4 ms·

I don't want to be mean but he wasn't a good cultural fit if he complained about that and should've been let go. Successful companies and products are built by

I don't want to be mean but he wasn't a good cultural fit if he complained about that and should've been let go. Successful companies and products are built by like-minded people. You can't have someone on your team who can't build software because he uses Windows and complains about it. He could've used mingw, or used cygwin, or setup a Linux VM. Make is god.

TD-Linux 11y ago
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I appreciate it either way.
- pkrumins 11y ago
  It was not sarcasm.
pekk 11y ago
Why not, if being too old or of the wrong race is a poor cultural fit. Using Windows for development of apps ultimately to be deployed on Linux isn't any more sensible than using Linux when you are ultimately building Windows apps. Visual Studio is there for a reason. So is make.
RaleyField 11y ago
> wasn't a good cultural fit And I'd fire you if you used barfy corporate speak like this. > should've been let go How positively stalinist. Just so we are clear - a guy complained and you'd fire him for that, not maybe first reason with him? Don't complain when the company is razed to the ground because nobody talks to anybody lest they be taken by the nkvd.
- pkrumins 11y ago
  Of course I'd fire him. These folks are building a Linux stack software and the guy complains he can't use make on Windows. It's not only he's not a cultural fit, he's also not a technical fit. He'll never understand the beauty of Unix tools. Fire early, fire often and build a team of like minded people around you. Nothing wrong with using corporate language either.
  - RaleyField 11y ago
    > He'll never understand the beauty of Unix tools The beauty of unix tools was that the model fit well with memory constrained machines of the time. After that came a mountain of hacks that just happens to still work and are used because nobody bothered to come up with a statically typed equivalent. It's far from beautiful, it just sorta works when it's not aimed at you foot. > Fire early, fire often and build a team of like minded people around you. It poisons the whole thing. Respect people and people will respect you and maybe they won't screw you over because you haven't given them a good reason to. Egomaniacally firing people for opinions will create infighting, it will cause people to start scheming and collecting dirt on coworkers to be used as a deflection for when the boss has one of his outbursts again. Supposedly most botched products at Microsoft are result of infighting between teams caused by stack ranking, which is effectively the same thing as what you are proposing. > Nothing wrong with using corporate language either. It isn't when it's not doublespeak. Culture is a nicer word for circlejerk. Finally, unix circlejerking is fine as long as you aren't a jerk about it..
  - skeeterbug 11y ago
    They aren't building Linux stack software. Re-read what you replied to: > I also built a Makefile-centric web development build workflow.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    I normally agree with you most of the time but this is just too much. Yes, you should have a chat with the guy but maybe it's as simple as installing MSYS2 on a Windows box or making sure he can run a VM for some tasks.
Silhouette 11y ago
I don't want to be mean but he wasn't a good cultural fit if he complained about that and should've been let go. That seems a very rash assumption with so little information. Maybe the developer in question needs other software to do their job and some of that software only runs on a certain OS. Maybe the advantages of having the right person on the team and able to use their preferred dev tools are a big overall win for the project. Maybe running into portability issues with such a fundamental tool is a warning sign that the build process isn't as robust as it could be. Maybe the whole thing can be fixed with a ten minute discussion and two-line edit to the makefile, and then you have the option of bringing other developers who prefer the same platform onto the team later as well. Successful companies and products are built by like-minded people. If you'd said something like "compatible", I might have agreed with you, but I see little evidence that complete enforced uniformity is necessarily a win in a field like software development. This sounds a lot like the kinds of managers who want to reduce everyone on a development team to interchangeable commodities, ignoring the inevitable reality that everyone's background and ability to contribute will be different. It also sounds a lot like the kinds of development teams that can spend weeks going down a dead-end path because no-one had enough varied experience that they anticipated the problem and thought to question the direction the project was going.
- eropple 11y ago
  > Maybe the developer in question needs other software to do their job and some of that software only runs on a certain OS. This can't be understated. How about, say, accessibility software? There's a reason that, say, visually impaired developers very often use Windows: because the accessibility tools are really, really good. But, naturally, it's just not understanding the beauty of Unix. Ick.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    Yes, if we're talking about web development here, there are loads of practical examples. Testing and debugging with browsers only available on certain platforms obviously requires that platform, and sometimes an emulation or VM version isn't close enough. Graphics software is frequently platform-specific, so if you have a front-end developer who also deals with logos, icons, animations, or any number of other graphical assets, they probably need a compatible system. Plenty of conference calling and desktop sharing tools are platform-specific, and you need to be using the same as whatever your clients or external collaborators use. The list goes on, but certainly for the three big areas I just mentioned Linux platforms are often far behind both Windows and OS X in what is available.

