Living Online

It's an interesting day when a fifty-something federal judge commits the same sins as the Say Everything generation. Remember this awesome article from New York magazine a while back?

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another.

Turns out, the Hon. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, got busted posting his own dirty pictures online. He's no technophobic octogenarian, either. He's very tech-savvy, so it's a weird mistake coming from him. Password protection just isn't that hard.

The timing, for my modest purposes, couldn't be better. This past season, a number of applicants have written me because they've gotten into a spot of trouble after posting things online that they shouldn't have. Sure, they use cutesy handles to hide their identities on discussion boards, but as Prof. Brian Leiter reminded us in the wake of the AutoAdmit discussion board scandal (see here and here), posters are just two subpoenas away from having their identities exposed.

Will Kozinski survive this scandal? Yeah, probably. He's a bigwig. Mere mortals generally don't.

Learn from Judge Kozinski, young grasshoppers. (And from Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.) Don't assume you have any real privacy online. You don't.

Edited to add: Updates here and here.

From my colleague Marla Gottschalk, our awesome career and workplace coach:

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Watching television the other night I had to laugh out loud when I saw a new IBM commercial. A young employee is noodling around on a social networking site at work when his boss walks in.

Boss: "What are you doing?"

Guy: "Social networking."

Boss: "Social networking?"

Guy: "Everybody's doing it. I have 826 friends."

Boss: [surprised] "That's a lot of friends."

Guy: "Well, I can find anyone."

Boss: "OK. I need to put together an international team of finance experts who know merger arbitrage, have 10+ years experience, speak Cantonese, and can hit the ground running Monday."

Guy: [blank stare] "I don't have any friends like that."

OK - so what can we learn from this mini job preview? As someone who studies work behavior, I have to say: Plenty.

1. Have a realistic view of your skills and abilities. Yes, you may be experienced using the Internet, but be sure that your skill is really work relevant before you brag about it. If the skill is not work relevant, try thinking of ways to make it relevant. Only then should you show it off.

2. If you really want to get ahead at work, innovate. Take what you do well, apply it to your role at work, and figure out a way to fix problems or challenges. Use flexible thinking and a fresh perspective on problems to really make an impact. Find an appropriate time and place to communicate your suggestions. Even the toughest of issues can benefit from a different point of view.

3. This one is obvious: don't spend time on a social networking site at work unless it makes sense for your job. That is a sure way to make a poor impression, or worse.

Overall, new hires should be highly valued. But they, too, may have something to learn after they land the job of their dreams. Rounding out a skill profile with things that you pick up from watching others and asking great questions never hurts. In fact, it will offer you a competitive edge. Never stop learning. Never.

One of the really interesting things about Gen Y is how dramatically its preferences are driving changes in everything from workplace policies to luxury goods marketing to real estate development.

Last week, I headed over to the Boston Society of Architects to hear a talk by a woman named Persis Rickes about ways in which architects who design for universities need to be thinking about what Gen Y wants out of its academic and living spaces.

The talk was in many ways a primer on Gen Y for an audience that didn’t know much about this generation. Dr. Rickes did a great job pulling together some of the basic information about Gen Y (much of it culled, with attribution, from the seminal work Millennials Rising by Neil Howe and William Strauss). I was most interested in the following points from the talk (and for clarity, I'll break out the parts that are my own editorializing):

Many buildings will be around for 50 or 100 years -- how do you design a building that may already be outdated 10 years from now?

Just ten years ago, university architects were putting jacks in every wall on the assumption that everyone would want to be able to plug in anywhere for internet access. Of course, today everyone expects wifi, and all that wiring isn't getting used. Wired? That's so last millennium. Trying to predict what people will want out of their spaces for the next half century is perhaps a quixotic exercise, but architects are trying to be as forward-thinking as possible.

What about the ideal architecture for Gen Y? Part of that depends on their aspirations, which brings us to:

Gen Y is civic minded, socially conscious, dedicated to justice and the environment, and involved in a variety of causes.

Gen Yers expect to learn in real-life scenarios to prepare for their careers after college, and colleges need to be building the equivalent of “moot court” classrooms for students to get hands-on experience that approximates what they’ll face out in the real world. Students expect opportunities for real-world internships and service work. Schools need to offer “blended spaces” for teaching and learning a mix of academic and practical skills.

