7 ms·

You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland a

by ldfdr 10y ago

You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language. This is part of the reason some URMs can't get ahead in US corporate culture. Yes, Linus does swear a lot, and uses aggressive language. That's part of his style, his culture, and how he communicates. No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers. If you made a mistake, the BSD communities would write you off. The Linux community would tell you what you did wrong, and how to fix it, even if they used harsh language to do so. The Linux culture is also quite meritocratic. It doesn't matter how you communicate, or how incompetent you were a year ago. If you're doing good technical work today, you're welcome. More than other cultures, arguments are taken at technical face value, not by who makes them.

pmelendez 10y ago
>No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers. I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk. Also keep in mind that BSD have legal challenges that GNU/Linux didn't so community is not the only reason why Linux won the popularity contest
- dpark 10y ago
  You think Linux didn't have legal challenges? Where have you been since 2003?
  - ghaff 10y ago
    The legal challenges were at very different points in their lifetimes. It's at least arguable that the legal issues associated with AT&T and BSD kept it from becoming as mainstream as it might have. (As did the somewhat splintered community.) Linux OTOH was already well-established before the SCO suits.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I think BSD's biggest problem was all the fragmentation that they created for themselves, with FreeBSD and NetBSD and OpenBSD (and more). BSDs legal challenges happened largely before Linux had any popularity, so the narrative that pins the blame for BSD's failure in the marketplace on its legal troubles seems hollow to me. The biggest lawsuit was settled in 1994, when Linux hit version 1.0 and Red Hat released its first version. FreeBSD 1.0 landed the previous year.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        I don't really disagree. As you say, the legal issues with BSD had been largely resolved by the time there was a significantly growing market for x86 *nix. (It's also worth remembering that, at the time, a lot of people were assuming that market would just go to Windows anyway.) I'm also inclined to think that fragmentation was a big part of why BSD didn't win out--not legal issues or licensing.
- rpcastagna 10y ago
  > I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk. It's 100% a cultural difference. While you see it as personally aggressive and grating, a lot of people see "overly polite" language as a sign that you don't care about the topic being discussed and/or are trying to address an issue politically rather than by merits of a strong argument. Neither of these perceptions is really right or wrong, it just has to do with the perspective you have based on where you grew up and who you've interacted with the most. From an engineering perspective it'd be optimal if everyone had the same universal expectations for how a conversation should be held, just like how it'd be optimal if everyone spoke the same language. People don't really work that way, though, and just like with languages we try to accommodate each other as much as possible and find middle grounds, etc.
  - deong 10y ago
    When you say "trying to address an issue politically", that sort of implies a context in which you're pushing back against someone else who's already employed a more "Linus-like" approach. That's not what the parent comment was suggesting. Someone like Knuth isn't accused of valuing politics over technical merit because he simply addresses technical merit in a polite way. I'm not one of the people who cares all that much that Linus is an ass to people on a mailing list, but it's ludicrous to suggest that his being an ass on a mailing list is necessary to convey a technical point.
    - rpcastagna 10y ago
      I wouldn't say it's universally necessary, just like it's not universally necessary to speak any given language to convey information. We just all have our own natural ways of doing things and it's not necessarily productive to try to get everyone to force themselves into the same mode of communication. We all have the tendency to view our natural modes as superior in various ways but I don't think we should let that tendency lead us to try to coral others into conforming to our norms.
    - hinkley 10y ago
      I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average. He's a perfectionist and he seems to get distracted easily. Like me, he seems to overly inured to the siren song of Force Multipliers (making other people more productive) and really should have spent more time practicing the craft. If I had it to do over again I probably would have spent a little more time coding and a little less of it thinking in my late 20's to early 30's. It would make a broader group of people understand what I'm about. Especially bosses who don't understand that it would take three people to replace me, even though the majority of the team close more bugs than I do.
hackuser 10y ago
> You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. I disagree. We always can simply claim 'it's a cultural difference' as an excuse, but that doesn't make it true and it doesn't make the behavior acceptable. Mature people in every culture look to show respect to others. If someone insulted me and said that, I'd think they were irresponsible and a bit slippery. I've lived in some of the places you mention, and my experiences don't match your descriptions. People, as they are are everywhere, are generally polite and respectful. They may have some different ways of doing it, but those fundamentals are universal in my experience. People naturally and quickly divine social norms from those around them.When I travel internationally, I learn and respect the social rules of the places I go. On a sports team, perhaps we pat each other on the butt; I don't do that in an office and say 'it's a cultural difference'. I may kiss familiar women on the cheek to greet them in my culture, but I wouldn't presume to do it in others. Travelers who don't learn the local norms are called "ugly", as in 'the Ugly American". Even entering a new work environment, I learn the social norms; those who don't look incompetent and rude. How long have the people cited in this thread been in the professional IT culture? If they didn't have their positions of authority and instead had a boss in a company, my guess is that they would very quickly find a way to be polite. My guess is that they are polite with their spouses and kids; their in-laws, etc.
