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Comment by klelatti | Hacker News Reader

> To answer your question, the root cause of my decision to leave the core team is a toxic environment in the meetings themselves. The catalyst was a specific meeting last summer: after being insulted and yelled at over WebEx (not for the first time, and not just one core team member), I decided to take a break. I was able to get leadership to eventually discuss the situation with me last Fall, but after avoiding dealing with it, they made excuses, and made it clear they weren't planning to do anything about it. As such, I decided not to return. They reassure me they "want to make sure things are better for others in the future based on what we talked about" though.

Seems incredibly disrespectful.

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Just imagine: if this is how they treat someone with Chris Lattner's reputation, think about how they'll treat a new contributor writing their first new feature proposal. It's not a project I'll ever want to touch.

Indeed, astonishing really.

Seems to me to probably reflect a high degree of insecurity: if you're not secure and feel the need to protect your position I can imagine some people reacting this way if Chris is telling everyone he thinks your idea is a bad one.

I've heard great teams at Apple and toxic teams - maybe more on Software than hardware (see the writeup / postmortem on Aperture which started off great but middle managers under time constraints ruined it/made it toxic).

Not sure if Apple silo-ing off teams lets this perpetuate, but then again, it's not like Google or FB have their own share of toxic groups.

You'd think something like that whole Apple university MBA program would figure out better ways of managing large numbers of people with commensurate egos, but it seems like an unsolved problem.

I don't believe the silo-ing of teams is a problem in itself. If teams are not silo-ed in a company of 150k employees, things will grind to a halt quickly.

Sucks because Apple has hired a lot of really talented developers to work on Swift. I hope they aren't being treated to this kind of toxicity.

>>> not for the first time, and not just one core team member

Playing devil's advocate here, but we should hear the same history from the other side, more so if these "insulting and yelling" happened more than once with different team members.

That's fair. Also presumably Apple's rules mean that we probably won't be hearing the other side.

Yes, true. But also, there are very few situations where what's being called out here is justifiable.

Yes there are situations where it is justified, but we shouldn't draw that conclusion with knowing all sides.

I don't know any details to question legitimacy of the issue, however in my experience I am constantly surprised how many times it is just communication breakdown or gap in what each party perceives.

Also the pandemic has made things more stressful for everyone and outbursts do happen with more frequency perhaps it is easier virtually to shout at some one i suppose.

Torvalds was known for his infamous roasts on LKML, he only goes on a triade when he feels the situation warrants and person should know better. That doesn't make it right , but someone had to really explain it to him before he toned it down recently. I don't think his intent was ever to be toxic or aggressive.

Effectively communicating problems can be hard.

TLDR, life is too short to work with assholes, an attitude I fully endorse. Or maybe he's the asshole, who knows? Either way it works out.

One of the strongest predictorsof work satisfaction is satisfaction with one's coworkers. It beats money and autonomy.

So they wanted him gone, figured out his sensitivities and he fell into the trap. Sad but common if some higher up decides to remove you "voluntarily".

I'd be a bit skeptical of that. Sounds more like a team under stress and lashing out when someone questions the direction they are going.

In any event though not good.

They act like real a### on the forum so can only imagine how things are in private. Chris always came off really humble and down to earth.

link?

I haven't being there for a decent amount of time from my recollection John McCall was always acting really harshly. Was very stark contrast to say how Jose Valim acts on Elixir forum.

My guess would be Ben Cohen, though

I am very far removed from swift community so have 0 insight just shared my recollection of interactions on swift forums

Both. Chris mentioned not just one.

The post under discussion contains a link about "more heat than light".

It's possible for an environment to be objectively toxic without regard to someone's "sensitivities".

Still incredible toxic. Maybe not uncommon but still toxic.

> they wanted him gone, figured out his sensitivities and he fell into the trap

It's also possible that there are people who feel that yelling is an acceptable part of debate.

Misguided people, sure, but they do exist.

Then they should be taught, quick. Once is grounds for an apology, twice is bye-bye land. Who cares about 'objective' toxicity, WTF is wrong with people defending yelling at people.

> people defending yelling at people.

The probability is unusually high that they personally yell at people in collaborative meetings.

Trying not to make assumptions about people here, but yes, probably.

Many have been taught by abusive parents or figures of authority, or whatever shit television, that it's normal. "Some 'light' yelling is to be expected.", "Different styles of management/debate", "whatever works for them, I'm sure everyone does it a bit". What next? Corporal punishment? Like in the old days, when kids really respected their elders - or else - and were taught /right/ and women stayed in their place?

Those people need to be taught that no one, ever, should have yelled or should ever yell at them for being wrong or just disagreeing. It's not OK, it never was, it never is. Parents, friends, teachers, colleagues.

You spend 8 hours a day at work, if it's not a safe place, and you can find another job, GTF away as fast as possible, or have the perpetrators get the hell away, if you have this power.

I'm sorry we even have to say that.

If you're defending people yelling at people, you probably won't be pointing out that they are misguided if they think yelling is acceptable.

However, the claim being made was that this yelling was a trap that was intentionally set to drive Chris out and not just a case of someone who thinks yelling is acceptable behavior.

I was trying to answer to that (frankly paranoid rant about traps being set) by simplifying: Repeatedly yelling = fired. He or no one should driven away by violent behaviour. Fire the misbehaving person or say (like an adult): hey Chris, we (your management) are in disagreement with whatever, and are going with someone else as leadership, so we're reassigning you. If you want to go, well here's the door.

Anything else is just accepting sociopathic mind games. 'oh he shouldn't have felt threatened by violence and unchecked unacceptable behaviour! he was so naive, toxicity is not objective, suck it up'. WTF. I'm all for hearing the other side of this story but please, everyone (not you, GeekyBear!) stop defending sociopaths (or violent people) being sociopaths, and blaming victims not being sociopaths themselves.

The late Pieter Hintjens' writings on psychopathic behaviour needs a re-reading...

In many parts of the world that goes against labor laws. You cannot harass or ostracize someone to make them leave. That is not just a toxic environment but way worse as there is intent to make the employee leave.

I don't think there was an employment involved here.

You know what's even more common and isn't a conspiracy theory ?

Engineers letting technical disagreements turn personal.

And Chris himself said he disagreed with the technical direction of the project.

I don’t generally pay much attention to this space. However, I’ve heard two interviews with Chris, both on Lex Fridman‘s podcast, and I don’t get a sense that he is an emotionally fragile person. The space he’s been operating in for ~20 years is filled with strong and often ideological opinions.

Just sounds to me like he felt like he was wasting his time.

Then why didn't he just say that he wanted to "pursue other challenges" or something like that, especially if he'd actually mean it?

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