Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite' • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#171

Post by eropple » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #120

eropple wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low emotional intelligence on display throughout this thread is both disappointing and unsurprising. I have fired "nice and really trying" people. Because they were decent people, I have also then recommended them to my personal network for positions that are better suited to their skills (and more than once have they gone on to success at a friend's company), because hiring somebody who can't do the job is manag…

Thank you for providing a glimpse into a mind bending gymnastics one might need to engage in to convince himself or herself that it is different somehow: this is actually why work references are absolutely useless - people love to coddle incompetence in order to be perceived as "nice bosses". If someone's being unable to do a job is management's fault ( in this case yours, since you are the manager of the person that…

Wow. This...uh. There's a lot of shitty to unpack in this post.

First: I've never had to fire somebody I hired. I have had to fire people I inherited. It doesn't suck less, but given your odd attempt at turning this into a referendum on people who aren't big on jerkass coworkers, I feel like it helps complete the picture.

Second: firing people is rather unlike "coddling".

Third: that I have fired people does not mean I do not think that they are decent people. It does not mean that I think they are fit for no job. And it does not mean that I, as somebody with a working empathic function, don't want to help them to land as softly as possible in a job where they can be happy and productive.

Fourth: the notion that a reference can't be honest because somebody puts forth the above idea is entirely and only in your goddamn head. You are projecting. On the other hand, I've told somebody who asked (off the record) something along the lines of "I would not hire this person as a team lead because I've observed deficiencies in X, Y, and Z, but their strengths in A, B, and C make them good for role R" because honesty does not require being a prick.

Fifth: somebody who is fired for being an asshole--and, yeah, I've done that, and again, nobody I've ever hired--has no value to my network. I'm not going to inject the toxin I have spat out into somebody I actually like. Because I actually like those people and I want them to succeed. It isn't hard.

Were I in your shoes I'd be looking in the mirror right now. You're projecting something real ugly onto me and its source is worth thinking about.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#172

Post by Sharlin » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #119

yourbandsucks wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, on most political or religious topics, people leave that stuff at home and don't bring it to work. The SJW people are bringing it to work and right into everybody's face. I'm not saying "guess what, then, I'm the opposite, let's go be racist". I'm saying "could you please get that out of my face".

> I'm not turning around and saying "guess what, then, I'm the opposite, let's go be racist". incidentally, the people who did decide to do this became the alt-right.

The alt-right as a movement is pretty clearly a counterreaction to the social justice movement, but I’m not sure if it’s so much reasonable people getting radicalized than an already rather unpleasant subset of the population finding a platform – and an echo chamber – for their unpleasantness.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#173

Post by doktrin » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

Fair enough, honestly. As someone who's broadly sympathetic to his managerial style, I totally understand the desire to distance himself from those in the 'underbelly of the internet' who use an 'anti PC / SJW' stance to (poorly) mask their own bigotry.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#174

Post by yourbandsucks » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #168

yourbandsucks wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a different person than the original poster, but hey I'm pushed away too, so let's go with it. SJWs do not have a monopoly on thought, on how to deal with societal problems, or any of that. This isn't a 'tolerance of intolerance' thing, it's a 'tolerance of those outside your very narrow camp' thing. Most of the individuals I've encountered couldn't tell you who their congressman is, and they'd never go door to d…

By talking about how problematic these people are, you miss and reinforce my point. I’m not saying anything about how they behave or whether it’s acceptable or helpful. I’m saying that how you behave should not be determined by them. If you’ve decided not to encourage people to do the right thing (or, worse, stop doing the right thing yourself) because some other people are jerks, you’re just making excuses for behav…

As far as my side of the street: I've knocked on a LOT of doors for progressive candidates, and will continue to do so. Don't you worry about me.

But do you see the box you're building? I'm either 100% on board with an ever-more-extreme program, or I'm somehow revealing the evil nature of my heart by being turned off by them?

I'm very serious about the persuasion component, and the fact that it's pushing EVEN ME away ought to set off alarm bells. If they're annoying and unpersuasive to me, how on earth would they be perceived by someone in Ohio? Have they ever met someone from Ohio?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#175

Post by matz1 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #21

stemc43 wrote: post #10

If not for this guy - we wouldn't have Linux. I'd much rather work with honest person that can tell me how he really feels then nice spoken liars.

That’s essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn’t it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?

sure but I can't realistically expect everyone to be nice, Isn't better for me to always try to prepare myself for the fact that anyone can be rude and unhelpful ?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#176

Post by 08-15 » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #55

rooam-dev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes "constructive" requires more effort, which for an engineer could mean "overhead". Especially if communication is text based (email, chat, etc.), it's more difficult to express your emotions. My imho of course.

As far as I can tell Linus's feedback is almost always constructive in that it generally points out precisely why he thinks something should or shouldn't that way. The problem is that he sometimes splices personal attacks and uses an overly aggressive tone which doesn't really help anything. I can somewhat justify using a very corrosive tone if you're not in a place of power and you want to be sure that you're not ig…

> From a purely pragmatic point of view I don't see what his corrosive tone gets him.