- rpcastagna 10y ago
  I think it's disingenuous to try to appeal to what you see as the norms of "professional IT culture" when Linus founded the Linux community, and with it, its culture. I think invoking the "Ugly American" concept when discussing this is interesting because saying that Linus and the Linux community should conform to "professional IT culture" at large seems emblematic of that mentality. Linus started a community and gets a disproportionate influence in setting its norms as a part of that.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    That comment seems to assume that if enough people do it, it therefore is a good idea. Not all behavior is relatively the same; good and bad don't depend on what the majority likes to do. Lots of people in the business world are condescending toward women; that doesn't make it good or acceptable. In a different context, civil rights exist to protect the minority from the majority. My point in the GP was that the claim of 'cultural differences' isn't valid; we all learn and adjust to new cultural norms easily, and very few cultures, if any, have the norm of disrespect.
peterwwillis 10y ago
Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why. "I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system. And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it." -- Linus Torvalds, 09/06/2000, LKML "I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." -- Linus, 2012. Linus Torvalds on why he isn't nice: "I don't care about you." http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-nice-i-dont-care-about-you/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-wh...
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  There's this bizarre thing going on on HN, reddit, and other tech sites. We saw it with Linus and we see it again with Trump. Suddenly, all these people are making excuses for terrible behaviors and outrageous claims. Usually following a "he didn't really mean that" playbook of justifications like "productivity" or "politics" like either excuses acting like a child. Why are we afraid to call people out on the shit they say? Is this some new level of political correctness? Or do we just see these people as something to project onto and dismiss anything counter to that? No idea, but it seems we live in strange times where a man's own words are ignored for feel-good conclusions that have no merit or basis in reality.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    It's not about political correctness. It's about what these people make you feel, and how you respond to it. People want to believe that somebody whom they like on one score - Linus's technical achievements, Donald Trump's ability to empathize with the working class and the poor - are likable on all scores. It's much like the classic literary 'harsh father' figure - he may beat you, he may be strict, he may never show love, but he provides for the family and he teaches you to be moral, so everything he did must have been good. The beatings must have had a purpose. It's hard for us to accept that good and bad exist in the same person, and that somebody who does good things may also do very bad things, not just discretely, but often at the same time.
ivraatiems 10y ago
Linus doesn't swear because it's "his culture." He swears to put people down. There's a difference between using harsh language casually to talk about something, and using that kind of language to talk down a person or their work. Linus does the latter. Not only that, but he openly admits it. I don't understand why there's confusion on that score. He knows what he's doing, he knows it's dickish, he does it anyway because people let him, and legions leap to his defense for it. It flabbergasts me, to be honest. That's why he's a jerk, and that's why it's unacceptable.
- sssilver 10y ago
  Unacceptable by who? Some universal morality? Come on.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    Unacceptable for communication in a professional setting in North America or Europe. I don't buy the argument that it's acceptable to behave as he does in the workplace in Finland any more than it's acceptable in the US or any other such country. It's also just generally a disrespectful way to treat other human beings, and that is pretty universal, actually. But to be frank, I think that context was perfectly clear in my post.
    - sssilver 10y ago
      I'm an Armenian living in Texas and his communication is completely acceptable to me. If anything the standard American corporate professional speak pisses me off when matters get serious. Why don't we embrace that different things work for different people and there is no communication standard to be imposed per continent or even culture?
      - ivraatiems 10y ago
        I think you're conflating corporatespeak/not being direct with being rude. Compare these three statements: "There's a problem with the function you wrote. I need you to fix it tonight." "The function you wrote is non-optimal for our goals. Please reconsider and reevaluate when you get a chance." "You fucked up that function. Fix up your shit NOW." The first is "standard professionalspeak." It's clear, direct, gets the point across. It isn't rude. The second is worthless corporatespeak. The third is rude and dickish. It's also how Linus tends to communicate. I agree the second is not great, but would you really prefer the third to the first? My point is that you can be totally direct and clear about what must be done without being nasty to the person doing the work, and that is the ideal. I don't think there are many cultures that would prioritize being mean over being direct, but if yours does, I'd be curious to understand what advantage you think that confers. Further, if we're going to embrace different communication styles, then I would say the onus is on people to learn to communicate inoffensively, not to learn to accept offensive communication.
gkya 10y ago
Stop talking nonsense. The first version of Linux came around 1991-1992, with a plethora of GNU programs to be used on it. The oldests of the current open-source BSDs were released 1993. That's why Linux got any success at all.
matthewpersico 10y ago
"You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language." Being born in New York (City), still living close and working there, I have to smile at the distinction between "American inner city" and "parts of New York". It just reinforces our attitude that there is New York and then there is everywhere else! Thank you!

