Snakes in suits
Let's say you're about to hire somebody for a position in your company. Your corporation wants someone who's fearless, charismatic, and full of new ideas. Candidate X is charming, smart, and has all the right answers to your questions. Problem solved, right? Maybe not.Psychopaths may enter as rising stars and corporate saviors, but all too soon they're abusing the trust of colleagues, manipulating supervisors, and leaving the workplace in shambles. In Snakes in Suits, corporate psychologist Dr. Paul Babiak teams up with psychopathy expert Dr. Robert Hare to focus on the psychopath's role in modern corporations. They found that it's exactly the modern, open, more flexible corporate world that is the perfect breeding ground for these employees.Snakes in Suits reveals the psychopath's secrets, introduces the ways in which they manipulate and deceive, and helps readers see through their games. It is a compelling, frightening, and scientifically sound look at exactly how psychopaths work in the corporate environment, teaching you how they apply their "instinctive" manipulation techniques to business processes. It's a must read for anyone in the business world, making you aware of the subtle warning signs of psychopathic behavior—before it's too late.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
10mentions
9people
2012–2024years
90% recommend10% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- About psychopathy and manipulative behavior at work, you can read about this here:
The rest is my own prescription of how to detect and fix the problem. We have the technology."Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work" ISBN: 978-0061147890 "The No Asshole Rule" ISBN: 978-0-446-52656-2 - A book recommendation: Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Babiak. Lots of good material on recognizing the situation. But once you do, the advice is simple: get out.
- With the caveat that I have no ability whatsoever to diagnose psychopathy, I nevertheless found the book Snakes in Suits[1][2] (TLDR notes[3]) to be a fascinating and accessible read on the topic. At some point in each of our careers, particularly for readers of HN, we will likely encounter individuals that exhibit the traits described in the text. As the old maxim goes - 'forewarned is forearmed.'
[1] http://snakesinsuits.com/index.html
- Anything less than the following is just displaying lack of morality in our whole society:
Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend Balwani are absolute psychopaths without remorse or conscience. We should not give them this much attention. I can't help but feel that we are doing something wrong by talking and writing about them, as if they are something special. They should be in jail, and the facts of the case should be made public, and that's it - end of story.
If we portray them in any other way, we are just doing disservice to everyone.
For further reading, Carreyrou's book is OK-ish (can be read in a day) but really - it's a bunch of stories about how psychopaths lie to stay in power. It's a nice book, but in the end we are talking about people that pathologically lie, and even dumber* investors that throw money based on signalling/stories and not facts/prototypes/verification of any kind of anything. That's pretty much it.
Much better literature would be 'Snakes in Suits' and 'Without Conscience', both by Robert Hare, the guy that has created the psychopath checklist (the tool used to clinically diagnose psychopaths, like a psychopath test). I highly recommend both of the books (especially 'Without Conscience'!)
* that's just my opinion: throwing millions without anything close to a prototype that works AT ALL is just something that an imbecile could only do. Goes to show what kind of people hold capital in the millions. Remarkable.
- There's an important difference. If you give somebody power over people and they are unable to empathize, then they can't be trusted to act responsibly. Many sociopaths seek power precisely because they like exploiting people. If you're interested further in the topic, try reading Snakes in Suits or The Psychopath Test.
Similarly, we shouldn't give people with peophillic issues power over small children.
Broken people deserve our support, and we should work to heal them. But in doing so, we can't let them break other people.
- Relevant reading for those that are interested:
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work - http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0061147893?pc_redir=1395239748...