I don't know whether it actually, but I think Linus becomes "corrosive" to get rid of someone. Certain developers disappearing is not a side effect, it's the intended effect.

If you have a "contributor" who keeps submitting the same faulty patch over and over, who doesn't listen, but keeps making a fuss about his "contribution" not being accepted, what can you do? You tell him that his code is no good and won't be accepted, and you tell him that his making a fuss about it is not welcome. But he doesn't stop, so now what? Block him from the mailing list? He just comes back with a new address. What's next? You decide to be so unpleasant to him that he leaves.

Anecdotally, this sequence happened with certain engineers at Redhat, who kept dumping their bad code at Linus so that it may be maintained upstream. They could have cleaned it up, but that's exactly the maintenance cost Redhat wanted to outsource to the community.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#177

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

blktiger wrote: post #58

rectang wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torvalds' written communications are incredibly well-composed, full of information and get his point across well. On the basis of his emails alone, he's a "gifted communicator" in my view. Not everyone who is as logically brilliant as him can write like that. Despite that, I'm sure that when he says he's "not a people person" there's something to it. Maybe a certain difficulty reading people or anticipating their res…

IMO, the thing that he doesn't seem to understand is the difference between criticizing the implementation and criticizing the person. Pointing out flaws in the code is not the same as calling a person stupid. If he could just learn to explain why the code is bad most of his people problems would disappear. Not all, since some people take criticism of their code poorly, but if you aren't committed to the highest qual…

"Asking probing questions to get the person to think through the problems on their own to fix them for example."

My impression that most of his blow ups happen after he has tried this approach unsuccessfully.

I am just a little tech lead but over the years I have found that with some people you have to yell at them from time to time because they don't understand feedback that was given nicely.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#178

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #172

beaconstudios wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not turning around and saying "guess what, then, I'm the opposite, let's go be racist". incidentally, the people who did decide to do this became the alt-right.

The alt-right as a movement is pretty clearly a counterreaction to the social justice movement, but I’m not sure if it’s so much reasonable people getting radicalized than an already rather unpleasant subset of the population finding a platform – and an echo chamber – for their unpleasantness.

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#179

Post by Millennium » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

yosefzeev wrote: post #88

I don't need my computer tools to define my political/spiritual beliefs. In fact, I think Torvalds adopting something like this in relation to Linux is a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for alternatives that understand the division between spiritual beliefs and "forced agreement with an assertion by participation" that uses religious terminology that has quite a different meaning to…

It is indeed a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos: in particular, Geek Social Fallacy #1 (Ostracizers Are Evil). And you know what? That's probably a good thing.

The radical inclusivity (i.e. exclude no one, for any reason) of the geek community led to some beautiful things. We took in the people nobody wanted around, and with their help, we built something special. But in our reluctance to exclude anyone, we forgot something important. We were all accused of dragging things down and ruining things for other people -it's part of what bound us together- but we neglected to address the fact that for some of us, that was true. And we became their enablers, and they did drag us down and ruin things for everybody, because that's what they do, and we did not insist that they change or leave. Many people preferred to just leave themselves, rather than confront the manchildren in our midst: a de facto exclusion, rather than mandated by any sort of rule. We were, in essence, abused and manipulated by the people we should have kicked to the curb, and because of this, they took over.

This is ending. And that scares some people to death, and not even unreasonably so: these are people who were rejected by their societies all their life before finding geekdom, which they clung to because, in its refusal to reject anyone, it could never reject them. Anyone who remembers being an outcast would be scared by the possibility of geeks beginning to cast people out, because it opens the potential that they might be cast out yet again. Who wouldn't fear that? Especially after years of growing unused to outcast status?

And yet, it has to be done. It should have been done a long time ago. Those who get cast out because of this still have the option that has been facing them since childhood: they can change. Because sometimes, the ostracizers are right.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#180

Post by DFHippie » Thu, Sep 27, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

beaconstudios wrote: post #158

evanspa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel it is "the natural tendency" to make minorities feel less welcome? My natural tendency -- and anecdotally, pretty much everyone I know -- is to treat people well regardless of their race; to treat people the way you'd want to be treated.

the question of the status quo is itself politicised. One side (progressive sphere) says people who don't belong to the normed group (cis-white-hetero-male in US/EUR) are inherently treated worse, either consciously or unconsciously (bias), and conscious effort has to be made to overcome this. Another (classical liberal sphere) says that exclusionary behaviour are the exception and most people abide by the golden rul…

It is important to note that this isn't merely a matter of opinion. One can study the effect/presence of unconscious bias objectively and quantitatively. These studies have large error bars but they use conventional and accepted statistics.

To the extent it is politicized, it's politicized the way evolution and climate change are: groups who are politically opposed have opinions about the consequences of these studies. One or the other group sometimes finds empirical reality to be in conflict with the arguments they wish to make in support of their preferred policies.