Anna says: This desire flies in the face of the mission of a liberal arts education, which values teaching you “how to think” over teaching specialized or pre-professional skills. But even at staunch liberal arts colleges, students are demanding hands-on experience through their extracurricular activities and internships, even if they don’t receive academic credit for them. Schools will need to think about what kinds of spaces they’re offering for hands-on training and learning, whether that happens as part of the curriculum or as an extracurricular activity.

I also wonder what it means for business schools that an entire generation is obsessed with social or environmental justice jobs (that's not the best short-hand and doesn't really cover the whole range, but I'll use it for these purposes). I personally think it would be impossible to do good without the private sector, but I suspect that business schools have a marketing problem on their hands with this cohort, and it explains the big uptick in social entrepreneurship and corporate citizenship offerings at business schools.

It also explains why so many college students are flocking to law school. I often talk to people who think they can litigate away the world's big problems -- poverty, hunger, international conflict, and war -- and they have every expectation that they’ll do so while making six figures or more in the process and living a somewhat glamorous life. (Brangelina and Bono have created some unreasonable expectations.) The social justice jobs are definitely out there, but many people I hear from struggle with the paychecks associated with those jobs. Sometimes people come out of school with unrealistic expectations about what kinds of salaries they can command in a certain job or with a certain diploma hanging on the wall, and those expectations (reasonable and unreasonable) are a big subject of this whole blog more generally.

Because realistic expectations are so important, it is absolutely necessary for college students to observe different jobs first-hand, whether it's through an internship or some other avenue.

Gen Y is obsessed with achievement and is really, really stressed out.

Gen Y is under a lot of pressure to achieve and excel. They like conformity and rules, because conformity and rules relieve some of that pressure. They have an overachiever culture. They know that they are being measured. They want constant feedback.

That means schools will need to offer a lot of tutoring and testing help, as well as spaces where those services can be accessed 24/7. Students also want a lot of very nice extracurricular spaces to blow off some of that steam, and there’s also increased demand for spirituality and meditation spaces. They also need spaces to be overachievers and show off their work, for example through state-of-the art performance halls.

Anna says: This has absolutely been my experience counseling Gen Yers for the last eight or so years. They are so worried about making the slightest mistake, because they feel that the stakes are so high, and I continue to grapple with the best ways to deal with their high anxiety levels.

This is a generation for whom mental health treatment and mental health prescription drugs are fairly routine, and I wonder how people who work with, manage, counsel, teach, and mentor Gen Y can best prepare themselves to work with these high anxiety levels. It's not specifically what most of us are trained to do, but maybe we need to be. From time to time we hear awful stories about college students going over the edge in one form or another, and I'm intrigued by Cornell's efforts to train the university community to deal with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

More generally, these are the most risk-averse people I’ve ever encountered, and they fear doing things on their own (more on that below in the teamwork discussion). The kinds of questions people run by me every day reflect that fear. (“The application instructions say to put my name in a header. Could you please look at my header and sign off on it before I submit?”) Part of that phenomenon I also attribute to their parents (more on that below too). Part of our challenge as mentors for Gen Y is to help them develop their confidence to make decisions on their own when they are feeling that immense pressure to spread the risk. It's an interesting contrast to the strong confidence they feel in other ways (the next topic).

Gen Yers all think they’re special, don’t leave their parents behind, and want everything tailored to them and at their disposal 24/7.

Gen Y requires constant praise, much of it gratuitous, and feels entitled to it. Their parents have fed this sense of entitlement by making their kids feel as if they are the center of the universe, and the parents’ lives do indeed revolve around their kids. Gen Yers are sheltered and overprotected. They expect everyone else to jump at their say-so and are supremely confident -- some would say over-confident -- in their abilities.

For space planning, this means that Gen Y students expect 24/7 access to people and spaces and services, and schools will have to provide the technology to enable that kind of access. They expect private bathrooms and showers, single dorm rooms and apartments, and customized everything (such as cafeterias with 24/7 access to vegan food or whatever the case may be). They expect top-of-the-line health and wellness centers, academic support centers, and larger admissions offices (because they bring their whole families along).

