Dealing with Mean People - A Silicon Valley Manager's Perspective

I suppose it had to come -- the inevitable "What made that poor boy do such a horrible thing?" brooding and hysteria after the Virginia Tech murders. Already people are seeking to blame culture, video games, racism, conjectured bullying / criminal exploitation in his past, and so on, as if that makes it all understandable. Sadly, no matter how you slice it, nothing will balance out with the horrible crime this kid's committed -- the murder of innocents -- and to spin wheels trying to do so misses the point. No action like this is redeemable.

Instead of focusing on a hateful monster, we should ask a different question. Why, when the world perpetrated a terrible evil on one man, who witnessed murder on a mass scale, suffered deprivation and want -- who literally witnessed the face of evil during the Holocaust -- did he give his life to save his students? Professor Liviu Librescu did not give in to meanness and cruelty, although his life was shaped by the meanness and cruelty of others. If anyone should have had a "reason" to be bad, he was the one. Yet he is the model of all that is good in people. He was literally "good" in times of evil.

Speaking as a manager, I've seen my share of hostile angry employees. Silicon Valley is extremely competitive, and some people don't thrive in the pressure cooker of high-stakes startups...

They're a very small subset, and usually screened out by the interview process, but they do sometimes get past that, especially in a fast-hire time. I'm not talking about people in the throes of an addiction (very common in Silicon Valley) or have suffered a personal loss (divorce, health, or family). I'm talking about that truly awful guy (and yes, some gals fit here too) who is completely and unrepentantly hateful and mean. The stalker, the bully, the abuser. The guy who nobody wants to work with because he is so antisocial. The gal nobody wants to talk to, because she is a veritable fount of vicious backbiting remarks. These people are poisonous, and as a manager I have had to deal with it.

The saddest part of this story is not that this kid should have been forced to get help. As an adult, no one could have forced him into help, and he clearly did not want help. He liked his hostility. It gave him a power over other people. He stalked two women and was reported to the campus authorities! His very presence and vile writings caused 63 people to drop a class rather than be around him! And when Professor Nikki Giovanni told him he couldn't write that stuff in her class (after all, she is the professor and sets curriculum, right?), he told her in no uncertain terms "You can’t make me"! So she demanded he be removed from her class. And after all this, was he dismissed from the university? Was there even a thorough review of his records and behavior? Was this problem referred to legal for a ruling if there was any doubt? Nope. Instead, after much hand-wringing the English department co-director of creative writing decided to tutor him and play amateur therapist instead of dealing with the serious allegations of her own professors and students. "He was so distant and so lonely" she claimed in her defense on Good Morning America. Hmm, how would she know? Is she a trained psychologist? Did she see into the soul of this kid? Was it right for her to ignore facts and go on her feelings? I think we see where things really went wrong.

Here's how it would have played out in Silicon Valley. After a few sessions of "get-along", this guy would have had heavy objective performance milestones placed on him. He would have been watched for any slip-up. His work would have been under constant review. And if any, absolutely any, claims of threats, stalking or harassment had arisen (and it doesn't matter if a girl says it's not really serious, because we also don't give much credence to a wife who has two black eyes tell us she did it to herself -- we arrest the guy anyway -- so those cops at Virginia Tech have no excuse there), he'd have been surrounded by security, made to clean out his desk, walked to HR, given his last paycheck and escorted out the door. No ifs, ands, or buts. He's gone. And if he made any threats, the cops would be called and charges pressed. We're not doctors or shrinks or pastors. We're just people working together, and the safety, health and morale of the team is more important than feeling sorry for someone who hates you.

I'm sorry to say it, but those poor students and faculty who were murdered and wounded and their families and friends were not let down by some vague system or culture or a sad kid's supposedly bad upbringing. They were let down by their own colleagues who decided that it was more important to play God with a sick psyche than follow sensible processes that protect the students, faculty, and school. They died for hubris. It isn't ever worth it. The risk is just too great.