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Apology

felleisen.org

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Re: Apology

#201

Post by RobertKerans »

wolverine876 wrote: post #182
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. It's an issue of power. If they didn't have power, nobody would say that. If a student behaved that way toward Felleisen, certainly nobody would say that to Felleisen. Power corrupts.

Or it reveals?

Re: Apology

#202

Post by WalterBright »

tluyben2 wrote: post #193
aidenn0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an incompatibility here between the set of people who act like Felleisen and the set of people who react like Butterick. There is inevitably a message from the community to one side of "change or leave." Whether explicit from action or implicit from inaction. There is both a pragmatic and a moral side to the decission. From the pragmatic point of view, a brilliant asshole might be worth more than the sum of…

I used to think very much like WalterBright as I never took offense (was raised to just listen to what people try to say, not how they say it) (and if someone goes physical (some people, when they cannot hurt you with words, start shoving you etc) I punch them in the face). But that way, usually, the bully just moves to someone else and, even though I am untouched, the person did not change. So now that I am older, I…

Nobody here is excusing bullies.

Re: Apology

#203

Post by ljm »

nerdponx wrote: post #145
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #3

Context: Why I no longer contribute to Racket . https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27531508

Wild. Where were the other people in the room? This sounds like shared (ir)responsibility beyond the individual with the bad attitude.

This was my take on it. It could be that literally everyone on the leadership team was terrified into conformity, but I find that hard to believe, and that instead it was more of an inner-sanctum that held some admiration for the leader who let them in.

Re: Apology

#204

Post by _pmf_ »

slibhb wrote: post #139
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

I think the honest, uncomfortable way of dealing with the Stallman and Felleisen fallout would be to ask "what can be done to offer non neurotypical persons an alternative career path that does not involve creating a living hell for other people by becoming managers" (saying this as someone who probably is in this category as well).

As long as there is no non managerial career (which is the case in all of academia), people will have to fake being a manager.

Re: Apology

#205

Post by tluyben2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #202
tluyben2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think very much like WalterBright as I never took offense (was raised to just listen to what people try to say, not how they say it) (and if someone goes physical (some people, when they cannot hurt you with words, start shoving you etc) I punch them in the face). But that way, usually, the bully just moves to someone else and, even though I am untouched, the person did not change. So now that I am older, I…

Nobody here is excusing bullies.

I know you are not, but if you shrug off their bad ways, that will sustain them instead of stop them.

Re: Apology

#206

Post by undecisive »

slibhb wrote: post #139
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

I desperately want to agree with this, but something sticks at the back of my mind:

This is not acceptable behaviour.

The way we define acceptable behaviour changes from circumstance to circumstance. What's acceptable for Steve Jobs isn't acceptable for the guy at the window of McDonald's (either side of that window). That's maybe just the way it is - but it probably isn't right.

But what if everyone around this guy got together and said: There is a minimum behaviour you must conform to. We won't accept you shouting at us, we won't accept you belittling us. If you do it again, we will say "You need to calm down or leave the room please". When you're told that, those will be your only two choices, or everyone else will leave the room. And we may not come back. Because this is not acceptable behaviour.

It no longer becomes a question of training. It becomes a question of priority, of data. He can see that he is hit with this phrase day in day out, and he can understand that his behaviour is toxic. Eventually either people will stop saying it because it isn't working, or they'll stop saying it because he is getting the constant negative reinforcement. If it's the former, at least someone has tried. My worry is that with too many people, the individuals are too scared (or scarred) to try.

I also worry about the concept of "a path around him". If part of your job description is the instruction of students, you need to learn to deal correctly with those students. If good behaviour is not part of your skillset, then you do not have the skillset for the job, and that should have repercussions.

I guess there's an issue with the concept of tenure. But I don't feel like saying "You have the option of entering into this abusive relationship" is the right solution (even if it was that bluntly worded from the outset, which it absolutely should be). And I certainly don't think you should be told "You've tried the abusive narcissist, now that you've suffered you're welcome to escape"

If he truly cannot change, then that is sad for him. It should not be the source of damage for yet more people around him though. And looking at the apology, he clearly hasn't understood the effect he has on the people around him.

Re: Apology

#207

Post by StellaX »

throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

Ha. I had a CTO who was so bad that people literally hung up in the middle of a phone call with him and walked away from his project. With "I will not work with this guy ever again". Or a freelancer who, when renewing his contract put an extra clause in it, stating something like "I officially to refuse to work with this guy". Or he unknowingly blamed another guy for a work somebody else did in the past and he recommended him to leave the company. The later was out of pure malice. Or once in a month or so he went on a psychotic rage against someone. The list is longer.

Only a handful of people are capable of working with him over the years. And even that looks a bit like some weak form of servitude. Nobody really likes him. He's been having just one buddy in the whole company of ~150 people. And even this guy is a bit antisocial, lone standing figure. And the two don't work on the same project.

It's been perfectly clear, this guy has some personality disorder and once a colleague who was interested in psychology told us what it is. Some sort of psychopathy, IIRC.

Re: Apology

#208

Post by pjc50 »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #28
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #3

Context: Why I no longer contribute to Racket . https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27531508

I really think people need to learn to push back, and talk plainly. This could have easily been a blog called "that time Felleisen was being a cunt and I told him to go fuck himself" and been 1/4 the length.

> that time Felleisen was being a cunt and I told him to go fuck himself

.. leading to getting banned from this conference and possibly the wider community?

Re: Apology

#209

Post by dagw »

WalterBright wrote: post #196
dTal wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of this comment? That crying is wimpy and that it's fine to abuse multiple young adults to the point of tears because it's their fault for "taking offense"? We are not talking about whether tears are a sensible and productive response. We are talking about whether it is reasonable to tolerate someone who consistently provokes them. Perhaps both sides need to take some responsibility, but redirecting…

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings. 2. Be forgiving of people who do not mean offense, but are simply inept at the social graces. It's not that hard. You get to choose whether to be offended or not. Choose the not. BTW, sometimes I listen to celebrities when they deal with hecklers trying to get under their skin. It's fun to watch how they parry the verbal knives. I recall Prince Phillip once being…

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

Isn't that a lot like curing depression by saying "why don't you just stop being depressed?" Different people are wired differently and humans are on the whole really bad at consciously controlling their psychological state.

You even said in the previous post that crying and being sad is OK in some situations (like when a loved one died). Why didn't you choose to control your feelings and not be sad then?

Re: Apology

#210

Post by steve_g »

WalterBright wrote: post #196
dTal wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of this comment? That crying is wimpy and that it's fine to abuse multiple young adults to the point of tears because it's their fault for "taking offense"? We are not talking about whether tears are a sensible and productive response. We are talking about whether it is reasonable to tolerate someone who consistently provokes them. Perhaps both sides need to take some responsibility, but redirecting…

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings. 2. Be forgiving of people who do not mean offense, but are simply inept at the social graces. It's not that hard. You get to choose whether to be offended or not. Choose the not. BTW, sometimes I listen to celebrities when they deal with hecklers trying to get under their skin. It's fun to watch how they parry the verbal knives. I recall Prince Phillip once being…

I agree with your rules generally, but they're not workable when there's a big power imbalance between the offender and the offendee. Professors and grad students, in particular, have a massive power imbalance. A grad student's success in their multi-year quest for the degree is heavily dependent on the whims of the professor. The student must care about what the professor thinks. Escaping a tyrannical prof could set back the student's career by years.

I considered graduate education after I got my BS, but the risk of ending up as some professor's dog wasn't worth it to me.

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