Anna says: Yep - I’ve already said plenty on this subject (here and here -- note that the posting you're reading now will show up at the top of both links, so you'll have to scroll down for the older postings). The brouhaha over this recent voicemail is the perfect example. (Gen Y high school student finds it completely appropriate to call the COO of his county school system -- at home -- to complain that classes haven’t been canceled after three inches of snowfall; COO’s wife leaves an angry voicemail telling the kid to “get over it”; kid then posts the COO’s email and phone numbers on facebook.)

I'm also reminded of something an admissions officer once said to me: "With Gen Y's parents, their kid is always gifted or learning disabled. Those are the only two options." It's no accident that their children take that self-perception with them to college and into the workplace.

Gen Yers are always part of a group.

As much as they all want their own dorm rooms and bathrooms, they spend all their time together, travel in packs, work together, and study together. They therefore need lots of informal spaces that let them learn and study in groups.

Anna says: I've noticed that they also like to work on their applications in groups. Their college and grad school essays get passed around all over God's creation for feedback from parents, friends, neighbors, you name it. That's why so many essays read as if they were written by committee... because they were written by committee, and that rarely makes for a good essay, because the applicant's voice gets completely lost in the shuffle.

On an unrelated note: I've observed that Gen Yers also like to date in packs. In a way, it's not even a date at all, at least as someone Gen X or older would understand it.

Gen Yers multitask.

They need blended spaces for work and play because they’re never doing just one or the other.

Anna says: Definitely true. Whether they’re surfing the internet while in class, writing a paper at Starbucks, or instant messaging every five seconds while studying for an exam, this is an "ADD" generation that can’t focus on one thing for any length of time -- not necessarily because they literally have ADD (although some of them do, and that can compound the challenge), but because competing technology is always pulling them away from the task at hand. In that sense, young or old, we're all ADD'ers now, certainly in the workplace, but Gen Y takes multitasking to new extremes.

I wonder whether it’s a good idea for schools to accommodate this need to multitask. I know professors don’t like it when their students are buying shoes online during their lectures, and there has been some research showing that the human brain just doesn't do things all that well when it's multitasking (a lesson for us all, myself included). Just because Gen Y (or anyone, for that matter) wants something, does that mean it’s always good to give it to them?

Gen Yers are respectful of authority.

I’m not sure how respect for authority plays itself out in architecture and space planning, but the architects in the room found this characteristic very interesting.

Anna says: I disagree strongly with this characterization of Gen Y. I think the confusion on this point comes from a Boomer baseline of what it means to defy or disrespect authority. I suspect that in Boomer minds, if college students aren't lighting fires, smashing windows, and threatening to burn down Yale like in the Boomers' college days, then Gen Y must be pretty respectful of authority. And it's true that Gen Y, because of that risk-aversion I discussed above, doesn't like to rock the boat the way Boomers seemed to take a certain kind of pride in doing. But I would argue that Gen Y's admirable refusal to destroy things doesn't mean that they are respectful of authority.

Aside from that voicemail example I linked to above, I'll also point out the following:

I get an earful all day long from employers when they hear that I write about Gen Y. I hear about Gen Yers marching into the workplace thinking they can do the CEO’s job better than the CEO, and sometimes even saying so out loud. They expect management responsibility their first day out of college. I’ve even heard one employer tell me about a recent college grad who, on being given certain instructions, rolled her eyes, threw her pen on the table, and said, “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard.” That loud thud you hear is the sound of jaws dropping at workplaces across the country.

I routinely have applicants tell me, in effect, “Yes, I know you were an admissions officer, but here’s why I think you’re wrong.” I get some level of push-back just about every day. I do want people to disagree with me, because I know I'm not omniscient and often the input is helpful. Still, I'm curious that there is so much push-back when it's my expertise and experience they're seeking out in the first place, and I get that only from Gen Y, and the younger set of Gen Y in particular. It's interesting.

I hear this kind of feedback from professors as well, who are also surprised by the way in which their students communicate with them, and the ways in they make demands. For example, I have heard from several professors who are shocked to receive what they consider shamelessly casual emails demanding (not asking for -- demanding) special considerations, extensions, etc. These professors are also, in some cases, shocked to be referred to as "hey john" or whatever their first names happen to be.

