No Jerks Policy

Last week, we discussed how we keep our promises, which differentiates us from most of the competition. We mentioned that we offer free “discovery” to our prospective clients, and that one benefit of this offer is the opportunity to evaluate clients before we agree to work with them. Internally, we call this our “No Jerk Policy” (we actually call it the “No A**hole Policy but this is a PG-rated blog, so we’ll censor ourselves).

This policy of ours, put in other words, means that we won’t tolerate working with people who consistently demonstrate selfishness, vindictiveness, lack of empathy, or general unpleasantness – no matter what the financial benefit may be. This applies not only to employees and vendors but also to clients. We’d rather have a $20k/month client who shares our values than a $200k/month client who treats us like crap. Why do we do this? Doesn’t it violate our fiduciary obligations?

Actually, no. We have found that, in the long term, the “no jerk” policy increases our bottom line, even though it may require some short-term sacrifice. Why is that?

Reason #1 - Employee Mental Health

If a client is a jerk to my business partner or me during the discovery process, odds are they'll be a bigger jerk to the business analysts, designers, and project managers once the job starts. This is certain to adversely affect our employees’ mental health and job satisfaction. A bad client will make our employees’ lives miserable, even if we pay them well, even if they like their co-workers, and even if they like everything else about our company. If it gets bad enough for long enough, then it can begin a “cycle of death” which goes like this:

1. The employee’s misery adds negativity to the workers around them, which adversely affects productivity for the company.

2. The employee, and perhaps those around them, quit.

3. The employees who quit start to talk, and word gets out that our company is a bad place to work.

4. It gets harder to recruit good candidates to replace those we lost, so we have to settle for lower-performing candidates.

5. Our work product deteriorates.

6. We can no longer attract top clients, so we have to work with more jerks.

7. Repeat.

The more this cycle increases, the worse it gets. Absenteeism starts to increase, productivity starts to decline, medical expenses rise, and ultimately we find ourselves out of business.

Reason #2 - The Power of Partnership

The most important lesson I learned in business school came from Professor Stuart Diamond, who taught a popular class on negotiation skills. The first practice negotiation we did involved one side representing a formerly great but out-of-work opera singer, and the other side representing an opera house in financial trouble. The goal was to see which side could get the most lucrative deal. In almost every case, the negotiators spent the class bickering over how much the venue would pay the singer. However, in one or two cases, the sides worked together and developed additional revenue streams, such as joint recording deals, HBO specials, and podcast series. These one or two cases ended up (hypothetically) earning 10x or more than what the bickerers would have made.

The lesson here is the power of partnership. Cooperation almost always results in more for everybody than fighting does. We firmly believe in this concept at CodeStringers. We want to deliver far and above what our contract says that we have to– not only because it's financially beneficial but also because it's a lot more fun!

On the flip side, however, partnership is impossible when you’re working with jerks. Jerks tend to place more value on being right than on being rich.

Reason #3 - Our Mental Health

I’m not sure if they do this anymore, but prospective employers used to always ask candidates, “What is your biggest weakness?”

For me that answer is easy, migraines. I get migraines when I’m overly stressed, when I travel, when I’m exposed to too many flashing lights, and, strangely enough, when I’m forced to spend too much time with people whom I don’t like. Therefore, if we violate our company’s “no jerk” policy, I will get migraines far more often, which means I can’t work and our company loses productivity.

Not everyone has this direct relationship between mental health and productivity, but I assure you, it’s there somewhere.

Conclusion

It should go without saying that no one likes to work with jerks. However, at CodeStringers, we go one step further by making it an official policy so we don’t sacrifice long-term viability for short-term gain.

To be honest, we have made mistakes in the past. We can’t say that we’ve always upheld our policy. There have been cases in which we were “on the fence” about whether a client violated our “no jerk” policy, but ended up taking the job anyway. Needless to say, every time we were on the fence, the client turned out to be more of a jerk than we had originally thought, and it came back to haunt us later.

We like to think that we’ve learned from these mistakes and won’t make them again. We encourage you to do the same.

Originally Written 9/21/2022 Updated 5/30/2026