Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company; former product lead at KISSmetrics who writes about leadership and product management.
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Assholes can ruin your company culture, make people hate their jobs, and stifle creativity. Yet, the business world is filled with them. The No Asshole Rule does a great job of showing research and data why you shouldn't tolerate them at your company, and also what to do if you're stuck working with (or for) one. It also shows why assholes sometimes succeed, which is an important part of understanding and taking away their power.
His continuously-updated books page, where every book he reads gets a 1-10 rating and a "Why Read it" note; the book links carry his Amazon affiliate tag. The page carries no publication date for individual entries — its own metadata gives article:published_time 2012-12-16 and article:modified_time 2020-10-28, and books were added across that whole span. (undated page)
Computer performance engineer; author of Systems Performance and BPF Performance Tools.
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The No Asshole Rule - Robert I. Sutton (Business Plus, 2010)
His Books page, which he introduces as a list of textbook recommendations — explicitly not everything he owns, only what he would recommend. Last updated 24-May-2025. The Amazon links on the page carry an affiliate tag. Listed under Management.
Management writer; co-author of In Search of Excellence and author of The Excellence Dividend.
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Robert Sutton, The No Asshole Rule
A list he wrote after his niece at Tuck asked him for the best leadership and management books; the second half is drawn from a draft of The Excellence Dividend.
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.