Over the years, all this leads me to conclude that this is not a generation that as a group respects authority, experience, age, or a higher position on the org chart, although individual differences certainly occur (as with any of these generalizations).

On this subject, one of my Gen Y colleagues pointed out the following to me -- great food for thought:

While Gen Yers may not have respect for the trappings of authority (emailing profs with first names, office etiquette, etc.), I think they have tremendous respect for the value of authority. That is, they know what it means to be ranked X, or in position Y, or to be offered a job at a particular bank or office. They also know what it means to "know" someone in authority -- how to pull strings, ask for favors, and use connections to authority figures to advance their careers, percentages (of admission?), etc.

I recognize that this is a wholly different "respect for authority" than that term usually involves, but it it still a type of respect. It's a respect for the power of authority -- for the access, advancement, and "step skipping" that authority can grant you (i.e. if you "know" someone you can avoid some of the bottom rungs of the ladder).

So in that sense, I don't think Gen Y is entirely disrespectful of authority. I think the concept of "authority" has changed; instead of authority being representative of "the man," it's about "the connection," the "hookup," or the favor. Why apply through HR if your father's partner can put your resume on the desk of an executive? The recognition of the executive's power is a certain "respect" for his authority. Not the same type of respect we're talking about, but a respect nonetheless.

There were a lot of other interesting nuggets at this talk, but I’ll conclude by asking the following:

Anna Also Says: This stuff doesn’t come cheap. Who's paying for all of this?

I know applicants who decide where to go to college because one school has a cool rock climbing wall or that other school’s dormitories have seen better days or that school has the best cafeteria.

Somewhere in the application frenzy, the big picture seems sometimes to get lost. This country club approach to college doesn’t come cheap, and when Gen Y complains about its staggering student loans, I have to wonder who they think is financing those Olympic size swimming pools, state of the art performance halls, 24/7 access to freshly prepared vegan menus, spa-like wellness centers, and so on. That lifestyle is very expensive, and college students are paying for it with a staggering amount of borrowed money, plus interest.

It makes me wonder what some people's priorities are, what they're looking for in their college experience. Sounds to me as if some of them want a 4, 5, 6-year stay at Canyon Ranch rather than the best education they can find. I don't knock any of those wonderful features -- I know I would have loved them when I was in college too -- but I see some people focusing a lot on the immediate benefits and not on the long-term costs.

It also becomes very clear to me why many college students find it such a shock to join the real world after college, when they no longer have student loans to fund such a posh lifestyle. No wonder most of this age group moves back in with mom and dad for some period after school. This goes back to my theme of expectations and figuring out what's realistic and what isn't.

I heard one university representative at the talk say that her college had to offer this lavish lifestyle because that’s what they have to do to compete for applicants. Having been an admissions officer, I understand the pressures schools face to attract applicants. I do wonder, though, about the college administrators and trustees who are perhaps allowing their educational missions to be compromised too much, the parents who are letting their kids pick a college based on a rock climbing wall or a cafeteria menu, and the magazine rankings that reward schools for increasing their expenditures per student. Something is out of whack.

17-year-olds are 17-year olds, and I don't fault them if they are still figuring out what their priorities are, how compound interest works, and what kind of life they want to be living five or ten or twenty years down the road. And it’s our job, as the ones with a bit more life experience, to help them think about those things (even if they're not always inclined to listen to us).

It's been a busy weekend, wrapping up Round 2 business school applications and responding to people whose December LSAT scores came out yesterday. (Admissions officers love to mess with our holidays, don't they?) On the LSAT front in particular, there's been some ecstatic news for some, and some not-so-happy news for others. And for the not-so-happy folks, let me remind you not to wrap your whole identities around this test. It's a big world out there, and you don't have to let one test determine your place in it. (More on that here and here.)

In the universe of workplace issues, I gave an interview recently for a human resources magazine about Generation Y in the workplace. If you want to see what's on their minds over in HR, take a look here (SMB Human Resources). The same issue, at the same link, also has an interesting article about Facebook and MySpace in the workplace, and why some employers are saying, "no thanks."

