I recently won a contest at www.trenchmice.com, and one of the prizes I received was the recently released book by Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D., The No Asshole Rule — Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t. It’s a fabulous book, and one I heartily recommend.
If you are plagued with assholes in your current job, then this book will help you recognize the problem and how to deal with it without becoming one yourself. If you are involved in hiring and firing at your company and/or have an influence on the company’s culture, values, and/or hiring process, then this book will help you build a no-asshole culture at your company.
If you’re in a job you love, working with people you love in a culture you love, then this job will do for you what it did for me. It made me realize what attracted me to Tamale and what makes me happy to be there, even though it’s been only four months — there are no assholes at Tamale, and the culture just doesn’t tolerate them.
I suppose that some day I’ll probably decide to leave Tamale, and when I do embark on a job search once again, I will most assuredly be consciously applying the “no asshole rule” to every company at which I interview. It is astounding what a difference it makes in terms of job satisfaction and overall happiness.
