The Assholiness Index: Is Larry Ellison the Real Poster Child?

As I’ve written before, one of the main reasons that I wrote the chapter in The No Asshole Rule on“The Virtues of Assholes” was that, when I started telling people about the book, they often would argue “what about Steve Jobs, doesn’t his brilliance show that assholes are, indeed, worth the trouble?”  I grudgingly agrue in the book that – if you are only talking about performance – Steve Jobs is the Poster Child for the Upside of Assholes , although as I emphasize in the post, “Jobs is famous for saying the "the journey is the reward," and for my tastes, even if the journey ends well, it still sucks when you have to travel with an asshole, or worse yet, a pack of them.  If you are successful asshole, you are still an asshole and I don't want to be around you.”

 My idiosyncratic experience aside, however, I also present some Google searches in the book, where I compare three people from entertainment and technology who have, at least at times, been accused of being overbearing jerks: Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison of Oracle (See The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison and Michael Eisner, former long-time CEO of Disney (See Disney War).  I used the absolute number of Google hits as an indicator of how often each is mentioned as an asshole (which I admit is flawed because a website may say, for example “Michael Eisner is not an asshole” and still be counted).  Guy Kawasaki also had good fun with this, running all sorts of searches with different phrases and the word asshole, like “lawyer” and “Guy Kawasaki.”

But I just learned about a big improvement in this method.

I got an amazing email from Kenneth Cliffer, who has a Ph.D, and describes himself as “a neuroscientist by training"  who has been working "as an educational consultant developing curricular materials for math and science.”  Ken points out, quite rightly, that a flaw in my method is that doesn’t control for the number of overall Google hits for each person.  It is only based on the absolute number of hits that contain the person's name and the word 'asshole."  In the spirit of evidence-based based management, where having strong opinions weakly held is essential –so that updating is possible when better facts come along – it appears that I may have been too hard on Steve Jobs.  The upshot seems to be that Larry Ellison, not Steve Jobs, might be most properly called the poster child for The No Asshole Rule. I present Ken's charming and enlightening email below on the “assholiness index:

I have come to the part of The No Asshole Rule in which you compare Jobs, Eisner, and Ellison with regard to their assholiness (consider using this term - it has a certain appeal in its incorporation of "holiness" in it) using Google hits. However, I feel compelled as a scientist to point out that it does not control for the popularity of each of these figures, for which one might expect Jobs to be the most generally popular, followed in order by Eisner and Ellison - exactly the order of asshole references you found. Indeed, I get 70.4, 1.31, and 0.121 million hits for the three, respectively, the same order as for asshole hits you got. To control for general popularity, you could use the percent of all references that are asshole references, or the ratio of asshole to non-asshole references. I now get many more asshole references for each than you got, with Ellison now passing Eisner in that department - the numbers I get now are 699,000 for Jobs, 20,200 for Eisner, and 30,500 for Ellison. Here is how these numbers feed into one or the other assholiness index:

Executive  Percent asshole/general hits   Ratio asshole/non-asshole hits

Jobs           699/70,400 = ~ 1.0%                  699/69,701 = ~ 1.0%

Eisner        20.2/1,310 = ~ 1.5%                   20.2/1,289.8 = ~ 1.6%

Ellison        30.5/121 = ~ 25%                        30.5/90.5 = ~ 34%

If you use the number of hits you got vs. the current number of all hits, you get a percent assholiness for Jobs, Eisner, and Ellison of about 0.13%, 0.86%, and 0.83%, respectively. Note that this is not entirely legitimate, since the asshole references and general references were assessed at different times, but it does suggest that Eisner and Ellison may have been roughly equal and scored about 6 or 7 times higher than Jobs for assholiness with respect to their overall popularity (which means nothing as an absolute index of assholiness - Jobs may be more assholy, but proportionately even more popular). Now, according to my table above, it appears that Jobs is the least assholy in relation to his overall popularity, Eisner is about 50% more so, and Ellison pegs the meter at 25 to 35 times more assholy with respect to popularity than Jobs.

Ken’s method is clearly a big leap forward from the one used in the book, but being a scientist, he is careful to point out that further research is still needed, suggesting “You'd have to have an independent assessment of assholiness, such as your self-test applied to the candidates, to make an absolute comparison.”

I also confess that I have not subjected this to the scrutiny of my colleagues and doctoral students at Stanford, who are quite skilled at finding imperfections in various methods, so I invite comments about the viability of The Assholiness Index.

