[rayiner]

Here's the thing about being not nice: you can usually get away with it if you're really exceptional, but if you ever misstep, nobody will want to help you out, and some may gleefully put the screws to you. Just in the last couple of years, a couple of acquaintances that had a reputation for being not nice have stumbled career-wise, and unsurprisingly no one was there to lend a hand. Honestly, I was shocked how little time it took to catch up to them.

[opendais]

It is alot like Diplomacy. You want to be honorable/nice until you are playing for the final outcome of your career, then you stop playing nice.

The CEO at one of the places I've worked basically screwed over 80+ people to get his retirement package [sold the company; his equity was worth millions] and they blindly trusted him right up until the day he did it. Those 80 people were laid off shortly after and the jobs were moved some place cheaper and/or into the buying company.

I think the thing is the "dumb ones" stop playing nice before it is the final round of their career and they have years/decades for it to catch up with them.

[rogov]

I hadn't heard of Diplomacy until I read the Grantland article [1] that was posted here yesterday.

"It is alot like Diplomacy. You want to be honorable/nice until you are playing for the final outcome of your career, then you stop playing nice." This sentence correlates exactly with the climax of that article.

  I don’t want to hurt the other players just to get that win, he had always thought. Additionally, by always being a trustworthy ally who plays honorably, Haver had built up a reputation as someone who was good to work with in tournaments. “That’s why it was easy for people on my board to say, ‘He’s not going to stab his ally.’

  “And that’s what allowed me to do it when I did.”

I am, however, hopeful that I would continue to be honorable through the end of my career. That's how you leave a legacy.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183

[opendais]

I used to play Diplomacy in High School and we all pretty much played that way. ;)

I generally assume that is how people in the real world behave as well and I'm usually right. It is part of why I'll never be a libertarian, when the counterweight is gone the knives come out. Human nature is ugly when they know they can get away with it.

> I am, however, hopeful that I would continue to be honorable through the end of my career. That's how you leave a legacy.

I hope you are too. :) It makes you a good person that you'd choose to do the right thing over self interest when the only thing that stops you from it is you.

I'm not sure I'm that good of a person and I know many people I've met IRL aren't.

[song]

That's what I really hope when I think of an employee who screwed me completely over after I gave him a chance and spent a lot of time training him...

But from the last news I've heard being a snake has been very successful for him and he's landed a high position in the new company where he works (taking over the guy who hired him).

I hope one day it all catches to him but I'm not hopeful.. I just wish the world worked like this.

[y4mi]

i know i shouldn't judge with this small amount of info, but still...

you normally aren't paying an employee in training even close to the normal rate in the profession. which is obviously correct, but makes the argument that the employee screwed the employer by leaving after the the training kinda strange.

[song]

In that case, he left with some of my customers contracts so that was the screwing over part... The training thing is the fact that I spent a lot of time training him hoping to do great things together and eventually making him a partner of my company.

Anyway, it's a long story....

[DarkTree]

It may be likely that if the world did work like that, he wouldn't be such a snake. People are conditioned to think that stepping on other people to get ahead is the only way to be successful. In that sense, I too wish the world worked like that, because then we would have a lot less snakes.

[benihana]

The last sentence of your comment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZjOk2G80GM#t=77