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Comment by jononomo | Hacker News Reader

I honestly miss the old days when smart people would just yell at you. It's frankly more efficient and the people who can't handle it just aren't smart themselves. I'm not talking about unwarranted abuse, but I did like the confidence that top notch programmers felt free to express back in the 90s.

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> the people who can't handle it just aren't smart themselves.

Don't dismiss everyone who won't put up with that kind of environment as "just not smart". It's a completely unwarranted assumption.

Just a hypothetical: Being verbally abused as a child might make that impossible to take as an adult. That doesn't make you any less smart.

But it doesn't even have to be abuse. There are people who are plenty smart, whose reaction to being yelled at by their boss would be "why should I put up with this?" In fact being smarter might even make that response more likely.

You yell back and explain why you're right. Or, if you're not right, you go fix the problem.

Or you go somewhere else where you get to work with grownups and non-sociopaths.

You wouldn't have cut it working at Microsoft, but that's okay since there were many lesser companies around during that era, as well as opportunities in child care.

Or do neither. I'm not going to have technical discussions where whoever is louder wins.

If you've ever met one of these super-smart engineer types you'll know that nothing shuts them up and gains their respect faster than having the right answer. It's not about "whoever is louder" it's about having deep and impassioned understanding of technical issues.

Yup, at a previous company I managed the IT department and reported to the CFO. In a 1:1 meeting he said "I want employees I can yell at and not be worried that they'll quit". He was referring to accounting staff when he said it, but it was the final straw that got me looking for other opportunities. I gave notice a few weeks later.

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