No Jerks Policy

Over the last 5 years of my career I’ve shifted my priorities in life. When I was younger, I was willing to deal with a lot of bullshit at work so long as they kept paying me a salary. Nowadays, I care more about my own happiness, and I’m not willing to work with people who are jerks.

Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that I have quit several jobs over the years because I had to work with people who were unreasonable, uncooperative, impolite, engaging in bad behaviour, and so on. In some times this included the management all the way up to the CEO.

Subjecting yourself to abuse of any kind just for the purpose of obtaining a paycheque isn’t worth it. Life is short, and if you spend your working years miserable you’ll look back with regret on all that time wasted.

Employers, pay attention: having toxic people on your team does more harm than good, no matter how productive you may think they are.