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Comment by felipec | Hacker News Reader

Yes, every culture has their idiosyncrasies, which is precisely the reason why mentioned them. If every culture is different, then different cultures... are *different*. Being aware of the differences helps understand where the potential frictions might be.

You are making assumptions about me, but what about Tanaka and Matsumoto? They are Japanese and they couldn't get Funaba to understand either.

Ultimately Funaba wasn't angry with me, he just ignored me, he was angry with Matsumoto for listening to me and telling him what to do. Could Matsumoto have picked "less combative words"?

Or is it possible that there was a problem with Funaba?

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The problem lies with you.

I've dealt with Japanese people for a long time, and what I'm seeing here is people trying to avoid a person who is being disruptive and rude. And I'd be miffed too, because your writing style comes off as arrogant and entitled.

I don't mean to imply that this is how you are in person, and I'm sorry that this will come off as an attack, but business communication is something that you'll really need to work on if you want to successfully contribute to larger projects (this is nothing to be ashamed of; Linus Torvalds had to take lessons, too). I'd also remove that blog post if I were you.

"The problem lies with you."

You yourself are hypocritically writing in a direct, laconic style while advising Felipe to politely tip toe around sensitivity issues. Why aren't you yourself trying to "empathize" with Felipe and whatever culture he's from?

To be clear, I obviously like direct communication. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of this comment chain.

I have successfully contributed *thousands* of patches to many large projects. I don't need help.

And as is very typical you are concentrating on the wrong thing. I am not important.

The bugs that ruby users are experiencing *today* are important. If I die tomorrow that's not going to change.

> I have successfully contributed thousands of patches to many large projects. I don't need help.

Linus Torvalds successfully contributed far more, and for decades swore up and down that he didn't need any help with communicating (after all, what's so hard about it? You say what you mean and mean what you say! Child's play!). And yet even he eventually realized his need to learn.

At the end of the day, community and morale is far more important, because it improves velocity overall and fosters new blood. I know it's hard to see, because I've been there myself, scratching my head at why those "idiots" wouldn't just see reason and do things efficiently like me. Focusing on the code and not the people and their "silly" politics. I took far too long to realize that I was the problem.

No, Linus Torvalds did not realize that, he thought he was going to get cancelled, so he _claimed_ he was going to change.

After the stormed passed he went back to being Linus.

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