P.S. I just put “Robert Sutton” and asshole in Google and got 14,300 hits. Robert Sutton alone yields 117,000 – since it  my ratio is worse than Jobs and Eisner, although not Ellison’s.  Although I think this has more to do with the book than my personal behavior!

Comments

[D]

In reference to the email quoted results below, it is a good thing that Larry bought an island. It will be a safer place for his grave site after he croaks, which will be sooner rather than later. After all, 'wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus'

"Jobs is the least assholy in relation to his overall popularity, Eisner is about 50% more so, and Ellison pegs the meter at 25 to 35 times more assholy with respect to popularity than Jobs."

[Bob Sutton]

Ken Cliffer just sent me this response, which is not only enlightening, it shows that yours truly could be winner of asshole ratio... I hope people don't start calling me "Your Asshoilness," someone already called me "Bob Sutton, the master of the asshole." I thank Ken for working so hard on the response. To quote Ken:

“Sagacious Coward” is correct. I did not use quotes on the names in my searches, which made them less specific for the particular people. It makes more sense to narrow the searches appropriately using the quotes. When I use quotes, I get some different numbers from “Sagacious,” but generally consistent (now that the percents are down, the results are essentially the same for the percent or the ratio method; only percents are presented here):

Executive Percent asshole/general hits

Steve Jobs 131,000/19,300,000 = ~ 0.68%

Michael Eisner 858/518,000 = ~ 0.17%

Larry Ellison 628/917,000 = ~ 0.069%

(Interestingly, I sometimes get slightly different numbers of hits for the same searches done repeatedly within a matter of seconds.)

Now, a few substantial caveats:

1) If you use variations on the names, the results vary considerably:

Steven Jobs 568/127,000 = ~ 0.45%

Mike Eisner 79/9790 = ~ 0.81%

Lawrence Ellison 61/45,100 = ~ 0.135%

For these names, Eisner “beats” Jobs, for either of Jobs's names. Using these indices, Ellison indeed has the lowest index using any names for him and the others. However, the variation resulting from different names for the same people helps to invalidate the technique as anything very meaningful.

2) If you use the same technique on other high-profile names, with various types of images and reputations, you get generally similar results, with the results and variation again indicating that this technique may not be a good one for assessing true assholiness in any meaningful sense, even assholiness relative to popularity. Alternatively, it would mean expanding the meaning of "assholiness" well beyond what you intended or how most people consider it. Apparently any high-profile figure attracts a wide range of discussion that uses this term (or other negative terms), in various ways, and not always applied directly to the subject of the search. In descending order, they are (note the two names tried for Gates):

Buddha 247,000/24,300,000 = ~ 1.02%

Bill Gates 204,000/23,300,000 = ~ 0.88%

Jesus 1,240,000/152,000,000 = ~ 0.82%

Allah 233,000/30,500,000 = ~ 0.76%

William Gates 1,120/175,000 = ~ 0.64%

Oprah Winfrey 87,400/2,200,000 = ~ 0.40%

God 1,540,000/407,000,000 = ~0.38%

3) Consistent with the idea that the above makes the method largely irrelevant as a good index of true relative assholiness in any meaningful way, I agree that your high index is due to your having written about the topic, rather than any character feature of yours. By the way, for different versions of your name, I get these (the variation again helping to invalidate the method as anything very useful):

Robert Sutton 14,700/123,000 = ~ 12.0%

Robert I. Sutton 50,600/178,000 = ~ 28.4%

Bob Sutton 200,000/378,000 = ~ 52.9%

Note that the last one would give an asshole/non-asshole ratio of 200,000/178,000 = ~ 112% (it’s no longer a small percent for which the ratio and percent are roughly equal).

[ann.michael]

Bob - perhaps the results are skewed by the fact that, though an asshole, Steve Jobs is generally more respected and highly regarded than Larry Ellison. Steve is forgiven by the public for being an asshole and Larry is not. Therefore there are more non-asshole hits for Jobs. (not scientific - just a point that might underscore your view that our society tends to forgive assholes if they are really creative)

[Bob Sutton]

Dear Sagacious,

Thanks for speedy analysis..indeed, things seem murky now.

Bob

[sagacious coward]

Being a scientist, I felt the experiment needed to be verified. Using quoted names, here is what is get:

Steve Jobs: 136,000 / 20,600,000 = 0.66%
Michael Eisner = 853 / 518,000 = 0.16%
Larry Ellison = 636 / 839,000 = 0.08%

Different results occur if you do not put quotes around the name of the individual. According to my informal test, Steve Jobs is still #1.