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Comment by GW150914 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think it has anything to do with so-called PC or women, it’s just unprofessional behavior and tech has gone from people in a garage to the leaders on the market in that same time. Tech grew up, became a profession, and perforce people involved have had to grow up too. It has literally nothing to do with the usual culture war bullshit that gets paraded around. It’s sort of tragic that some people have so little experience in the real world beyond the tech bubble that they think basic standards of decorum and professionalism are gendered.

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That doesn't sound plausible to me. Tech has been "grown up" in terms of professionalism for a long time. What didn't catch up was emotional intelligence and workplace ethos. What is new is that people aren't going to tolerate Linus ranting at them and their colleagues and cussing them out anymore like in the old days. And I'm sticking to my guns, thinking that a lot of this has to do with a more diverse workplace (and the pressure doesn't have to come from the LKML, but from the larger software engineering ethos).

Linus is a very smart guy, and I'm glad he's accepted that he needs to change. He should be lauded for that.

Tech has been a profession longer than you or I have been alive.

First of all I opened with, tech has gone from people in a garage to the leaders on the market in that same time. The scale has dwarfed essentially everything except finance. Second, when I look around at major professions, I see standards of practice and organizations to enforce them. There is no functional AMA of tech, and it shows in every janky IoT product, dishonest and borderline illegal privacy invasion or growth hack, and MVP that forgot the V. If you want the respect, you need more than just money, you need accountability. In Linus’ case he’s lesrning that in the real world it is (as he said) unprofessional to suggest that a colleague should be aborted.

Imo of course.

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