And while I'll likely be posting again before Christmas, in case I don't, I'll close with one of my favorite pastimes, making fun of the worst of academia. From The Independent (London), "The Snowman: A Tale of Modern Masculinity":

Dr Tricia Cusack, an art historian, has, for the periodical New Formations, discerned inappropriateness in the very nature of Christmas: "Some members of cultural minorities in Britain find the central power relationship of Christmas threatening, not to speak of its whiteness - a white Christ, a white snowman."

It is the snowman that bothers Dr Cusack most - not just his threatening whiteness, but also his masculinity, his "phallic carrot-nose", his location in a semi-public space or garden "to substantiate an ideology upholding a gendered spatial/social system, marking women's proper sphere as the domestic/private, and men's as the commercial/public." The snowman "animates the garden or field with an anthropomorphic presence, a household god keeping nature in order."

Surely it was no accident that "in view of the western narrative of actual masculine domination of nature/female, ... out of virgin snow a male icon is built."

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It's peak admissions season and I'm a bad, bad blogger as a result -- lots of client work to turn around (bless them!). But... in the meantime, I have to share the weirdest, juiciest story I've read in a long time. The opening paragraph:This is the story in which you learn how a graduate of Columbia Law School—that’s me—and almost 80 other people, who really should have known better, got suckered into giving away all our personal details as well as up to two months of our lives for “jobs” that never actually existed. And then you learn why it all happened the way it did.Read on here.

True story? Fiction? Who cares? I want more.

Brian Leiter reports the inevitable: Anthony Ciolli and other AutoAdmit posters have been sued. He links to the complaint as well.

More here, here, here, and here.

Today's Boston Globe has a great article about MySpace in the working world ("MySpace vs. WorkPlace"). In part:

Montibello, the marketing manager at a Newton-based consulting firm, was screening job candidates last year when an application came in from a recent college graduate. As she prepared to set up an interview with the applicant, one of her younger co - workers asked a fateful question: "Did you check out her MySpace page?"

Montibello did so, and there on the applicant's public profile she found what she calls "all kinds of compromising photos," including one of her applicant Jell-O -wrestling. Still, that "wasn't necessarily an issue" to Montibello or her boss. "The real issue came when my boss was interviewing her and mentioned it, and the person was like 'Oh, yeah, it was so funny,' and was so cavalier about it, instead of being responsible," she says.

They ultimately hired someone else.

Contrast that with a reaction from a twenty-something interviewed in the article:

"Whatever I do outside or after work shouldn't be brought up against my work review," contends Lydia Fabiano, 23, of Braintree, who has a MySpace page she allows co - workers to see. "Just about every person has their own thing that they do outside of work. As long as it doesn't hinder your work performance, it should be two separate things. Whatever I do at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night shouldn't matter at all to my boss."

OK, but unless you're Lindsay Lohan, the whole world isn't going to know what you were doing at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night unless you tell everybody. Twenty-somethings are like their very own paparazzi documenting all their substance-fueled benders and fashion faux pas, and then they turn around complain about the invasion of their privacy. Weird.

I come down firmly on the side of employers here. As I put it to a reporter a while back, posting something on a public website is like parading naked down Main Street. You can do that, but then don't blame other people when they stare and gawk and decide you have poor judgment. And as I wrote in my "Say Everything" posting:

Whether as a matter of fairness or just practicality, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you post things online for anyone with a web browser to see. To employers, how you behave online says a lot about you: your judgment, your discretion, your maturity. When they are interviewing you for a job, they are evaluating, among other things, what kind of ambassador you're going to be for that organization to the outside world. If they find you, say, trash-talking your current employer, or posting embarrassing pictures about your employer, or making fun of your boss's behavior at the company Christmas party, or writing about your sexual exploits with Very Important People and Not So Important People (who can forget Peter Chung?), or threatening your colleagues, or sharing your provocative photos, they'd be crazy *not* to wonder whether they want you working for them.

Or take #11 in my Memo to Corporate America:

Assume they’re venting about you online. They think nothing of complaining about work to the whole world on MySpace or their blogs and will happily use company email to complain about you, the company, the office refrigerator, and the idiot in the next cubicle. You may be surprised to discover what they are saying online, and you’ll likely have to have a conversation about the propriety of venting in public and using company resources to do so.

