781–790 of 1001 posts
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> people who are able to accomplish their goals by rallying others to their cause. Like Linus.
Is anyone really rallied to the cause by Linus himself? I think the product is the only real draw. With the exception of a select few that simply want to work with someone as high profile and legendary as Linus.
I'm probably going to be alone in saying so, but I always enjoyed Linus and his attitude. (to me) it made him appear honest and dedicated to (his own) goals, and I always felt like that was respectable. (mostly) whenever he was proven technically wrong about how to do something he would concede to the technically better solution, and if he didn't do so he gave reasons for his conclusion. in other words : his technica…
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Sure, but every study i've ever read currently backs it. If you are aware of any that say "very smart assholes make organizations better in the long run" or even "very smart assholes don't meaningfully hurt them in the long run", i'd actually love to see it! (I hold the position i do precisely because it's backed by research, not just my own random thoughts and experiences)
Strong-personality-assholes have been making successful things for a very long time now (Linus, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, come to mind). It's probably not that being an asshole is good. It's that if you are a genius/visionary and nice, your genius gets diluted by the people around you. Let's build a genius/asshole map: 1. Genius, non-asshole: You start a genius-level thing, it is brilliant and awesome. As it progres…
However, what about a genious which politely replies something along the lines of "I'm very sorry but I don't think your contribution aligns with the goals and/or philosophy of this project.". That is not a nice nor an asshole response. After reading Linus' text, it seems to me he intends to get somewhere near this point.
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Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obv…
You're in the minority but you're not the only one. You can see the sentiment expressed about Rust community a lot. Super nice - don't ever say anything that may upset someone - kind of atmosphere is off-putting to many. I for one wouldn't want to work in such environment but I would love to work with Linus. The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and…
> The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others.
I would argue this is entirely false. If they can't adjust to others finding their behaviour offensive by not being offensive, they're not "better at adjusting to others". Yes, this is a two-way street, but that doesn't automatically mean everyone has to be comfortable with the guy who swears at you and calls you an idiot for writing a patch they didn't like.
We can have technical discussions without personal attacks, without rude language, without racial or sexist slurs. We manage it at my work all the time, although I for one think I could still do this better.
It's difficult when we grow up in a culture which glorifies violence and "macho" behaviour, where most of us in the field are male and have been told all our lives that we're expected to be strong and independent and assertive.
And honestly, if you can't find a way to explain why an idea is bad on a technical level without offending someone, maybe you don't have a good enough reason to criticise it, or you need to think about it some more to figure out why you don't like it apart from your initial reaction.
Style is less than substance. If there's one person who knows this, it's Linus Torvalds. And the proverbial bus would be all substance, if and when it hit.
Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…
> We often label people who are all smiles while simultaneously extremely strict as passive agressive. I get this label often and was wondering where was that coming from. Thanks for the insight.
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Certainly he has done far, far, far more good than bad. I don't think anybody feels otherwise. I would say he's something of a hero to me! He has certainly rallied many to his cause. As much good as he has done, could he do some things better? Linus certainly feels so. Interesting that so many here seem doubt Linus' own assertion.
Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. It creates a vicious cycle of absurdity - the one where people appease the anger to try and achieve some good not realizing how much the bad influences the culture of the movement/organization/group. No one is perfect, but the community for far to long treated an imperfect man…
There's a vast difference between a "Steve Jobs type asshole" and a "Linus type asshole". The rants I read from Steve Jobs were all petty, domineering and often arbitrary.
The rants I read from Linus were (mostly) about senior developers who tried to defend broken designs and breaking simple, well thought out rules. They were entirely predictable and avoidable.
The former would suck the life out of me but I wouldn't mind the latter.
Newton was an asshole too. The whole "apple fell on his head" story came about because he was so mean to people. I won't say that most geniuses are inempathetic, but many are. Einstein wasn't, some say Gauss was. Beethoven was. Linus is. And we'll accept Linus's attitude for being an aversion to bullshit, just the quality that we need in a kernel maintainer. I'm glad to see that Linus finally realizes that he has a p…
Thinking that Newton's success is caused or strongly correlated to him being an asshole seems to be begging the question. Why can't we just as well argue his achievements were intrinsically linked to his fanatical religious belief? After all, we can at least quantify the latter -- it's said that at least half of his writing was on religious subjects. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newto...…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but every study i've ever read currently backs it. If you are aware of any that say "very smart assholes make organizations better in the long run" or even "very smart assholes don't meaningfully hurt them in the long run", i'd actually love to see it! (I hold the position i do precisely because it's backed by research, not just my own random thoughts and experiences)
Strong-personality-assholes have been making successful things for a very long time now (Linus, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, come to mind). It's probably not that being an asshole is good. It's that if you are a genius/visionary and nice, your genius gets diluted by the people around you. Let's build a genius/asshole map: 1. Genius, non-asshole: You start a genius-level thing, it is brilliant and awesome. As it progres…
I think that now, today, Linus could afford to be less of an asshole. But I honestly wonder if the project would've have succeeded so well without him being so strict and demanding in the beginning.
EDIT: Yes, I think that it is possible to be strict and demanding without doing ad-hominem attacks and without swearing. It's just that it's very rare.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is anyone really rallied to the cause by Linus himself? I think the product is the only real draw. With the exception of a select few that simply want to work with someone as high profile and legendary as Linus.
Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obv…
- Abrasive: This idea is the dumbest ever and you are an idiot that deserves to die.
- Constructive: This idea have problems X, Y and Z.
- Polite: Thank you for the effort, but I see problems X, Y and Z with the idea in its current form.
A lot of the discussion here is confusing the question of competence with the question of tone. You can be competent and have a nice tone and you can certainly be incompetent and have an abrasive tone. I can understand not having the patience for politeness, but personal insults are obviously counterproductive.