

In general, some incentive structures allow managers to retain stock and 3% of unspent division budget as a year end bonus. Thus, they naturally cut every possible cost rather than risk growth liabilities.

Perhaps someone will come up with a better incentive structure, but those people were fired years ago. As process-people often eventually win over creatives due to their singular focus. lol =3

[dboreham]

Some people get through the week by abusing other people.

[apwell23]

One of my coworkers made up a totally bogus story about me to show her "management potential" about how she managed a situation with uncooperative team member on a project.

ofcourse our middle manager knew that it was bs but she was the one mentoring this person so she ran with it.

i didnt even know about this when all of a sudden i saw it my review with hr.

i considered this person my friend and we even hung out with each others families over holidays.

i was totally shaken by the whole situation.

[bawolff]

Both stupidity and malice happen. It can often be difficult to tell the difference as we arent as objective as we think we are.

However, accidentaly attributing stupidity to what is malice is generally not too bad. If its malice it will happen again and you can revise your opinion.

Accidentally attribute malice to what is stupidity is an easy way to start grudges. This can blow back on you and turn someone who just made a mistake into someone who does actually hate you, and make third party observers think you are unreasonable.

So erring on the side of assuming stupidity is generally a good call.

[tpmoney]

Over the past decade, I've been dealing with sorting out a rare and difficult to diagnose medical issue with a family member. Over this decade, I've learned what I consider a very important lesson and one that I often find myself having to re-apply and to have discussions with providers over.

What you call something matters a lot less than what you do about it.

What I mean by this is when you're in the weeds of "not in the first few options for diagnosis", a lot of conditions have a lot of overlapping symptoms. You might get a diagnosis for some condition, and then as new evidence comes to light, that diagnosis may change. After a while you start to doubt any possible diagnosis and even when you get one, you spend your time worrying about "What if I'm wrong? What if I don't have X?". The thing that's important to remember though is that for a good chunk of the symptoms that all of these conditions have, the treatment for them is exactly the same. It doesn't matter if you have condition X, Y or Z if the treatment for symptom Q is the same for all of them. That doesn't mean an accurate diagnosis isn't important, it very much is. But it's only important where the treatment options would differ. But if you want to resolve symptom Q and the treatment is the same, it just doesn't matter what you call it.

The same thing applied to malice vs stupidity. Unless there's a very different action to take to mitigate the problem, it doesn't matter which one it is. Lets take your example of someone taking credit for your work in front of upper management. If this was stupidity what would you do to mitigate the issue? You'd do more to document what you're doing. You'd make sure you have a chance to speak for your own efforts. You'd make sure that your contributions are more visible. You might get a neutral party involved in keeping an eye on things. You might gently correct your co-worker if doing so was appropriate in the moment.

So what would you do if it was malice? Probably all of the same things right? About the only difference in what you do might be whether you talk to the co-worker about it, or talk to HR. But beyond that, everything you'd do to mitigate the issue is more or less the same. And whats important is that the issue you have is that credit was taken for your work. Really in the end it doesn't even matter whether it was stupidity or malice because learning which it was doesn't get your credit back. And accurately labeling it doesn't stop you from losing credit in the future when it happens again.

But there is one personal benefit from assuming stupidity, you can feel less anger. It's a lot easier to be objective, and stay focused on your real goal and the problem you really want to solve when you don't feel like you're actively being attacked. So whenever there is ambiguity, and the actions you would take to mitigate the real issue are the same, why choose the label that increases your own stress and anger levels and makes you more likely to retaliate in a way that actually back fires on you because you're reacting in anger.

Which again isn't to say that you should be a doormat. But you can set boundaries for yourself and take actions to accomplish your goals without getting mired in judgements of other people's actions. Their feelings about it and their motivations aren't my concern, my concern is taking care of myself. I don't need them to see things my way, or admit to wrong doing to enforce my boundaries and take care of myself. And I can take care of myself a lot better if I'm not angry and stressed out.