TD-Linux 11y ago

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I appreciate it either way.

pkrumins 11y ago
It was not sarcasm.

pekk 11y ago

Why not, if being too old or of the wrong race is a poor cultural fit. Using Windows for development of apps ultimately to be deployed on Linux isn't any more sensible than using Linux when you are ultimately building Windows apps. Visual Studio is there for a reason. So is make.

RaleyField 11y ago

> wasn't a good cultural fit And I'd fire you if you used barfy corporate speak like this. > should've been let go How positively stalinist. Just so we are clear - a guy complained and you'd fire him for that, not maybe first reason with him? Don't complain when the company is razed to the ground because nobody talks to anybody lest they be taken by the nkvd.

pkrumins 11y ago
Of course I'd fire him. These folks are building a Linux stack software and the guy complains he can't use make on Windows. It's not only he's not a cultural fit, he's also not a technical fit. He'll never understand the beauty of Unix tools. Fire early, fire often and build a team of like minded people around you. Nothing wrong with using corporate language either.
- RaleyField 11y ago
  > He'll never understand the beauty of Unix tools The beauty of unix tools was that the model fit well with memory constrained machines of the time. After that came a mountain of hacks that just happens to still work and are used because nobody bothered to come up with a statically typed equivalent. It's far from beautiful, it just sorta works when it's not aimed at you foot. > Fire early, fire often and build a team of like minded people around you. It poisons the whole thing. Respect people and people will respect you and maybe they won't screw you over because you haven't given them a good reason to. Egomaniacally firing people for opinions will create infighting, it will cause people to start scheming and collecting dirt on coworkers to be used as a deflection for when the boss has one of his outbursts again. Supposedly most botched products at Microsoft are result of infighting between teams caused by stack ranking, which is effectively the same thing as what you are proposing. > Nothing wrong with using corporate language either. It isn't when it's not doublespeak. Culture is a nicer word for circlejerk. Finally, unix circlejerking is fine as long as you aren't a jerk about it..
- skeeterbug 11y ago
  They aren't building Linux stack software. Re-read what you replied to: > I also built a Makefile-centric web development build workflow.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  I normally agree with you most of the time but this is just too much. Yes, you should have a chat with the guy but maybe it's as simple as installing MSYS2 on a Windows box or making sure he can run a VM for some tasks.

Silhouette 11y ago

I don't want to be mean but he wasn't a good cultural fit if he complained about that and should've been let go. That seems a very rash assumption with so little information. Maybe the developer in question needs other software to do their job and some of that software only runs on a certain OS. Maybe the advantages of having the right person on the team and able to use their preferred dev tools are a big overall win for the project. Maybe running into portability issues with such a fundamental tool is a warning sign that the build process isn't as robust as it could be. Maybe the whole thing can be fixed with a ten minute discussion and two-line edit to the makefile, and then you have the option of bringing other developers who prefer the same platform onto the team later as well. Successful companies and products are built by like-minded people. If you'd said something like "compatible", I might have agreed with you, but I see little evidence that complete enforced uniformity is necessarily a win in a field like software development. This sounds a lot like the kinds of managers who want to reduce everyone on a development team to interchangeable commodities, ignoring the inevitable reality that everyone's background and ability to contribute will be different. It also sounds a lot like the kinds of development teams that can spend weeks going down a dead-end path because no-one had enough varied experience that they anticipated the problem and thought to question the direction the project was going.

eropple 11y ago
> Maybe the developer in question needs other software to do their job and some of that software only runs on a certain OS. This can't be understated. How about, say, accessibility software? There's a reason that, say, visually impaired developers very often use Windows: because the accessibility tools are really, really good. But, naturally, it's just not understanding the beauty of Unix. Ick.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Yes, if we're talking about web development here, there are loads of practical examples. Testing and debugging with browsers only available on certain platforms obviously requires that platform, and sometimes an emulation or VM version isn't close enough. Graphics software is frequently platform-specific, so if you have a front-end developer who also deals with logos, icons, animations, or any number of other graphical assets, they probably need a compatible system. Plenty of conference calling and desktop sharing tools are platform-specific, and you need to be using the same as whatever your clients or external collaborators use. The list goes on, but certainly for the three big areas I just mentioned Linux platforms are often far behind both Windows and OS X in what is available.