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Linus on "acting professionally"

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Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#71

Post by arrrg »

antirez wrote: post #47
ealexhudson wrote: post #11

Linus is dead wrong here. When he says acting professionally means "fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords", he's attacking a straw man: none of that behaviour is professional, and to say that professional behaviour must degenerate to that behaviour is a stretch at best. Aggression is not warranted in a professional environment; neither overt (a…

So what is the profesional way to refuse to work with somebody you don't want to, or to mark the work of somebody else as bad? Of course options that will require a lot of time are not good, like gently showing how a "few" things could be improved.

"I do not want to work with you because of reasons A, B, C."

Leaving out the reasons would also be ok, but don't be surprised if this results in confusion and anger. (However, the abusive alternative to this will likely not help reducing the confusion or anger.)

"This work is bad because of reasons A, B, C."

Leaving out the reasons would also be ok, but don't expect other people to agree with you if you do that.

Being straightforward doesn't require one to be abusive.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#72

Post by karma_fountain »

jonahx wrote: post #56
stephenr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've obviously never worked in an office, or you have taken a big step away from reality. The things Linus mentions are what happens as a result of supposed "professionalism". People are emotional, reactionary creatures with very different needs. These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it. As was shown on a recent post…

this is a false dichotomy. it's possible to be succint, harsh, and directly to the point without swearing or being abusive. for example, off the top of my head: "stephen, this code is riddled with basic errors and is completely unacceptable. please fix a, b, and c immediately and know that if you make mistakes like this again, your contributions will no longer be welcome." versus: "stephen, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WIT…

Exactly, you can save time, be understood about what is wrong, and not have to "criticism sandwich" everything. You just shouldn't be rude.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#73

Post by estebank »

jakobe wrote: post #37

Torvalds seems to be a real bully. And it hurts me to see all these responses justifying his behaviour, as if this is the way it must be. Just look at this message: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1TUvG3J... There is no justification for this kind of behaviour. If anybody else behaved this way, they would be sent to a psychiatrist. But apparently since it's Linus Torvalds, he's just being a littl…

I remember that thread. You have a senior kernel committer breaking userspace and then turning around and laying the blame on the userspace application when it broke. In Linus' email I see cursing, and an ass chewing for all to see.

The thing is, the kernel mailing list being in the open makes it so we see conversations like this, but they should be seen as the equivalent of a private conversation, because that's what they really are.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#75

Post by gngeal »

ealexhudson wrote: post #38
stephenr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've obviously never worked in an office, or you have taken a big step away from reality. The things Linus mentions are what happens as a result of supposed "professionalism". People are emotional, reactionary creatures with very different needs. These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it. As was shown on a recent post…

So lying is a result of "acting professionally", but swearing is natural and ok? I don't buy that "people" need to swear any more than they need to lie, or that the result of swearing is somehow less damaging/more productive than lying.

I don't buy that "people" need to swear any more than they need to lie, or that the result of swearing is somehow less damaging/more productive than lying.

Lying is dishonorable, counterproductive in context of multiple cooperating people, and a really bad idea overall, purely objectively. Swearing, linguistics-wise, is indeed a completely normal ("natural and ok") trait (present to some extent in individuals of all cultures, gender, professions etc., even in some higher animals) that is orthogonal to anyone's performance. How could you possibly equate these two is beyond me.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#76

Post by pasiaj »

lazyjones wrote: post #29
pasiaj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The whole point is that he is not suppressing the urges. When he feels frustrated, he might add a "fuck" or "shit" to convey that feeling. You, on the other hand, did not agree to something, felt mad or frustrated, and instead of conveying that frustration you snidely suggested that that he must be suppressing some "natural urges". Violent? Homosexual? From whose subconscious did those arise from? Not Linuses? (…

> The whole point is that he is not suppressing the urges. Freud would disagree and so do I. > you snidely suggested that that he must be suppressing some "natural urges" Same thing Linus did in the last paragraph. :-/ > your reply to be a perfect example of what Linus is trying to avoid ("fake politeness[...]" That makes no sense. I am just trying to analyze and understand his behavior. There's no emotion involved a…

>> The whole point is that he is not suppressing the urges.

> Freud would disagree and so do I.

So one can not curse out of anger or frustration without there being suppressed urges? I do not think Freud would agree with you.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#77

Post by w1ntermute »

stephenr wrote: post #22
ealexhudson wrote: post #11

Linus is dead wrong here. When he says acting professionally means "fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords", he's attacking a straw man: none of that behaviour is professional, and to say that professional behaviour must degenerate to that behaviour is a stretch at best. Aggression is not warranted in a professional environment; neither overt (a…

You've obviously never worked in an office, or you have taken a big step away from reality. The things Linus mentions are what happens as a result of supposed "professionalism". People are emotional, reactionary creatures with very different needs. These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it. As was shown on a recent post…

> As was shown on a recent post - Linus reverted to swearing in his native tongue

Actually, he swore in Finnish in that post, and as a Swedish-speaking Finn, Swedish, and not Finnish, is his native language.

http://www.muktware.com/news/2857/which-linus-torvalds%E2%80...

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#78

Post by meowface »

fosap wrote: post #63
smtddr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basically your position is "If you don't like it, get out". I'm not sure this view is productive in any kind of discussion. Personally, I think the amount of abusive speech & profanity in the tech-field is way too much. I assume(incorrectly?) that it's because it's mostly male and a lot of men like to do that to each other. I personally don't do it to anyone and don't like it being directed at me.

And that is the concept of the "benevolent dictator". If he is a dick, incompetent or does technical stuff you don't like, fork. IMO the best way to run FOSS project, but of course there are others.

Agreed.

It's quite easy for an open source project to just waddle around and start blindly accepting things random developers contribute with no real decision or filtering process (cough PHP). They may verify the code's not buggy or that it at least does something that could be of use to someone, but they generally don't care if it fits in with the overall design and goals of the project.

Having someone who has the complete vision in his head, who's also extremely technical and knows what changes are good and bad, is absolutely invaluable.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#80

Post by nknighthb »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #49
oellegaard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note. Once I worked at a tele provider and I accidentally messed up some contract and we lost $6000 - that was in a very professional working environment. I was called into the office of the manager and was told (not in a specifically pleasant way) how stupid my actions were. This taught me an important lesson about caring for details. In open source, the office is the mailing list. Life is tough. Say sorry an…

The important difference is that the mailing list is public, your humbling was private. I'm guessing your co-workers knew you'd been chewed out but how much worse would you have felt (I guess plenty) and how much more would you have learned (I guess nothing) had your dressing down been in public? Much of this isn't about some artificial standard for the sake of it, it's about getting the best out of people. Public be…

I much prefer being publicly berated. There's no question of what was said, and there is pressure on the one doing the berating to get it right and not be unreasonable in their expectations. It further urges consistency -- if one person is dressed down for doing X in Y circumstances, failure to do the same to the next person who makes the same error will either reveal obvious bias, or make clear that the original berating was undeserved.
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