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Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

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Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#221

Post by kilotaras »

johnsonjo wrote: post #215
an_d_rew wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree totally. In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be pure rational actors. But we aren't, not even close. (And I would argue that that's a good thing, but that discussion is waaaaay out of scope). As soon as you accept that humans, including yourself, primarily make _emotional_ decisions and not rational ones, it becomes easier to steer decisions in a healthy manner.

> In an idealized "intellectual-only" world, humans would be Spock-like and be pure rational actors. I used to think more along these lines. I heard someone recently talk about Spock and Captain Kirk and their approaches to different situations, and he said that most people think Spock must always be right due to his logical side. He then said that many times Kirk’s more human emotional approach actually worked out b…

Don't generalize from fictional evidence. On average rational decisions are usually better than irrational ones.

Also being rational =/= being cold and unemotional.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#222

Post by anad7 »

I feel that the Kotlin community definitely needs a "No Jerk approach". I've recently been to a meet-up which was on the advantages of using Kotlin for Android development, the speaker exhibited many characteristics from this article.

1. Bob interrupts others, and ignores their opinions (When people asked questions, he downplayed them and in some cases declined to answer them)

2. Bob bullies, humiliates, and oppresses individuals. With non-technical people, he wins arguments by bamboozling them with irrelevant technical detail, making them feel dumb (When asked about Coroutines he started explaining irrelevant stuff like locks and guards and compiler level instructions without actually answering the questions)

3. Bob engages in displays of dominance in front of groups (He was quite assertive that his language is better than Java, no one could convince him otherwise)

4. Bob is negative. He trash-talks other technologies, companies, and people behind their backs (He trash talked Java)

5. Bob manipulates and misleads. Sometimes he misleads subtly, by presenting facts that are literally true in a way that is intentionally misleading. (He mislead people into thinking that null checks were just wrong and should be avoided altogether by writing code in Kotlin, he also indicated that writing data objects was not possible in Java)

6. Bob uses physical intimidation. Bob glares at those he doesn't like, and may invade people's personal space. (He said that if his team member was unwilling to learn Kotlin he was probably not worth his salt)

7. Bob gives great talks – about himself.

8. Bob refuses to change. (This was quite evident about him)

To sum up, he was arrogant and loved humiliating the audience, I and a few others left the talk after 30 mins.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#223

Post by Chris2048 »

cperciva wrote: post #212
shifter wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Project leaders need to set good examples Why? Are we Puritans now?

It has nothing to do with puritanism. If project leaders don't set good examples, people "lower down" in the hierarchy will also act like jerks, and the project will lose potential contributors as a result.

> people "lower down" in the hierarchy will also act like jerk

It's not clear to me he is a jerk. If LT only shouts when things are important, people without important tasks have no reason to shout.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#224

Post by Chris2048 »

mamoswined wrote: post #86
gcommer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the "Alice" types I know come from a background in academia, which strongly selects for these types of people who can leave their emotions at the door and iterate on ideas quickly and rationally. None of the complaints raised in this article apply to teams composed entirely of "Alice" types (and the most productive labs I've worked in demonstrate this; and towards this goal I actively practice to become more…

I once had a 100% Alice team (all women too!) and it was awesome until we were forced to work with contractors who were 0% Alice. We offended them, turned out their boss was friends with some higher up at our company, and we got pretty much screwed.

How did you offend them?

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#225

Post by yitchelle »

fanpuns wrote: post #186
luckydude wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known Linus for a long time and don't believe him to be malicious. Do you have context for that statement? Linus has a sly sense of humor, I bet it was either directed at some code or it was in jest.

Here's the email. Jest may be hard to discern via text, but I if I had made that contribution (directly or indirectly) and was met by this response by the maintainer, I think it would be my last. https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495 Actually, after reading it a few more times, I can't find any jest in it tbh

"Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE FCKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the fck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"

Saying stuff like is just poor leadership and being as ass. This is like saying racist comments and brushing it off as a joke.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#226

Post by LeeHwang »

This really hit close to home.

I work with engineer whose is brilliant. We originally thought he was jerk, but the bosses loved him because he was a 5x engineer with the ability to handle huge cognitive loads, catch errors or conflicts in our large systems in the planning phase.

It turns out he was neuro atypical, and was actually nice guy, it turned out he was the one paying for friday pizzas not the boss. He was just too ahead of us, and honestly we let our inferiority complexes and frustration color our opinions of him.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#227

Post by orbitur »

ramchip wrote: post #195
fanpuns wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the email. Jest may be hard to discern via text, but I if I had made that contribution (directly or indirectly) and was met by this response by the maintainer, I think it would be my last. https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495 Actually, after reading it a few more times, I can't find any jest in it tbh

He’s essentially saying “this userland code is beyond stupid, but we don’t break userland so here’s how we can keep it working.” The comment is neither aimed at the contributor (who works on kernel code) nor the reporter (who did not write the code). In fact if you read the rest of the thread you can see them concur and joke about it.

Are the people joking about it equals or can Linus decide who gets fired?

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#228

Post by ubu7737 »

cperciva wrote: post #187
digi_owl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds have gotten an undeserved reputation because it is oh so easy for the online tech media to take emails out of context. Whenever he brings out the harsh words, it is because someone has been stalling and deflecting about breaking some core rule for kernel development. Torvalds never pounce on someone out on tail end of the patch chain. He comes down hard on those that have been in charge of maintaining…

Torvalds never pounce on someone out on tail end of the patch chain. He comes down hard on those that have been in charge of maintaining major sections of the kernel for years, and should know what is expected of them. I don't think that's necessarily good enough. Even if he is personally restrained in whom he acts like a jerk towards, his behaviour establishes norms within the project and contributes to how other pe…

This is such a passive attitude. I don't think the passive, judging members of tech organizations will ever take responsibility for how they are dragging their orgs down. Because, by definition, they are passive and take responsibility for nothing.

But the truth is that organizations fail more often because of their passive, "why won't anyone lead me properly" attitudes. And this smacks of it.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#229

Post by AstralStorm »

antisthenes wrote: post #196
heygrady wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've given advice to young professionals in the past in this same vein. I ask, "What magic is it that people love good ideas, yet, you have a good idea and no one listens to you?" The answer boils down to this: if you have a good idea but people are rejecting it, find a new way to talk about it.

The real answer is that ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is everything. When you proclaim a good idea, you aren't offering an execution plan to go with it, so people (rightfully) ignore it.

Actually it is not even execution, but who promotes the idea and whether they have clout.

People in management also tend to buy impossible lies especially considering deadlines.

Re: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

#230

Post by AstralStorm »

mfringel wrote: post #95
crdoconnor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer working with "Alices". It's refreshing to see people actually called on their bullshit. IMHO there's also a limit to how much you can spare everybody's feelings and still be effective at that ^^. I think the OP believed that there isn't a limit. I think he's wrong. In a corporate environment, there's almost no value in actually being one though. Linus Torvalds would almost never be promoted and would frequen…

Do you like the act, or the result? That is, do you like "seeing people actually called on their BS"? Or, do you like people stop doing BS things as a result? IMO, the latter is much more interesting than the former. Being a 100% Alice guarantees the former, but does not guarantee the latter.

Nothing guarantees the latter ever.
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