Sure, people older than 24 do stupid things too -- not necessarily on MySpace, but often with corporate email. (See here, here, here, and here.) In our electronic lives, we don't necessarily get smarter with age.

And "old" people know how to use "the internets" too. From the article:

Take the case of Dana Schaeffer of Burlington. When she started a new job a year ago, Schaeffer, now 42, required training from two co - workers who were in their 20s. At home one night about two weeks after she started the job, she was on her own MySpace page when, she recalls, she thought to herself: "Hmm, I wonder in anybody in my office has it. They seem like a pretty techno-savvy place." So she typed in the name of one co - worker, checked out his MySpace page, then typed in the name of another, and went to that page . . . and was stopped cold. There was a vituperative message about her, directed to a co - worker. She went to that person's page, and found an even more vicious reply to the original message.

It was devastating for Schaeffer. "They went back and forth on how much they couldn't stand working with me," she says. "I was absolutely, absolutely horrified. It was very hurtful."

She said nothing to her co - workers, and still hasn't. But in hindsight, Schaeffer has figured out what she should have said to them -- and they are words that could stand as a mantra for the modern workplace: "I have a MySpace page, and I know you do too."

Bottom line: You owe it to yourself not to blow that huge investment you made in your college education and your future career prospects with careless postings.

When a gay, Canadian associate sued the venerable law firm Sullivan & Cromwell for anti-gay, anti-Canadian discrimination, he brought to light an uncomfortable truth: plenty of law firm partners treat everyone like crap, not just protected classes. It’s one of the paradoxes of our legal system that you’ll get into trouble if you treat certain subsets of humanity badly, but if you treat everyone badly, you’re generally in the clear, legally speaking.

From this article about the lawsuit on law.com [the link is now dead -- I haven't seen the content reposted somewhere else]:

Charney's complaint, say former associates, accurately captures the ambience of the firm, especially the mergers and acquisitions department. "Every word of that complaint rang true to me," says one former lawyer. "They [M&A partners] are just vulgar."

Still, even those who express sympathy for Charney doubt that S&C partners are homophobic. "I don't think it's discrimination; M&A is just a brutal group," says the former lawyer. "I think this guy was treated badly and unprofessionally." Sums up another former M&A associate: "S&C isn't antigay, just antihuman."

Every big-firm lawyer I know can tell horror stories -- really bad behavior is not unique to the M&A partners at Sullivan & Cromwell, or that particular firm, or even the legal profession. The associate's complaint alleges, among other things, that the partner he worked for "threw a document at [his] feet and instructed [him] to 'bend over and pick it up -- I'm sure you like that.'" If I had a dime for every muckety-muck boss who's ever thrown documents (and even objects) at people while saying nasty things, I'd have retired by now.

(For those interested in this case and its fall-out, Above the Law has had the best coverage and updates on the various filings.)

As that sad tale makes clear, people of all stripes can and do experience hostile work environments in which they are subjected to nastiness and degradation on a daily basis.

That’s why I couldn’t help but pick up "The No Asshole Rule" by Stanford business school's Robert Sutton, a manifesto for the new millennium that calls on browbeaten, belittled, and berated employees to rise up and take over. Well, he’s not really calling for a revolution, but he is proposing something radical: that assholes at work need to be identified and weeded out -- ruthlessly -- not just for the good of their (usually subordinate) employees, but also for the good of the organization. It’s one of those observations you’d think was totally obvious until you realize that nobody has identified the problem, dissected it, given it a name, and proposed a solution. Sutton does so with this book, succinctly and unsparingly.

And there’s no better word to describe these menaces. Somehow, as Sutton explains by way of defending the book’s title, “jerk,” “bully,” and even "assclown" don’t quite capture the primordial nastiness, or the instant recognizability, of the office asshole. Anyone who has experienced the wrath of an asshole can spot another one a mile away, even if only through a subconscious Gladwellian sort of pattern matching.

Here are the defining traits of the asshole, according to Sutton:

Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the “target” feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?

And it’s Test Two that makes this book so relevant to my audience of college students and recent graduates: you’ll be the prime targets, and the fresh meat, for every office asshole out there.

