101–110 of 653 posts
From https://curl.se/docs/code-of-conduct.html : "As contributors and maintainers of this project, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities" Why have a code of conduct while being hostile to contributors? I think they should handle this differently.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…
This sounds like a real cross-cultural mismatch, but it’s doing too much work with nationality alone. In a lot of Indian (and broader South Asian) work contexts, questioning instructions can be read as challenging authority or admitting incompetence, so people default to executing without asking. That’s often reinforced by education systems and contractor dynamics where producing something quickly feels safer than pa…
That’s ego, assuming doing is the value, not doing RIGHT.
Doing alone has almost zero value.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…
This sounds like a real cross-cultural mismatch, but it’s doing too much work with nationality alone. In a lot of Indian (and broader South Asian) work contexts, questioning instructions can be read as challenging authority or admitting incompetence, so people default to executing without asking. That’s often reinforced by education systems and contractor dynamics where producing something quickly feels safer than pa…
Back-and-forth iteration and consultation is a genuinely hard problem. Certain kinds of feedback cycles have a minimum latency of "overnight". Which means we need to invest heavily in good communication.
But also, it means more people need to have the "big picture", and they need to be able to make good decisions (not just arbitrary ones). So the ideal goal is to prevent people from going off in random nonsensical directions based on miscommunication, and equip them to actually think strategically about the overall plan. Continent X might make different decisions than continent Y, but they're all talking, and enough people see the goal.
A lot of the international teams I've seen pull this off are ones where an Eastern European or Indian team is just another permanent part of the company, with broad-based professional expertise. Contractors on any continent are a whole different story.
So I think what a lot of people try to blame on Indian management culture (or whatever) really is just a case of "we hired contractors in a different time zone." I mean, there are always cultural issues—Linus Torvalds came from a famously direct management culture, and many US managers tend to present criticism as a not-so-subtle "hint" in between two compliments—but professionals of intelligence and goodwill will figure all that out eventually.
I've been helping a bit with OWASP documentation lately and there's been a surge of Indian students eagerly opening nonsensical issues and PRs and all of the communication and code is clearly 100% LLMs. They'll even talk back and forth with each other. It's a huge headache for the maintainers. I suggested following what Ghostty does where everything starts as discussions - only maintainers create issues, and PRs can…
> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…
It would be typical to do the first thing that comes to mind, then see what happens. No negative feedback? Done, move on. Negative feedback? Try the next best thing that makes the negative feed back go away.
People will not wonder whether they might bother you. Just start talking. Maybe try to sell you something. That's often annoying. But also just be curious, or offer tea. You react annoyed and tell them to go away? They most likely will and not think anything bad of it. You engage them? They will continue. Most likely won't take "hints" or whatever subtle non-verbal communication a Westerner uses.
I found it quite exhausting in the beginning, it feels like constantly having to defend myself when I want to be left alone. But after I started understanding this mode and becoming more firm in my boundaries, I started to find it quite nice for everyday interactions. Much less guessing involved, just be direct.
Professionally I haven't worked much with Indians, but my expectation would be that it's necessary to be more active in ensuring that things are in track. Ask them to reflect back to you what the stated goal is. Ask them for what you think are obvious implications from the stated goal to ensure they're not just repeating the words. Check work in progress more often.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Indian students Is this cultural? I ran a small business some years ago (later failed) and was paying for contract work to various people. At the I perceived the pattern that Indian contractors would never ever ask for clarifications, would never say they didn't know something, would never say they didn't understand something, etc. Instead they just ran with whatever they happened to have in their mind, until I cal…
selfishness, laziness, lack of self-awareness, lack of shame, etc are obviously universal traits. But cultures absolutely reinforce them to different degrees. Many cultures around the world are built around the sorts of behaviors we both described. Whereas other cultures have at least some (if not a lot of) resistance to it - eg publicly ridiculing when people step flagrantly out of line. This is good. My impression…
From https://curl.se/docs/code-of-conduct.html : "As contributors and maintainers of this project, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities" Why have a code of conduct while being hostile to contributors? I think they should handle this differently.
all curl team came here to downvote you, don't be so cruel :D
I understand they people hate to to waste time. They should just be polite about it.
Or you know .. update or delete the CoC.
From https://curl.se/docs/code-of-conduct.html : "As contributors and maintainers of this project, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities" Why have a code of conduct while being hostile to contributors? I think they should handle this differently.
I am friends with a solo maintainer of a major open source project. He repeatedly complains that at the beginning of some semester, he sees a huge spike of false/unproveable security weakness reports / GutHub issues in the project. He thinks that there is a Chinese university which encourages their students to find and report software vulns as part of their coursework. They don’t seem to verify what they describe is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
selfishness, laziness, lack of self-awareness, lack of shame, etc are obviously universal traits. But cultures absolutely reinforce them to different degrees. Many cultures around the world are built around the sorts of behaviors we both described. Whereas other cultures have at least some (if not a lot of) resistance to it - eg publicly ridiculing when people step flagrantly out of line. This is good. My impression…
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