Linus on "acting professionally" • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#231

Post by vinceguidry » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:06 PM UTC

brk wrote: post #102

sz4kerto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very hypocritical approach I believe. A few years' ago our ex-prime minister said that if you don't like what's going on in the country, you're free to leave. It doesn't work like that.

Not good comparison. A country is essentially a fixed physical plot of land, with people, resources, climate, etc. If you leave a country you have to leave all of those things (and more) behind. Forking code essentially gives you the ability to take everything, and then move it in your own new direction. You leave behind only the parts you thought were "bad" or unprofessional or whatever.

A better comparison is "If you don't like your job, get another one." A few people will be poised to exercise such a strategy, most won't.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#232

Post by mkramlich » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:06 PM UTC

This is a brilliant piece of writing by Linus. Love it. Rarely seen his points expressed that well.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#233

Post by lnanek2 » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:06 PM UTC

professee wrote: post #50

It figures a top voted comment on Hacker News is that Linus is wrong and we should all hold hands and sing camp songs. There are tons of useful discussions that simply don't happen on HN because anybody with an actual strong opinion gets helbanned. For instance Google's Go language is lauded here because of fake politeness, but almost universally dismissed elsewhere. This discussion has already achieved its real goal…

Haha, agreed. I see two "dead" comments above you invisible to most people that are actually very valuable and pointing out that Finland where Linus started is not like America in regards to PC and honesty. I think HN is lessened by banning people who just have different or brutally honest opinions. They should save banning for spammers/trolls/people intentionally disrupting the discussion or lying, etc., but I see people ghosted all the time who are not that.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#234

Post by lucb1e » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:07 PM UTC

rachelbythebay wrote: post #147

I only have one Linus story. Way back in 2007, he was supposed to come and give a talk on git. I had to do an on-site interview with a candidate immediately beforehand, but managed to get it done and got there in time to see the talk start. I had never seen him in person and figured it might be interesting, particularly since I had actually used git on some projects prior to that point. This wound up being recorded,…

I lasted eight minutes watching the video. He just rambles about how screwed everything is and how right he is.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#235

Post by jasallen » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:07 PM UTC

I actually agree with him on the term "professionalism", and I've come out against the term "maturity" for the same reasons.

That said, Linus is a jerk. He says things that are aimed to hurt people. It's one thing to 'not think about it', or to not 'play into the game'. But he goes well beyond that, saying things that are mean and vitriolic. He can get away with it, he's a genius coder, yeah, all true. He's still a jerk.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#236

Post by doctorfoo » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:07 PM UTC

sergiosgc wrote: post #218

doctorfoo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News: Where IQ and intelligence trumps being pleasant. So many tech types are assholes.

Pleasant ≠ profanity free. I identify fully with Linus' stance of profanity bursts followed by no-grudges held. A common professional profanity free, revenge backstabbing, work environment is much much more unpleasant.

I agree with your first statement totally, the difference is I would rate Linus' attitude, separate from his language, as unpleasant and unnecessarily aggressive. I don't like aggression in the workplace (or anywhere.) And I think that links into a comment above regarding women; in general women are less aggressive and so feel less at home in this industry. In general, in my opinion, etc, etc.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#237

Post by claudius » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:07 PM UTC

doctorfoo wrote: post #199

phryk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much profanity? Well butter my ass and call me fucking skittles! So you want to censor everyone who doesn't buy into your flowery child talk? Fuck that. Cursing is a perfectly fine means of setting emphasis and I sure as shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits am not going to surrender that just so some shithead I don't even care about can jack off to his or her little control fantasies. You don't like that? I…

Hacker News: Where IQ and intelligence trumps being pleasant. So many tech types are assholes.

You'd not take intelligence over ‘being pleasant’? I tend to enjoy the company of an intelligent asshole more than that of a ‘pleasant’ idiot any day.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#238

Post by scotty79 » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:08 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #188

scotty79 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>"He gets a free card to be rude and you get a free card to not like him" No, he doesn't. If your boss or your client would talk to you in that tone you would call it verbal abuse. There is no such thing as a jerk free card, you can always be one but that doesn't mean is excusable. "I am yet to see him abusing anyone. Verbal abuse mentioned is just swearing in aggressive tone of voice." This is not the first time tha…

If my boss was rude I'd wait up a bit to see if he'll last longer at his job than I could put up with. I wouldn't like him. I wouldn't do any favors for him. Boss is part of the job. If you don't like that part of the job you'll like the job less. If you like it little enough you overcome your inertia and leave job.

If my client was rude and I wasn't ok with him I'd stop responding to him. That's the beauty of freelancing. You don't have to work for people whoose behavior doesn't suit you.

In my opinion swearing doesn't make you a jerk but jerks don't get free pass. They offend some people and get less respect and cooperation from them. That's the social price. No law necessary.

Abuse at workplace is much wider subject. First thing is that there has to be relation of power. Linus has no power over people who he swears at. They can freely choose to never interact with Linus again at any point in time at no loss to themseves or their loved ones. Heck, they can even take all the stuff Linus did, copy it and work on that instead.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#239

Post by DevX101 » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:08 PM UTC

There is HUGE difference between 'your code sucks' and 'you suck'.

I'd argue the former is more effective at addressing the problem at hand, while hearing the latter from someone you respect can be emotionally devastating for some people.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#240

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Tue, Jul 16, 2013, 1:09 PM UTC

nknighthb wrote: post #80

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ber…

Research shows that you're not typical - most people find it massively demotivating.

There seems to be a thing here with a lot of people saying "I work like this and like it". That's fine but the worst mistake you can make with others is often assuming that everyone else is like you. a lot of management science is bullshit but alongside the nonsense there is actual quantitative research about how people behave and so on.

There is possibly a discussion to be had around whether programmers (or more strictly people with the potential to be good programmers as that's what you want to optimise for, rather than the people who are currently programmers) are typical but as a hypothesis I'd rather go with programmers behave broadly as other people do.