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Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

where.coraline.codes

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Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#471
post #449

Back in 2006 I read that people don't understand the intended tone in emails. I'm assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the reasons I have devalued email and comments. The key quote: "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think th…

I have started to use emojis almost excessively in situations where there is risk of misinterpretation due to my terseness. It comes across a bit unprofessional, but I prefer that over being considered rude or lacking empathy. I believe the latter impression is harder to recover from.

So your basically adding a laugh track to an email? I think japanese/korean tv do something similar, where they show people's faces in a corner reacting to whatever is on screen so the audience is encouraged towards a certain reaction.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#472
post #449

Back in 2006 I read that people don't understand the intended tone in emails. I'm assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the reasons I have devalued email and comments. The key quote: "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think th…

I have started to use emojis almost excessively in situations where there is risk of misinterpretation due to my terseness. It comes across a bit unprofessional, but I prefer that over being considered rude or lacking empathy. I believe the latter impression is harder to recover from.

Careful with that, you might just add more confusion! https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m...

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your definitely is not actually the definition of objectivity, though it is one way to be relatively confident that you are being objective, so I won't argue the semantics too much.

All of these can be objectively measured to a degree if you actually care to take the time:

* Logical ordering of thought: identify and diagram the main ideas in the text. Identify transitions in the text. Identify explicitly named connections between pieces. Multiple people can do this and expect to have a high degree of similarly in their results.

* Separation of components: similarly identify and diagram the components they list by name, the relationships the identify by name, the responsibilities they identify by name.

* Technical vocabulary: list all of the technical terms. Compare their usage against a dictionary.

* Ability to code: run their code. Does it complete and produce the expected output? This is absolutely objective. You can add further constraints and retain absolute objectivity: does it complete within a certain time, stay within a certain memory budget, stay within a certain cyclomatic complexity threshold, have a certain percentage of test coverage, etc.

* Familiarity with data structures and algorithms common to the problem domain: list the major constraints of the problem domain, list the data structures according to feature which addresses the constraints, similarly list algorithms. Compare to the candidate's answers. How many of the major concerns did they address? How many of the applicable data structures/algorithms did they know? Did they volunteer anything new and were they able to explain how it addressed the problem constraints?

* Understanding of the cross-cutting concerns. This could almost be a checklist. I would make it a little more involved. As a mentioned, Q&A, see what solutions they present, but to have a quantifiable metric we can identify major components and identify the major concerns each of those addresses, see how many the candidate reached, give bonus points for value concerns they addressed that we didn't.

I'm sure if I spent more time I could expand both of these lists.

I will concede that this is still subjective in many ways, especially in the interviewers choices of what is "correct" ( what are the problem constraints, etc.) and what parts of the answers after important.

In that regard I will concede to you that there is an ultimately subjective nature to most of this, because deciding what is valuable has an element of subjectivity, but that is going to be true of pretty much any pursuit outside of pure mathematics (and I'm not convinced we have entirely objective values there either). However, once we have decided what we value it's possible to eliminate a lot of the subjectivity from measuring it. In most interview processes it's not a lack of ability to be objective, it's a lack of concern about being objective.

And actually, I'm not too bothered by that. A healthy meritocracy does not require absolute objectivity. What it requires is an explicit statement of what the values are and a transparent means of evaluating people against those values, and but according to any other values. The values can be subjective. The evaluation can be subjective. As long as the values are known and the evaluation process is transparent it can function as intended. Even better, by clearly communicating the values of the system you send a strong signal to others so the can determine if your organization is something they want to be a part of.

Objectivity is a good tool to help maintain that transparency. But I'm not worried so much about the subjectivity of it as I am hidden values and opaque evaluations tied to things that should be irrelevant according to the stated values.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Github is engaging in risky behaviour by reaching out to individuals (specifically activists) for hire explicitly on the basis of "diversity" and trying to incorporate those individuals in a highly merit-based environment. This is the main issue right there. If anyone is reading this and wants to have a lot of HR/PR related problems in his/her company - start doing this and problems will pile up.

The reasoning behind that is (probably) that unless they hire for diversity, it will remain a highly merit-based environment. Have to start somewhere.

So diversity isn't its own merit?!

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#475
post #403

How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities censured for not trying to conform to the model of a de…

This. Exactly this. And half the comments I've read in this thread just add weight to the idea that the tech world is ruled by bigots who don't even know they're bigots. I see the words "Devil's Advocate" come up a lot when the person in question is not an average white man. I'm a straight white man, and some people in here make me really hate straight white men.

> I'm a straight white man, and some people in here make me really hate straight white men.

But I'm guessing you don't include yourself in this hatred? You are one of the special, enlightened few..