I’ve encountered my fair share (as we all have). My favorite stories, or at least the ones I still remember after all these years:

• The boss who decided to lock up the sugar packets in the communal kitchen because he decided his employees were being too profligate with them

• The boss who didn’t bother to make an appearance at his long-time and very loyal employee’s office baby shower and contributed five dollars instead

• The boss who told a colleague who had recently miscarried that she was too old to be having babies anyway

In my experience, asshole bosses, like assholes in all areas of life, also have the charming tendency to blame everything they’re not happy with on other people. Remember Alec Baldwin blaming everyone but himself for that horrible voicemail he left for his daughter? Classic asshole behavior.

Here are Sutton’s “Dirty Dozen” worst asshole offenses:

1. Personal insults
2. Invading one’s “personal territory”
3. Uninvited physical contact
4. Threats and intimidation, both verbal and nonverbal
5. “Sarcastic jokes” and “teasing” used as insult delivery systems [this one is key, in my opinion, because it’s a really passive-aggressive way to bully someone]
6. Withering e-mail flames
7. Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
8. Public shaming or “status degradation” rituals
9. Rude interruptions
10. Two-faced attacks
11. Dirty looks
12. Treating people as if they were invisible

The best part of this book is the series of anecdotes that capture the asshole in his native habitat so perfectly:

• “Chainsaw Al” Dunlop, former CEO of Sunbeam, whom another executive described as “a dog barking at you for hours…. He just yelled, ranted, and raved" (more here)

• Hollywood Producer Scott Rudin, who went through 250 personal assistants in five years, as estimated by the Wall Street Journal (more here and here)

• Linda Wachner, former CEO of Warnaco, who would “dress you down and make you feel knee-high,” and whose attacks were “not infrequently laced with crude references to sex, race, or ethnicity" (more here)

• Richard Phillips, formerly an attorney at Baker & McKenzie’s London office, who famously hounded his secretary to pay his dry cleaning bill while she was dealing with her mother’s funeral (more here and here)

• Neal Patterson, the CEO of Cerner Corporation, who “complained that few employees were working full forty-hour weeks, and ‘as managers – you either do not know or do not CARE.’ Patterson said that he wanted to see the employee parking lot ‘substantially full’ between 7:30 A.M. and 6:30 P.M. on weekdays and ‘half full on Saturdays,’ and that if it didn’t happen, he would take harsh measures, perhaps even layoffs and hiring freezes. Patterson warned, ‘You have two weeks. Tick, tock’” (more here)

• Movie producer Harvey Weinstein who went on the attack against (physically) much smaller Universal chair Stacey Snider: “he was a fearsome sight – his eyes dark and glowering, his fleshy face unshaved, his belly jutting forward half a foot or so ahead of his body. He jabbed his finger at Snider’s face and screamed, ‘You are going to go down for this!’” (more here)

The examples in this book spare no profession -- lawyers, MBAs, doctors, executives, professors, you name it. He even walks his readers through a study of wild baboons who tortured the rest of their troops with their asshole alpha behavior.

Fortunately, Sutton is not advocating a workplace full of spineless wimps. He believes in the notion of “constructive confrontation” (a concept borrowed from Intel), which brings me to Generation Y: criticism is pretty foreign to this age group (see here and here), so twenty-somethings are a bit thin-skinned and are more likely to label perfectly good managers assholes just because as a group they’re not used to receiving negative feedback of any kind. (If it's presented in a way that helps them understand how they can do better, however, they respond well.) I call this the Devil Wears Prada problem -- more on that here and here.

The Devil Wears Prada problem is also relevant here because a boss might in fact be an abusive asshole but still enormously helpful for your long-term career, if you can just stick it out a little longer. Sometimes you shouldn’t jump ship, even if the person is a class-A, certified asshole. Apple alums love to bitch about Steve Jobs long after they've escaped his wrath, but many of them are also quick to acknowledge how much they learned from him. As Sutton describes it:

[T]he people who tell these [Steve-Jobs-the-asshole] stories argue that he is among the most imaginative, decisive, and persuasive people they’ve ever met. They admit that he inspires astounding effort and creativity from his people. And all suggest -- although his tantrums and nasty critiques have driven the people around him crazy and driven many away -- they are a crucial part of his success, especially his pursuit of perfection and relentless desire to make beautiful things. Even those who despise him most ask me, "So, doesn’t Jobs prove that some assholes are worth the trouble?"

