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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#281

Post by wutbrodo »

Shank wrote: post #144
pc86 wrote: post #80

I am really torn on this one. I want to discuss the article because I think it brings up interesting topics, and for the most part HN folks are good at discussing polarizing things like this without devolving into Reddit-style nonsense. On the other hand, I want to flag it, because the article itself is absolute garbage. EDIT: I see now it is flagged. To be clear, I didn't, because I still think it's worth discussing…

Programmers aren't really well known for their inherent skill in writing. It seems like the content, rather than the delivery, is the more important thing here.

I don't think the complaint was stylistic in nature (though I may be mistaken...?). Other than GitHub's puzzlingly callous reaction to her medical emergency, the entire thing reads like a narcissist blaming everyone else for every imagined slight and excusing herself for far worse. It's the Fundamental Attribution Error in article form.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#282

Post by microtherion »

wutbrodo wrote: post #280
microtherion wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear appeals to "meritocracy", I'm reminded of this anecdote ( http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/09/republicans-to-the-ma... ): I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration. The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Q…

I'm sorry, but this is just stupid. You can take literally anyone who hypocritically asserts a belief in an ideal and use it to huffily dismiss the concept overall. And you can find such a person for literally any ideal. For example, I could say: whenever I think of anti-racism, I think of [insert quote about someone who claims to be anti-racist and then says/does something racist]. Does that say anything about the c…

I assume you would agree with me, though, that it makes little sense in the present discussion to talk about "meritocracy" without taking into account how Github implemented the concept.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#283

Post by jmcgough »

sethrin wrote: post #6

Am I reading this correctly? Fired for lack of empathetic communication? Is that really a thing?

Not saying it's true in this case, but I think that's typically code for "people think you're a jerk". It can really bring down team productivity to have a toxic coworker, especially if management isn't willing to fire them.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#284

Post by yargel »

pc86 wrote: post #80

I am really torn on this one. I want to discuss the article because I think it brings up interesting topics, and for the most part HN folks are good at discussing polarizing things like this without devolving into Reddit-style nonsense. On the other hand, I want to flag it, because the article itself is absolute garbage. EDIT: I see now it is flagged. To be clear, I didn't, because I still think it's worth discussing…

How can it both be absolute garbage and bring up interesting topics? Those seem kind of mutually exclusive.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#285

Post by thaumasiotes »

jdbernard wrote: post #279
s73ver wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then define "Best". The problem is, you can't come up with an objective metric for it.

I can't create a comprehensive definition for it, but I can identify many components that are objective and purely technical in nature: * Able to clearly communicate technical concepts. Evidenced by seeing displaying in wiring logical ordering of thought, separation of complex pieces into smaller, less complicated, and clearly delineated pieces, effective and actuate command of technical vocabulary. * Able to code. E…

None of your examples are objective. An objective result is one where when you measure it, and somebody else measures it, the two of you agree.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#286

Post by mathattack »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #47

If you're ever put on a PIP, get out -- it's a sign someone in the company doesn't want you there. I've never heard of a PIP working out and both the company and employee being happy -- maybe you only hear about the bad cases, but a PIP often seems to me like a cover your ass plan on the part of the company. They want to get rid of a person, but they're afraid of getting sued, so a PIP is a way to document why a pers…

My success rate with giving Pips has been 40-50%. Sometimes people just don't understand they're not performing until it's forced on them. Sometimes they can react.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#287

Post by nostrademons »

Jare wrote: post #244
tptacek wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough! You've forgotten more about managing devs than I ever plan to know. Just don't be surprised that there's a pretty big chunk of the profession that will make this assumption about PIPs.

I imagine most seasoned professionals placed on a PIP will probably already have a reasonable guess if it's a BS posture or honest attempt to fix a problem. If not from the get go, definitely by the first 1:1. I guess, it doesn't really matter what the company calls this process or how it's presented, only how it is conducted. If you even mildly agree with the reasons presented for it, and you get positive feedback s…

I would imagine that most seasoned professionals who can tell this don't put themselves in a position where they are likely to get PIPed in the first place. If it's a culture fit problem, they remove themselves from consideration at organizations that don't share their values. If it's a skill problem, they work like hell to correct the problem before their manager notices.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#288

Post by ubernostrum »

the_watcher wrote: post #271
ubernostrum wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're curious, consider doing research on the subject rather than asking people to re-litigate the whole thing from first principles every time the topic comes up. It gets exhausting because most people operate from a position of "a belief that there is no significant bias/significant effect from bias is the correct default assumption unless/until someone demonstrates otherwise through overwhelming evidence". And…

The post asked for sources. Presumably to facilitate research. The post did not ask anyone to relitigate anything.

The thing is, at this point saying that there's discrimination and systemic bias should be about as controversial as saying that the earth orbits the sun. It's not something that should be responded to with a demand for sources, and the fact that it always is, and always devolves into people trying to shift the argument to whether there's even a problem at all (regardless of any one individual's reason for starting such a conversation, that's where the conversation inevitably ends up), is just ludicrous.

People who are unaware of the existence of the problem can use a search engine and read up on it.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#289

Post by mc32 »

That sucks.

When you get off on the wrong foot, there is very little you can do to correct it, beside changing teams. Once a manager thinks they know something about your performance, or perceived lack, it's hard to counter that. No matter what --colleagues, clients, other managers, etc. I've seen this play out a couple of times.

There is no stopping the snowball.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#290

Post by nostrademons »

Shank wrote: post #211
pyre wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact, for example, she dismisses PRs or code reviews because made by > white males. Or the blog post on her first deliverable, rewritten by a > white male. I really feel like you are injecting your own issues into this. For example, here is an excerpt that you're referring to: > However, it soon became apparent that this promising start would not last > for long. For my first few pull requests, I was getting fe…

> I've never worked anywhere that I felt the need to start critiquing the code of people from other teams who were working on systems that I might not even have experience with. This is probably a side effect of how GitHub evolved. Watching some of their earlier talks and comparing that with how they function now, the introduction of managers was a recent addition. It probably didn't change how past engineers operate…

It was common in early Google as well...I knew someone fairly high up that used to leave drive-by code reviews for people on other teams. It wasn't done much by the time I joined in 2009, and became explicitly taboo by 2010 or so.

I think it's actually because when you're in a young fast-growing company, the success of the company is literally everyone's responsibility. You have both the means (because the company hasn't yet ossified into management structures and the codebase is small enough that most people can be familiar with all of it) and the incentive (because a large portion of your compensation is in stock options that are only worth something if you succeed) to materially affect the company's prospects. And many people who join in that environment don't get the memo about when it becomes inappropriate for a new, larger structure.

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