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#476
post #392

The main thing I've taken away from the whole github situation is that, as a tech company, you should just entirely stay away from public involvement in the social justice sphere. That doesn't mean exclusively hiring white men and sending out Kalanick-style emails; it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. My employer does a good job of thi…

> it means keeping your work environment as professional and politically neutral as possible unless absolutely necessary. This sounds good, but I think to some people in tech "professional" and "political neutral" are contradictory goals. And your company has to choose which to take. For example a professional workplace might say "You can't display photos of scantily clad women in the office" or "We're not hiring (fe…

Those things aren't really non "politically neutral", they bring risks of lawsuits.

being politically neutral means not being active on an issue when there are no laws to follow, and otherwise taking no stated stance on topics, other than to cite legislative rules.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#477
post #403

How would HN be reacting if this were written by and about a man? There are a lot of gender expectations that punish assertive and matter of fact women as 'bitchy' and 'insensitive'. If a white guy behaves the same way no one thinks twice about it. To me it sounds like management at Github is uncomfortable with her perspectives. We often see women and minorities censured for not trying to conform to the model of a de…

This. Exactly this. And half the comments I've read in this thread just add weight to the idea that the tech world is ruled by bigots who don't even know they're bigots. I see the words "Devil's Advocate" come up a lot when the person in question is not an average white man. I'm a straight white man, and some people in here make me really hate straight white men.

Well then I have news for you, you might be a bigot.

If bigot means: a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#478

Back in 2006 I read that people don't understand the intended tone in emails. I'm assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the reasons I have devalued email and comments. The key quote: "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think th…

Personally, I prefer text communication to calls (and asynchronous to synchronous) to such an extent that such a policy would just result in me not contacting people for simple things.

I know I'm probably rehashing an argument many here have had before, but consider: With text, the whole of your message is visible at once, for rereading. You can include links or files, and the recipient doesn't have to take any notes or do anything special to make this communication archived and searchable. With voice, you need to set aside a specific time to make the call, and the other person needs to drop whatever they're doing to accept it. And, unless you can find some special nook to do it, everyone around you is both subtly bothered by having to listen to you, and able to eavesdrop on your conversation.

The stated reason doesn't seem to hold up either--having one initial voice conversation won't help with any tone conveyance problems down the line. Unless it is used to convince you that the other person is indeed a person, and you shift your default assumption of what their tone might be (which is itself a worrying tribalistic bias, but separate). This, however, could backfire. What if your voice or in-person conversation with the person reveals some personal detail of theirs that makes you dislike them (such as an annoying voice, or personal style, or hygiene, or, more seriously, race or gender)? You'd then be less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in future text conversations.

Finally, I know I'm in the minority in this, but I don't get any extra benefit out of voice communications myself anyway. I'm oversimplifying somewhat, but I could say that all non-yelling "tone" is basically indistinguishable to me. Instead, voice communications often end up being a way for the more extroverted speaker to dominate a conversation through sheer force of will. My current boss does this all the time--his writing style is pretty scattered, but, whenever we Skype with someone, he'll rhapsodize at length about his abstract ideas about the current project before some of the other speakers are able to get anything in. I don't mean to be too harsh on him, because, one-on-one, his ideas and direction are often useful, but in these Skype conversations, it often turns out that it's the others' more focused additions that end up being the real product of the meeting, and his only contribution is some high-minded, well, tone-setting.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#479

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…

I've seen a PIP work out exactly once.

It was a revenge and scape goat PIP. An employee was leaving a team, so they decided to pin all the disasters of the preceding 6 months on him.

Of course they didn't raise the issue until after he had joined my team, but it was performance review time, and he'd been on their team for almost all of the review period, so they got to declare him "unsatisfactory" and force me to do the PIP process with him.

But he really was a good performer, and our team had worked with him before and knew the whole thing was bullshit, so he quite appropriately sailed through the PIP, and that allowed us to draw a line and say "it has been dealt with, the problem is resolved and whatever took place in that team has no relevance to his performance here".

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#480
post #449

Back in 2006 I read that people don't understand the intended tone in emails. I'm assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the reasons I have devalued email and comments. The key quote: "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think th…

I have started to use emojis almost excessively in situations where there is risk of misinterpretation due to my terseness. It comes across a bit unprofessional, but I prefer that over being considered rude or lacking empathy. I believe the latter impression is harder to recover from.

I do the same thing. I wouldn't do it in early interactions with someone or with customers, but with colleagues and friends in conversations I often think that terse factual statements can be mis-interpreted, and I'd rather be thought of as unprofessional/frivilous rather than rude.

Also re-reading e-mails whilst mentally putting myself in the shoes of the recipient to see if I think it could be mis-intepreted helps avoid potential issues, I find.

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