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Comment by subw00f | Hacker News Reader

You’re not mining coal, get real. Either use efficient techniques to make people do the intellectual work necessary to achieve whatever goal you have in mind, or you’re just deluding yourself thinking you’re some kind of “reality expert” while being an asshole, meaning they might still do it, but it would be despite your leadership, not because of it.

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Why does intellectual work imply that people doing poor work need to be treated like fragile little birds?

Intellectual work requires a bit of creativity (across all the domains I can think of), abuse, of any kind increases stress, stress decreases creativity, ability to problem solve, and resilience (or the ability to endure the difficulty of solving hard problems).

But even if that wasn't true. There's a significant difference between confronting the harshness of reality. And behaving in a way that makes reality suck more. Every human deserves to be treated with dignity, and a base level of respect.

Suggesting that someone is fragile and weak, because they object to being insulted, or object to the careless and needless stripping of dignity and humanity from people is a wild take.

I dont think porting everything over to React...making the site slower, bloated, & buggier is "creativity".

I agree that people should be treated with dignity...but groupthink & herd mentality often strips people of their humanity.

So the criticism is really about culture & abstract attractors...not the individual people who often act rationally within the context of the system.

I started working on srctree 2 years ago because of how awful github has become. I don't think there's much creativity in this trend line... But the question was; "why is insulting people doing intellectual work bad". Not, "do you think the changes at github are creative", but I do think that the changes require a bit of intellectual work, and that no matter how shitty github has become, it's unreasonable to attack people when unprovoked.

Can you only provide clear and direct feedback on poor work by insulting people?

No but I won’t rule it out for the incorrigible

Ok, but that’s still not effective as a leadership course of action. Calling people names might make you feel like a big man inside, but that’s it, it won’t accomplish anything, that’s only for your personal benefit, not the project, not the product and definitely not the team.

Actually if you completely rule out the possibility of harshness then you are giving license to let yourself be walked over and for standards to drop to zero. It might make you feel like a big enlightened man inside to do so, but the proper application of firmness and pressure is absolutely effective in leadership.

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