Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#521

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

thehardsphere wrote: post #520

ubernostrum wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712546

I did. I don't think it's constructive to tell people to google it in that case either.

OK.

I can tell you right now, though, the people who will keep demanding sources and want to re-litigate even the existence of discrimination/bias, in every single thread which mentions the topic, will not be convinced by providing them walls of links and sources. They've already made up their minds, and the only thing they'd do in response is exactly what I said: nitpicks and non sequiturs and "well, I don't find that convincing..." and so what's the point? If someone is genuinely and truly unaware, they can use Google. If someone just wants to try to discredit a basic established fact about the world, it's not my job to coddle them or make them feel good about it or "engage" with them or make them feel that they were properly listened to and had their concerns addressed, any more than it would be my job to do that for someone who denies evolution.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#522

Post by foobiekr » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 7:21 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #321

foobiekr wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager and employee this has also been my experience. it was even raised that effectively no employee survives a PIP due to the deliberate treatment of compensation (such as bonuses, which are immediately zeroed out) in the mandatory manager training by people who had been managers for 12, 15 years, much to the chagrin of the presenter from HR. In the company I work for now, we genuinely try and recover people…

How does it work at your company? IMO anything with deadlines and paperwork is a PIP in disguise (thus, hostile and relationship-poisoning). Much less than that can easily end up being little more than saying "do better," so I'm interested in how your company walks that narrow line.

We have a management structure that allows us to do both peer guidance and detailed project tracking which can help people avoid falling off the rails.

Our problem has never been a deliberately underperforming employee though - all of our issues to date have been people who start doing light slacking or who are too easily distracted/focus on the wrong things. Careful hiring and luck.

I have personally managed a serious problem employee who basically did not want to work and put a great deal of effort into actively avoiding work (writing long soliloquies in "documentation" instead of writing code or meaningful and appropriate docs); that was decidedly unpleasant and exacerbated by the (very large) company in question basically protecting certain classes of employees but refusing to add a resource. In the end it came down to me doing half of his job for him.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#523

Post by elptacek » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

Jare wrote: post #409

nostrademons wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes there are honestly mismatched expectations or understanding of how performance is measured and evaluated. Other times, people assume new roles, and some aspects of the new role are not prioritized correctly or just not working out. I have witnessed some such cases, and personally managed one. Working like hell does not help if the effort is expended in the wrong place. That's where the first 1:1 will be a c…

Any measure like a PIP is an attempt to reinforce a political/power structure. Where "mismatched expectations" indicate that it is not clear whether the behavior of the employee or the manager -- specifically, whichever manager has some part in that employee's success within the organization -- is the larger contributor to the failure to meet expectations. Most organizations are notorious for a systemic inability to distinguish one from the other, defaulting to laying the onus on the employee. So "working like hell" ends up as "effort expended in the wrong place." On the part of both parties. An "honest PIP" would be one where the intention is perceived as good, even though the need for a formal process is the result of some other weakness or failure where the net result is a less robust relationship, overall.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#524

Post by leosarev » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 7:31 PM UTC

mvindahl wrote: post #458

kybernetikos wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you want the best people, at least in principle? Maybe not. In many situations you want the best team, and the best team is not necessarily the team that has the most top flight individual contributors. The best teams I've been on seem stronger than the sum of their individual members, and I've definitely been on teams I rate less highly that had some very strong individual contributors. Along these lines, I…

The best person form the job is the person who will make the team perform at its best. Which in IT would probably mean a technically savvy, creative person with good social skills and some domain knowledge. Those would be the merits upon which to build our meritocracy. So you can be a productive coder or a good presenter or whatever but by themselves, these are incomplete metrics. If you happen to also be an a*hole,…

Couple of professors discussing what applicants should they accept into musical school.

Jew professor: let's take 9 Jews and 1 Russians

Conservative professor: let's take 9 Russians and 1 Jew

Liberal professor: let'ts take 5 Jews and 5 Russians

Eldest professor: you are all bloody nationalists! Let's take 10 best musucians!

