This is going to become a more common theme. Geopolitics spill into everyday life in all sorts of unexpected ways.
This issue doesn't have anything to do with geopolitics.
“Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
131–140 of 277 posts
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind this community is probably censored: https://qz.com/1063073/in-china-you-now-have-to-provide-your... From the online translation, the mention by one the commentators that the Kernel Maintainer is also Chinese...give me a bit of a chill... To make it clear ...Not that I would not trust the maintainer, instead, my concern is that depending where he is based a window could be open to unpleasant pressure...
Yeah real identity has been going on for a while and recently I had to submit my id number too but I don't think it affects most of the discussion on Zhihu as long as it's not too politically sensitive. It's an annoyance for many people in oversea though.
As I am not a Chinese speaker..do you confirm there is in the thread a comment that the maintainer is also Chinese ?
I am concerned about possible pressure from Huawei and its "shareholders": https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53172057 to a Kernel maintainer. Looking at the heavy down votes my post got its not a concern here...
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could someone ELI5 to me what KPI even stands for? Does that mean like they're like the shock troopers of open source?
KPI = Key Performance Indicator. It's basically a list of things that are considered during your evaluation. The more items off that check list you cross (if they're one-time items, like "ensure an uptime of X"), or the more of each you do (if they're things like "upstream patches" or "patents granted"), the better your score is. It's a shit system that does exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to do IMHO, but…
KPIs are not a shit system, they are actually important to running any nontrivial organization.
The issue isn't whether KPIs are good or bad but what you do with them.
KPIs don't need to be tied to actual people, usually they are tied to teams, systems, projects, processes, etc.
For example, a number of users resigning from our services might be a KPI.
KPIs are an important tool to understand what is going on and whether we are going in the desired direction or not and to communicate this to your teams.
KPIs are a tool for telling your organization what you think is important, to set the incentives in the right direction.
KPIs will not help you if you have no effing idea how to set incentives -- they are just a tool in case you know what you are doing.
Because they are just one step from being a target for your teams, you need to be very careful to communicate what you mean exactly when you set KPIs.
Now, if you make number of users resigning from your services a KPI, you immediately need to set some additional guarantees that this is not overused -- for example by making it difficult for your clients to resign. This might be another KPI (user satisfaction with regards to how easy it was for them to resign).
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is this person's commit history for the last year for additional context: https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?q=auth... They do appear to contribute regularly enough (relatively speaking) and based on some of the busfactor metrics, they are the sole maintainer or main maintainers for about 50 files. And if you look at their one line change commits, they do seem to be valid: https://public-001.g…
> And if you look at their one line change commits, they do seem to be valid By construction, yes. You're only looking at their commits that were merged into Linus's tree.
Yes you are right. I was more establishing this person's successful contributions and that they appear to provide meaningful contributions. What is happening now with all the new proposed changes that is causing a stir is something that I really can't speak too since there is no easy way to navigate their proposed changes.
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#135I have worked in team with some kernel developers at Samsung, years ago, so let me put some perspective for those who do not understand the dynamics. In some companies, the amount of patents or Linux kernel patches you get accepted is direct measure of your success. As you know, whatever you measure becomes a target -- these guys feel very pressed to get ANY kernel commits accepted, no matter how small, irrelevant or…
This is why ousting Linus puts the long-term health of the kernel at risk. It’s very difficult and expensive, at a personal and professional level, to tell colleagues to “fuck off” if they are submitting low quality garbage for reasons related to their salary. Linux was Linus’s baby, he had nearly absolute control, and he didn’t care too much about politeness - this was a magic recipe for him to be able to stave off garbage patch requests from motivated corporate peons.
Now, if the people approving patches are just normal employees who can get fired if a kernel sponsor complains enough, it’s going to be much harder for them to successfully deflect all the bullshit without ever caving in.
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Came to the comments to learn what KPI was. And leaned about Goodharts law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
Saving someone a click > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
And ironically, earned 3 points of HN karma kreds for this very tiny contribution to the discussion. Oh the deep irony in this particular context of KPI spamming.
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
KPI = Key Performance Indicator. It's basically a list of things that are considered during your evaluation. The more items off that check list you cross (if they're one-time items, like "ensure an uptime of X"), or the more of each you do (if they're things like "upstream patches" or "patents granted"), the better your score is. It's a shit system that does exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to do IMHO, but…
KPIs are not a shit system, they are actually important to running any nontrivial organization. The issue isn't whether KPIs are good or bad but what you do with them. KPIs don't need to be tied to actual people, usually they are tied to teams, systems, projects, processes, etc. For example, a number of users resigning from our services might be a KPI. KPIs are an important tool to understand what is going on and whe…
Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Humans are extremely good at gaming KPIs, and will do so as long as they're rewarded for it.
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#138I have worked in team with some kernel developers at Samsung, years ago, so let me put some perspective for those who do not understand the dynamics. In some companies, the amount of patents or Linux kernel patches you get accepted is direct measure of your success. As you know, whatever you measure becomes a target -- these guys feel very pressed to get ANY kernel commits accepted, no matter how small, irrelevant or…
This is why ousting Linus puts the long-term health of the kernel at risk. It’s very difficult and expensive, at a personal and professional level, to tell colleagues to “fuck off” if they are submitting low quality garbage for reasons related to their salary. Linux was Linus’s baby, he had nearly absolute control, and he didn’t care too much about politeness - this was a magic recipe for him to be able to stave off…
I think the email was completely effective in denouncing a behavior. Telling people to "fuck off" isn't required (nor desired, in my opinion).
Linux health happened *despite* Linus' manners, not because of them.
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could someone ELI5 to me what KPI even stands for? Does that mean like they're like the shock troopers of open source?
KPI = Key Performance Indicator. It's basically a list of things that are considered during your evaluation. The more items off that check list you cross (if they're one-time items, like "ensure an uptime of X"), or the more of each you do (if they're things like "upstream patches" or "patents granted"), the better your score is. It's a shit system that does exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to do IMHO, but…
I didn't know open source programmers were subjected to those kinds of performance reviews. It sounds to me like the pandas have come and visited the penguins and there's a whole lot of shock and horror as the penguins get eaten because you'd think the pandas only want bamboo.
Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
KPIs are not a shit system, they are actually important to running any nontrivial organization. The issue isn't whether KPIs are good or bad but what you do with them. KPIs don't need to be tied to actual people, usually they are tied to teams, systems, projects, processes, etc. For example, a number of users resigning from our services might be a KPI. KPIs are an important tool to understand what is going on and whe…
Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Humans are extremely good at gaming KPIs, and will do so as long as they're rewarded for it.
Overuse law. If you overuse a law too much it stops being meaningful.
Organizations have hard time improving without measuring their performance and communicating incentives.
There isn't magical solution you can scribe on a paper and tell everybody -- this is exactly what you need to do to achieve success.
The best what you can do is compromise, it is unavoidable.
So we know setting targets can make wrong incentives. It is also not a reason to not be setting targets. It is a reason to make sure you damn set those incentives right and take close look that you are getting what you have intended.