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Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

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Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#841
post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obv…

You're in the minority but you're not the only one. You can see the sentiment expressed about Rust community a lot. Super nice - don't ever say anything that may upset someone - kind of atmosphere is off-putting to many. I for one wouldn't want to work in such environment but I would love to work with Linus. The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and…

Your explanation of it relating to emotional maturity doesn't really resonate with me.

I prefer direct, but polite, communication. I've not taken any sort of test to measure my "emotional maturity" but if my career has been any sort of measure I'm reasonably emotionally mature (more years spent in leadership than not, plenty of folks following me from one organization to the next).

My take: I think a lot of this is a cultural thing, particularly relating to showing respect. You either grow up in that sort of culture, or you don't. Or otherwise, you lack the emotional EQ to pick-up up the commonly accepted cultural mores. How do I know this? Share some of your exciting exchanges with friends and family and see how they react.

When I share what I consider to be some of the more abrasive experiences with folks that I grew up (or are otherwise friends outside of the industry) they're always curious how it doesn't come to fisticuffs. We just never talked to one another that way. Where I grew up, it's fucking rude to talk to one another the way Linus and others like him do. Give respect, get respect.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#842

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

>Anecdotally, one of the most effective engineers I worked with, who asked penetrating questions during code and design reviews, did come off as a bit of an asshole at times. How do you see the view that you are/were mixing his questions as an attack on you yourself (or against someone else) unnecessarily ("Does he not trust me?", "I know how these things work"), perhaps subconsciously. It is what I've experienced a…

Exactly. It's a cultural thing.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. It creates a vicious cycle of absurdity - the one where people appease the anger to try and achieve some good not realizing how much the bad influences the culture of the movement/organization/group. No one is perfect, but the community for far to long treated an imperfect man…

> Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. I have. The problem was not so much the things he wrote in public but what he said (that couldn't be documented) or probably told the bosses (which also could not be documented.) He was a (mostly) well mannered and soft spoken guy esp. compared to the image of Linus, but he m…

I think he's like that in maillists and not in person as are many real life geeks/keyboard warriors?

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn’t some function we can feed a different argument here to value agreeableness more highly though. I generally agree, but that more collaboration would be good isn’t so much the question - the question is HOW these tweaks can be done.

I think getting more women into positions of power will be a start. Testosterone really does affect aggression.

I wish people would stop spreading this myth and actually follow current science when calling out biological difference between women and men. Testosterone does not cause or create aggression. The link between testosterone has the same root as the link between emotional instability and estrogens, which is deeply seated into gender roles and gender discrimination.

Consistently when people look at aggression the same findings pops up. Men more likely to engage physical aggression, women are more likely to engage low-risk aggression, and women and men show to be equally likely to engage in verbal aggression. Unless Linus goes around and are physical violent with fellow developers then his gender has nothing to do with it.

Take a look at this nice lecture from a professor of biology, neurology and neurological sciences (https://youtu.be/2bnSY4L3V8s?t=30m17s). Recent studies into testosterone levels has shown that it has no relation to initiating aggression in both men and women. What it did find is that different level of testosterone impact how much of an defense behavior is triggered in response to social status threats. An interesting fact is that higher level of testosterone in women actually have a bigger impact compared to men, but men on average showed a larger response.

That might sound like aggression but here is the deal. If you create a social structure which rewards cooperation and social status is maintained through non-aggressive behavior then testosterone is correlated to lower aggression. That mean that it should tell you a lot about the community or company if testosterone correlate to aggression.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#845

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

He's not just stubborn, persistent, and unyielding: he's performatively so. In his most notorious attacks, he's clearly playing to an audience. That could be the problem. He clearly can separate the blunt stubbornness ("we do not break userland, period") from the performative rudeness ("SHUT THE FUCK UP MAURO"). (I mean, to be clear: what the fuck do I know? I've never been in the position Linus is in.)

Have you been in the position to receive criticism from Linus?

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#846
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice theory, but the reality is that those rules tend to get enforced differently for different people, so it fails to entirely stamp out problem behavior. Shit runs downhill. Whomever is at the top is the DNA for how things actually work. To me, the good news is Torvalds is taking some time to figure himself out. That is likely to make a major difference. Few people bother to really deal with the man in the m…

Of course, but it's a start and a symbolic gesture.

> Of course, but it's a start and a symbolic gesture.

In Germany, they say: "'Gut' ist das Gegenteil von 'gut gemeint'" ("'Good' is the opposite of 'well-intentioned'"; I am aware that the pun does not translate well into English).

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#847
post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obv…

> If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! ...but that can be done politely, or not(†). In my experience, being polite doesn't add a high cost to calling someone out, makes the person being called out less upset on average, and generally improves the quality of ensuing answers/discourse (because those involved aren't burning emotional energy on pushi…

The cost of excessive politeness can be that the person doesn't get the message. I've seen people waste hours on the wrong problem because the person giving feedback was overly polite, and also things just reach an impasse with no progress made because everyone's being too polite to point out the elephant in the room.

I think a better word is "respectful." You can be direct and blunt, as long as you're respectful.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twenty years is pleanty of time to realise the impact of behaviour. I've seen his noteable rants posted here and on Reddit for years. There no way he didn't know. I think he has known about his behavior for a long time, and someone with influence has explained the impact .

When you are doing something no one else has done before, it can be very challenging to figure out which pieces of what you do are essential secret sauce and which could stand to be improved. I changed my HN handle from Mz to this one after more than 8 years and only after hitting the leaderboard. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard. It genuinely took me that long to conclude that…

> When you are doing something no one else has done before

Leading people?

Fair enough, he ceated something remarkable, but at the end of the day people have been leading others for literally millennia. So I'm not willing to cut him slack on that account.

(Having said that, I'm deeply impressed by the step he took in that email, and did it publicly)

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#850
> Maybe I can get an email filter in place so at when I send email with curse-words, they just won't go out. Because hey, I'm a big believer in tools, and at least _some_ problems going forward might be improved with simple automation.

Linus dealing with his behavior as an engineering problem. Genius.

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