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#525

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 7:37 PM UTC

problems wrote: post #493

Jare wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so apparently my attempt to offer an alternative pov for people who I believed did not grasp the original, is getting me some downvotes. Let me just link to what she has said about meritocracy in the context of her Code of Conduct: http://contributor-covenant.org/ "Marginalized people also suffer some of the unintended consequences of dogmatic insistence on meritocratic principles of governance. Studies have shown…

But what's her alternative proposal - that we say, accept pull requests from someone because of their race or sex without critiquing at all? Based on the way she responded to some stuff in this job... maybe that's actually what she wants, but it's not what I want and it sounds like a terrible idea in general. Meritocracy is still the best we have. It may be flawed, yes, but there exists no superior alternative. It's…

Being a "meritocracy" doesn't mean that you have to reject pull reqests until the author gets it perfect. For someone who's new, you can instead have someone with more experience with the project fix it up as an example, and for the second give some advice but fix it up for the author if the author seems stuck, and for the next one, ...

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#526

Post by thehardsphere » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #521

thehardsphere wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. I don't think it's constructive to tell people to google it in that case either.

OK. I can tell you right now, though, the people who will keep demanding sources and want to re-litigate even the existence of discrimination/bias, in every single thread which mentions the topic, will not be convinced by providing them walls of links and sources. They've already made up their minds, and the only thing they'd do in response is exactly what I said: nitpicks and non sequiturs and "well, I don't find th…

Right, it's not your job to do anything. It is perfectly valid for you to feel frustrated in exactly that way.

All I am saying, is that their are third parties who you are not interacting with, who could be persuadeable, who will read that frustration and are going to find it alienating rather than persuasive, and therefore you end up creating more people in the world who think there is no real problem.

It may be more constructive to simply disengage if you feel that exasperated by it. Both for persuading other people and for your own sanity. That's all I am saying.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#527

Post by gxespino » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:45 PM UTC

StrangeOrange wrote: post #431

gxespino wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why thank you for that clarification! I'm quite busy but can definitely submit a PR within the next few days. Feel free to do it first and I'll take a look, though. :)

Have you guys ever heard of Victorian England? Because that's where you're headed with this kind of language. I can't wait until we all start wearing thick, black, woollen coats in the summertime...

Idk. Every time I've wanted something done, this sort of language usually resulted in better outcomes as opposed to being direct, especially when communicating with someone I don't know very well, or a superior.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#528

Post by kaonashi » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 8:54 PM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #423

problems wrote: post #12

Isn't this the person who ran a code of conduct that has a website which includes things like "thoughtless use of pronouns" and mentions meritocracy as an evil, not a goal to strive for? Can't really say I'm expecting someone like that to be low friction.

Quoting from an article by her on meritocracy[1]: > In the Ruby world, we insist that “Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice,” ignoring the sexist statements he has made with regard to diversity outreach efforts. We write off Linus Torvalds’ dismissal of diversity as an “unimportant detail” and justify it based on the utility of his creations. But why is it that we can proudly refuse to use software created by corporations…

I don't think it's about labeling people as being good or bad, but more about not letting things stand.

If you encounter attitudes from people that are hostile towards you, you can either speak up and allow them to correct themselves (or double-down) or be silent and give your tacit approval.

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#529

Post by jubalfh » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

ninjaboy2 wrote: post #503

garethadams wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article starts by complaining about "drive-by issue comments", then described opening what might be considered a drive-by issue. That could be construed as contradictory. The article is reasonably clear that "drive-by issues" are ones where people leave comments uninvited, and it's also explicit that Caroline was specifically asked to review the survey in question. So it's hard to read that as contradictory.

> Caroline was specifically asked to review the survey in question. Yes and no. From the article: > One day a notification came to me that a repo for the open source developer survey had been created and that the survey questions were in progress. My director followed up with me to make sure that I was aware of the survey and asked me to review the questions. I worked my way through, and stopped short at one particul…

oh for fuck's sake, these were factual corrections

Re: Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub

#530

Post by jubalfh » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #401

romanovcode wrote: post #400

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.

Pray explain.