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Comment by Zhyl | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Tech people the world over need to remember the person. I don't even mean in a slightly soppy 'everyone is a real person with real feelings' way. I mean that in a practical sense you really hit productivity if you're rude. Simple exchanges or corrections become arguments because one party was acerbic or inflammatory which caused the second party to be defensive. The discussion gets derailed, the point gets lost. Nobody learns. The project deviates.

Social skills and emotional intelligence aren't fluff that smart people don't have to deal with. If you want to make great software and create great organisations you have to treat people with professionalism and respect.

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I don't treat people the same way, but I appreciate the blunt honesty. If we're having a few drinks as friends and you tell me that I'm an idiot, of course I will take that personally; however, tell me that as a developer and I'm motivated.

So far as that goes, my mind works the same as Linus. I err on the side of praise, which makes me different - although my lack of praise for some individuals probably speaks as loud as Linus' vitriol. Your ability is not a reflection of your character, i.e. "you are not your code."

I have no interest in maintaining Linux, maybe I would 20 years prior to now when choices were generally more than "drivers." That being said, Linus would make an excellent mentor for those who can separate their code and themselves.

He is an artisan, in the most classical sense. Every one of his maintainers is an apprentice. It's an incredibly unpopular perspective to have - but the epitome of professional decorum is to attack a person's work without attacking their life.

Smart people are able to discern the difference between their work (which is fallible) and themselves (which is infallible). I am a great developer, but the fact that even better ones exist is inspiring and I'd hope they would tell me what I'm doing wrong.

My assignment for the next N sprints is to clue up employees on debugging prod. I will destroy that assignment but, hell, I would prefer to work with people who cared enough to research it themselves; as I did.

> but I appreciate the blunt honesty.

There is a difference between blunt honesty and being rude. Honesty is pointing out that you're not pulling your weight, or how you did something was incorrect and not up to the teams standards. Rude is calling you names or otherwise insulting you. The insults also often lack any reference to the issue. Telling someone they are an idiot does nothing for that person or the team.

What are some examples of him insulting people (as opposed to their work/code)?

We’ll be here all day. He would associate the code to the person, which goes against the “I am not my code.” that many adhere to. Linus is stepping up and finally owning up to his behavior. We owe him a lot so we gave him a pass before. Now we won’t hopefully need to anymore.

To be fair, he has incredible judgment and we defer to him when it comes to being the road block to merging bad code.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18001144

He doesn't seem to hesitate to get extremely personal.

The more exaggerated the cursing, the more problematic is the subject according to Linus. Linus' over the top cursing is a means to transmit his evaluation of how problematic some code is. It's never personal.

Show me an instance where his cursing is not related to kernel code.

>Show me an instance where his cursing is not related to kernel code.

I think I and many others are reading your statement as:

"Hey, as long as the person wrote horrible code, it's OK to call the coder anything we want".

The whole discussion isn't about how he behaves outside the kernel development. It's about how he behaves within that context.

The key here is not to take the cursing personally. He's cursing the code not the coder. He don't hate specific persons. He can curse you on one not-so-good patch and praise you on another. The anger it's not directed at the person.

>He's cursing the code not the coder.

That's objectively not true. He may intend to curse the code, but he is clearly cursing the coder.

He didn't mean to direct it at a person, but he used a language that everybody would understand as statement directed at a person. And he is apologizing for the fact that he didn't realize that.

How does saying someone writing that code should die as a baby attacking the code?

don't spin it.

He wrote:

>I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F*CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted

"retroactively aborted" is a dark joke, if you have a sense of humor, and conveys how bad a decision Linus think is to make a system call to read each byte.

saying "should die as a baby" is a spin. To be precise is important.

> however, tell me that as a developer and I'm motivated.

I'm not sure why it would be any different. Just because I make a mistake (sometimes leading to a chain of mistakes) doesn't solely make me an idiot.

I'm not empathetic and have poor EI (medical reason) and have concluded similarly that being rude as a general rule is unproductive. First, I don't want to be on the receiving end of it myself(!), but nor do I want the time sinks of drama, a mutiny, or a revenge attack. Being thoughtful about your words seems to be a good idea for anyone, whether they're emotionally intelligent or not :-)

I've worked with assholes, that think they are god's gift and really they are just hampering the business goals of the company and don't realise it. They were constantly like a petulant 5 year olds during a tantrum, and I don't work with people like that. I quit such jobs. Done that 3 times now, first time took me 6 months, second time 3 months, last time 18 hours. Note - this is not rage quitting - they were a reasoned decision based on the likelihood of being about to resolve the problem through negotiation, and comparing that to opportunity cost. Fuck it life is too short.

Similarly would I contribute to an Free/OS project with such people for free? Hell no.

..and if productivity was better from disrespecting people, then that would be the way to go?

Well...That seems to be the actual case. Our current system seems to not to respect people, or the planet (or other animals besides humans.) It seems to respect money, 'productivity', 'efficiency' and 'growth'.

This is a non sequitur unless you have a hidden assumption along the lines of "We currently have the best of all possible systems."

Sorry, I don't know what you mean. I was trying to say something about my feeling that having a policy of respecting people because it's good for productivity seems obscene to me. Once you are thinking that way, whether you decided it's good for productivity or not, you no longer respect people, it seems to me. That is often called "losing your soul".

Just to clarify, I'm definitely not trying to suggest that this is the only reason you should be respectful. This is more a message about people within tech, who are numerous, that get frustrated with working with other people due to actual or perceived incompetence. The parent comment mentioned the 'it's ok to be an asshole if you're right' myth, which is particularly prominent in software projects or in tech related discussions. I would deduce that the only reason that smart, capable people do not invest the time or the energy into moderating their tone and choosing their words is because they don't see value in it. My point is that there is empirical value in it even if you're purely seeing it as a means to an ends.

Absolutely the rest of us who are just nice and pleasant as part of our day to day should continue to do so, we just need to remember that their isn't really a justification for ad hominem attacks as part of professional discourse.

Thank you! :-) Eloquently put.

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