It’s a fair question to ask. Most assholes at work aren’t Steve Jobs or Miranda Priestly. Also, asshole behavior is contagious and “spreads like a germ in the workplace.” Sutton’s advice, as expressed by one of his Stanford colleagues:

[W]hen you get a job offer or join a team, take a close look at the people you would work with, not just at whether they are successful or not…. [I]f your future colleagues are self-centered, nasty, narrow-minded, unethical, or overworked or physically ill, there is little chance you will turn them into better human beings or transform it into a healthy workplace -- even a tiny company. If you join a group filled with jerks, odds are that you will catch their disease.

Great advice, that. I’ve seen that kind of workplace in action, and it ain’t pretty. Do your due diligence before you accept an offer, and “[f]ind out if you are about to enter a den of assholes.” If you're going to join one, you should go into it with your eyes open.

Assholes are why I left the law, and I'm not alone (see here and here). There are just too many of them, and I didn’t see an escape while remaining in the profession. Are there great lawyers who are also wonderful human beings? Sure, and I’ve worked with some of them. But life is short, and I decided I didn’t want to turn into what so many lawyers turn into. (I don’t think they all start out as assholes; many learn that behavior along the way.)

I still talk to, and consult with, a number of lawyers, especially in the context of associate retention. Law firms love to think that throwing more money at associates heals all wounds, but they’re wrong. The best and the brightest always have options, and law firms routinely drive them out with their bad behavior. It’s hard to discipline or cut loose a profitable asshole, but as this book points out, organizations need to sit down and calculate their TCA -- total cost of assholes. For every Apple/Steve Jobs, there are many more companies whose assholes are doing more harm than good.

Sutton also has a wonderful blog. Read it here.

Here's a fantastic example of a young professional getting himself into hot water by using bad judgment with firm-wide emails. I imagine there's more than just bad judgment at work here, but that's pure speculation.

Another example of bad email judgment here (although that email had the benefit of being pretty accurate in describing summer associate programs, which are just well-paying recruiting events).

Hat tip for both to Above the Law -- one of my favorites.

The WSJ's Law Blog reports on the law firm that rescinded its offer to the co-founder of AutoAdmit:

The Law Blog has learned that law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its job offer to Anthony Ciolli, the 3L at Penn Law who resigned as “Chief Education Director” of AutoAdmit last month. He resigned in the wake of a WaPo exposé on how the site in part served as a platform for attacks and defamatory remarks about female law students, among others....

Charles DeWitt..., managing partner at Edwards Angell’s Boston office, where Ciolli was slated to be a litigation associate, told the Law Blog: “He worked for us last summer. He’s not going to work for us in the fall.”

Ciolli took time from working on final exams to talk to the Law Blog. “Three years of legal education has been wasted because of an unmoderated message board,” he said, adding, “The timing is absolutely horrible.” The 23-year-old, who contributes to First Movers, a blog written by law students and graduates, added that “I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

The Law Blog reviewed correspondence between Ciolli and the firm, and here’s how it went down:

On April 11, just over a month after the WaPo story ran, DeWitt sent a letter to Ciolli stating that the firm had recently learned of the controversy involving AutoAdmit, in particular its “off-topic” message board, and that “the information we now have raises serious concerns about your joining our firm.”

DeWitt wrote that the content of the messages on the board are “antithetical” to the values of the firm and the “principles of collegiality and respect that members of the legal profession should observe in their dealings with other lawyers.” DeWitt pointed out that in an online letter to another blogger, Ciolli and his partner Jarret Cohen identified themselves as AutoAdmit’s administrators and defended its “free, uninhibited exchange of ideas.”

DeWitt continued: “We expect any lawyer affiliated with our firm, when presented with the kind of language exhibited on the message board, to reject it and to disavow any affiliation with it. You, instead, facilitated the expression and publication of such language. . . . ” He wrote, his resignation from the site was “too late to ameliorate our concerns.”

Read more here.

This story is a cautionary tale. Many students discover the hard way that the working world won't tolerate all kinds of things that are routinely tolerated in academia and encouraged on the Internet.

More Ivey Files postings on AutoAdmit here and here, and on the "Say Everything" culture here.