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“Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

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Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#171

Post by Aperocky »

belter wrote: post #165
Aperocky wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post are downvoted because it is borderline racist. The maintainer happened to be Chinese and that gave you 'chills'. There are 1.4 billion Chinese and most of them live in China, there are also open source projects hosted in China, and a lot of open source contribution coming from people living in China, if only because there are many people there. The media links you posted are also made of conjecture ('Trump…

The comment is not racist because if you did read it the concern was NOT about the maintainer being Chinese and I made that VERY CLEAR. The concern was that in the Chinese group discussion commentators were mentioning he was Chinese. Now why would that be relevant indeed ? It can be relevant because it open the possibility to him being pressured by a company that is partly owned by the Chinese Army. That is where the…

All of that hoop you jumped through is (seen from my perspective) thinly veiled xenophobia/racism. Now it maybe that you did not intend it that way, but it came across as such, for instance you've posted:

> partly owned by the Chinese Army

None of the sources that you've posted supported this, The PLA is also specifically banned to operate/control business since 1998. The ownership structure of Huawei is also available in more detail here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Ownership

If it's not some deep seated bias, what lead you to straight up invent or stretch claims like this?

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#172

Post by alxlaz »

lmilcin wrote: post #133
alxlaz wrote: post #129

Earlier 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…

> KPIs don't need to be tied to actual people, usually they are tied to teams, systems, projects, processes, etc.

Right, but my post, the post I was responding to, the post the post I was responding to was responding to, and the article in the link, was specifically about a situation where KPIs are tied to actual people. I'm not sure what you're arguing for or against.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#173

Post by dtech »

Tainnor wrote: post #163
lmilcin wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The point they're trying to make is, I believe, that metrics shouldn't be targets. In a sense I think that this is obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of applied statistics.

You can't have a (semi-objective) target without a metric.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#174

Post by Ericson2314 »

shkkmo wrote: post #150
Clewza313 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which would indicate that the issue is not using KPIs to understand how your business is performing, but providing incentives based on KPIs.

This is trite. Just about any way of understanding something is going to create perverse incentives. Keeping the metrics secret has other problems too.

I don't think there is a a good solution. Maybe with radically shortened work hours and less pay disparity, the strives can strive off the job instead.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#175

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

belter wrote: post #167
belter wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is not racist because if you did read it the concern was NOT about the maintainer being Chinese and I made that VERY CLEAR. The concern was that in the Chinese group discussion commentators were mentioning he was Chinese. Now why would that be relevant indeed ? It can be relevant because it open the possibility to him being pressured by a company that is partly owned by the Chinese Army. That is where the…

Who Owns Huawei ? https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669 Who Owns Huawei? The Company Tried to Explain. It Got Complicated. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/technology/who-owns-huawe...

This is a detailed refutation of that paper: https://pekingnology.substack.com/p/who-really-owns-huawei-a...

It goes into the specifics of the Chinese laws governing employee share ownership, and why the employee shares are held by the union (it has to do with arcana of 1990s-era Chinese laws governing stock distribution by non-publicly-traded companies). Balding & Clarke fundamentally misunderstand why the union is used as a share-holding vehicle, and what the legal implications of that are.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#176

Post by embeddTrway690 »

otikik wrote: post #138
wyager wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Linux health happened despite Linus' manners, not because of them.

I don't care. Telling incompetent people to fuck off is cool AF.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#177

Post by Tainnor »

dtech wrote: post #173
Tainnor wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point they're trying to make is, I believe, that metrics shouldn't be targets. In a sense I think that this is obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of applied statistics.

You can't have a (semi-objective) target without a metric.

What you want to measure and what you actually can measure are usually very distinct things, that's where "operationalization" comes in.

You have a target that you can't measure directly, hence you measure a proxy. That only works for as long as people don't game it and aim for the proxy instead of the actual target. Also, in addition, at least in research every statistician worth their salt knows that their proxy is not the actual thing and only their best effort at approximating it, hence in good studies, limitations of the methodology are extensively discussed.

Importantly, the moment you realise that your proxy is being gamed, you need to switch proxy.

I think this is only one example of this annoying trend of pretending to be "data-driven" by coopting numbers and fancy statistics without also adopting everything we know about uncertainty and how we can quantify it. "Data" in many businesses often implies a level of clarity ("look, the graph always goes up") that often does not actually exist and I suspect that this can be hard to understand for certain types of managers.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#178

Post by belter »

belter wrote: post #165
Aperocky wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post are downvoted because it is borderline racist. The maintainer happened to be Chinese and that gave you 'chills'. There are 1.4 billion Chinese and most of them live in China, there are also open source projects hosted in China, and a lot of open source contribution coming from people living in China, if only because there are many people there. The media links you posted are also made of conjecture ('Trump…

The comment is not racist because if you did read it the concern was NOT about the maintainer being Chinese and I made that VERY CLEAR. The concern was that in the Chinese group discussion commentators were mentioning he was Chinese. Now why would that be relevant indeed ? It can be relevant because it open the possibility to him being pressured by a company that is partly owned by the Chinese Army. That is where the…

=========== DiogenesKynikos 7 minutes ago [–]

This is a detailed refutation of that paper: https://pekingnology.substack.com/p/who-really-owns-huawei-a... It goes into the specifics of the Chinese laws governing employee share ownership, and why the employee shares are held by the union (it has to do with arcana of 1990s-era Chinese laws governing stock distribution by non-publicly-traded companies). Balding & Clarke fundamentally misunderstand why the union is used as a share-holding vehicle, and what the legal implications of that are. ===========

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_relations_in_China#All-C...

"Independent unions are illegal in China with only the All-China Federation of Trade Unions permitted to operate."

"The Trade Union Law in China forces the all trade unions in China dependent with the Communist Party of China."

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#179

Post by crysin »

embeddTrway690 wrote: post #176
otikik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Linux health happened despite Linus' manners, not because of them. I don't care. Telling incompetent people to fuck off is cool AF.

Your ego is showing. At some point you'll be the incompetent one in the room. Remember, when you're told to fuck off, it's cool as fuck.

Re: “Please don't waste maintainers' time on your KPI grabbing patches”

#180

Post by wyager »

crysin wrote: post #179
embeddTrway690 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux health happened despite Linus' manners, not because of them. I don't care. Telling incompetent people to fuck off is cool AF.

Your ego is showing. At some point you'll be the incompetent one in the room. Remember, when you're told to fuck off, it's cool as fuck.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the GP, there’s a huge difference between humble incompetence and arrogant incompetence. Everyone starts out incompetent, but that’s fine as long as they don’t repeatedly shove it on other people. Incompetence, without the self-awareness or humility to avoid wasting other people’s time? Maybe getting a verbal slap on the wrist is exactly what’s needed…
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