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Linus on "acting professionally"

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Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#131

Post by vacri »

officemonkey wrote: post #85

Linus gets to do what he wants to do because he was extraordinarily successful in his field from a very young age. In other words, he's spoiled. If he had to "work for a living," ie: work in a job he needed, rather than a job he wanted, he would likely have had a job which enforced behavioral norms. He probably wouldn't have been as happy, but he likely would more polite. One of the things schools do is to socialize…

And yet another comment chiding Torvalds for not maintaining civility... while insulting him ('being a douche').

You talk about being 'incapable of realising' - perhaps review your own comment.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#132

Post by scotty79 »

pmelendez wrote: post #112
jdietrich wrote: post #44

You don't get to tell Linus what is or isn't professional. He has led one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years. However he decides to get that done is his business. Call it rude or impolite, call it thoughtless or insulting, but don't call it unprofessional. If there's one thing that nobody can dispute, it's that Linus knows how to get shit done and knows how to run an effective team. Ther…

> "He has led one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years" Yes, Linux has remarkable importance mostly because its installed base (IMHO it doesn't offer any innovation from an OS perspective, other that being stable enough and free) However, that doesn't give Linus a free card to be abusive and rude. Yes, not being polite and being insulting is indeed being unprofessional, there are ways to s…

He gets a free card to be rude and you get a free card to not like him and never do any favours for him and he gets a free card to not care what you think, do or don't do.

I am yet to see him abusing anyone. Verbal abuse mentioned is just swearing in aggressive tone of voice. How the word abuse got attached to expressing being pissed off is a mystery to me but I think it involves american lawyers.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#133

Post by sclangdon »

pmelendez wrote: post #112
jdietrich wrote: post #44

You don't get to tell Linus what is or isn't professional. He has led one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years. However he decides to get that done is his business. Call it rude or impolite, call it thoughtless or insulting, but don't call it unprofessional. If there's one thing that nobody can dispute, it's that Linus knows how to get shit done and knows how to run an effective team. Ther…

> "He has led one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years" Yes, Linux has remarkable importance mostly because its installed base (IMHO it doesn't offer any innovation from an OS perspective, other that being stable enough and free) However, that doesn't give Linus a free card to be abusive and rude. Yes, not being polite and being insulting is indeed being unprofessional, there are ways to s…

Making people do things against their will or fear punishment by death is not exactly the same thing is swearing at someone is it?

Anyone who works with Linus does so freely and can stop at any time they choose.

Furthermore, applying today's morale standards to civilizations thousands of years old doesn't strengthen your point as well as you think it does.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#134

Post by vacri »

Ygg2 wrote: post #13
lacion wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think sugar coating the world will make it less harsh.

Yes it would. Aggressive behavior begets more and more aggressive behavior. E.g. if you punch things to make you feel better when you are in a bad mood, you are more likely to punch people/things when you are in a bad mood (in fact it has an addictive quality).

Repression is also bad. Moderation is key.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#135

Post by shubb »

Agreement not to be nasty to people mostly protects people in a weak position. It's a long time since that has been Linus, so it's not surprising he's forgotten the merits of it.

Say 'Sarah Sharp' was hired by her company as a kernel developer. She knows that, if she makes a commit and Linus doesn't like it, he will write up what she has done like it was terrible (rather than slightly careless, or even just different from how he'd do it), and her boss will doubt her competence. Twice, three times, appears on google when he searches for her name... maybe she'll need a new employer...

So Sarah can either throw away her Linux expertise, and go work on BSD for way less money, or live in fear of Linus. Personally, I don't like living in fear. But presumably, she likes renting a house for her kids to live in. So there is nothing she can do except wake up in the night, unable to sleep until she checks the mailing list one last time.

I'm sure Linus doesn't care if she cusses at him. His worst case isn't homelessness.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#136

Post by Dylan16807 »

oellegaard wrote: post #18

Ugh, mailing lists. I wonder why so smart people as Linus doesn't invent something thats slightly more comfortable to use. Maybe they just like to be left alone, without interference from mortals.

A mailing list is threaded comments just like HN. Are you criticizing the page style of a particular list viewer or do you find HN equally uncomfortable?

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#137

Post by estebank »

jakobe wrote: post #110
estebank wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wha…

I find verbal abuse in private just as inacceptable as in public.

I don't see that as abuse. I've lived with abusive people. They slowly but surely try to destroy you mentally, not through cussing, but in other ways that might even seem friendly at first.

Being told what you did was moronic is very different to being told you are a moron.

Linus is rude, not abusive. There is a difference.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#138

Post by hahainternet »

pavlov wrote: post #48
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…

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". When has Linus actually worked in an office? Would he really know what it's like? AFAIK, he moved from Finland to USA in 1998 to work at Transmeta. He was already famous at that time, and presumably could dictate his working terms. I recall r…

Why would it matter? He's correct about office environments.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#139

Post by scotty79 »

davidw wrote: post #92
valleyer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be. On one end of the spectrum, we have the inane “compliment sandwich”. On the other, we have Linus saying “your code is shit”. In the middle, we have professional yet effective criticism. Something like, “Sorry, we’re not going to take this code — it’s too half-baked and exposes some serious security vulnerabilities.”

Even "your code is shit" is direct, but directed at the code, not the person. He seems to sometimes take it even farther and call people stupid, which just seems wrong to me. "This code is shit" seems like it'd be even better, as it takes even more of the 'you' out of it.

It's technically different but in practice people react pretty much same way when you tell them they did something stupid and when you tell them they are stupid if it was propmpted by them doing someting stupid.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#140

Post by inopinatus »

dotmanish wrote: post #67
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.

No, it's rather " If you don't like it, fork it. "

For several years I did maintain a private kernel fork for my then-employer.

I was not interested in contributing any of our work (mostly netfilter related) back to the core precisely because I have better things to do with my emotional energy than engage with the aggressively toxic personalities of LKML.

That's one of the joys of open source, of course, doing your own thing.

In contrast I had a much better experience contributing to Postfix and Dovecot, where the benevolent dictators did not feel the urge to spew pages of vitriol in response to a blunder when a neutrally worded admonishment would do.

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