by ldfdr 10y ago

pmelendez 10y ago

>No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers. I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk. Also keep in mind that BSD have legal challenges that GNU/Linux didn't so community is not the only reason why Linux won the popularity contest

dpark 10y ago
You think Linux didn't have legal challenges? Where have you been since 2003?
- ghaff 10y ago
  The legal challenges were at very different points in their lifetimes. It's at least arguable that the legal issues associated with AT&T and BSD kept it from becoming as mainstream as it might have. (As did the somewhat splintered community.) Linux OTOH was already well-established before the SCO suits.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I think BSD's biggest problem was all the fragmentation that they created for themselves, with FreeBSD and NetBSD and OpenBSD (and more). BSDs legal challenges happened largely before Linux had any popularity, so the narrative that pins the blame for BSD's failure in the marketplace on its legal troubles seems hollow to me. The biggest lawsuit was settled in 1994, when Linux hit version 1.0 and Red Hat released its first version. FreeBSD 1.0 landed the previous year.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I don't really disagree. As you say, the legal issues with BSD had been largely resolved by the time there was a significantly growing market for x86 *nix. (It's also worth remembering that, at the time, a lot of people were assuming that market would just go to Windows anyway.) I'm also inclined to think that fragmentation was a big part of why BSD didn't win out--not legal issues or licensing.
rpcastagna 10y ago
> I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk. It's 100% a cultural difference. While you see it as personally aggressive and grating, a lot of people see "overly polite" language as a sign that you don't care about the topic being discussed and/or are trying to address an issue politically rather than by merits of a strong argument. Neither of these perceptions is really right or wrong, it just has to do with the perspective you have based on where you grew up and who you've interacted with the most. From an engineering perspective it'd be optimal if everyone had the same universal expectations for how a conversation should be held, just like how it'd be optimal if everyone spoke the same language. People don't really work that way, though, and just like with languages we try to accommodate each other as much as possible and find middle grounds, etc.
- deong 10y ago
  When you say "trying to address an issue politically", that sort of implies a context in which you're pushing back against someone else who's already employed a more "Linus-like" approach. That's not what the parent comment was suggesting. Someone like Knuth isn't accused of valuing politics over technical merit because he simply addresses technical merit in a polite way. I'm not one of the people who cares all that much that Linus is an ass to people on a mailing list, but it's ludicrous to suggest that his being an ass on a mailing list is necessary to convey a technical point.
  - rpcastagna 10y ago
    I wouldn't say it's universally necessary, just like it's not universally necessary to speak any given language to convey information. We just all have our own natural ways of doing things and it's not necessarily productive to try to get everyone to force themselves into the same mode of communication. We all have the tendency to view our natural modes as superior in various ways but I don't think we should let that tendency lead us to try to coral others into conforming to our norms.
  - hinkley 10y ago
    I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average. He's a perfectionist and he seems to get distracted easily. Like me, he seems to overly inured to the siren song of Force Multipliers (making other people more productive) and really should have spent more time practicing the craft. If I had it to do over again I probably would have spent a little more time coding and a little less of it thinking in my late 20's to early 30's. It would make a broader group of people understand what I'm about. Especially bosses who don't understand that it would take three people to replace me, even though the majority of the team close more bugs than I do.

hackuser 10y ago

> You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. I disagree. We always can simply claim 'it's a cultural difference' as an excuse, but that doesn't make it true and it doesn't make the behavior acceptable. Mature people in every culture look to show respect to others. If someone insulted me and said that, I'd think they were irresponsible and a bit slippery. I've lived in some of the places you mention, and my experiences don't match your descriptions. People, as they are are everywhere, are generally polite and respectful. They may have some different ways of doing it, but those fundamentals are universal in my experience. People naturally and quickly divine social norms from those around them.When I travel internationally, I learn and respect the social rules of the places I go. On a sports team, perhaps we pat each other on the butt; I don't do that in an office and say 'it's a cultural difference'. I may kiss familiar women on the cheek to greet them in my culture, but I wouldn't presume to do it in others. Travelers who don't learn the local norms are called "ugly", as in 'the Ugly American". Even entering a new work environment, I learn the social norms; those who don't look incompetent and rude. How long have the people cited in this thread been in the professional IT culture? If they didn't have their positions of authority and instead had a boss in a company, my guess is that they would very quickly find a way to be polite. My guess is that they are polite with their spouses and kids; their in-laws, etc.

rpcastagna 10y ago
I think it's disingenuous to try to appeal to what you see as the norms of "professional IT culture" when Linus founded the Linux community, and with it, its culture. I think invoking the "Ugly American" concept when discussing this is interesting because saying that Linus and the Linux community should conform to "professional IT culture" at large seems emblematic of that mentality. Linus started a community and gets a disproportionate influence in setting its norms as a part of that.
- hackuser 10y ago
  That comment seems to assume that if enough people do it, it therefore is a good idea. Not all behavior is relatively the same; good and bad don't depend on what the majority likes to do. Lots of people in the business world are condescending toward women; that doesn't make it good or acceptable. In a different context, civil rights exist to protect the minority from the majority. My point in the GP was that the claim of 'cultural differences' isn't valid; we all learn and adjust to new cultural norms easily, and very few cultures, if any, have the norm of disrespect.

peterwwillis 10y ago

Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why. "I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system. And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it." -- Linus Torvalds, 09/06/2000, LKML "I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." -- Linus, 2012. Linus Torvalds on why he isn't nice: "I don't care about you." http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-why-he-isnt-nice-i-dont-care-about-you/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-wh...

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
There's this bizarre thing going on on HN, reddit, and other tech sites. We saw it with Linus and we see it again with Trump. Suddenly, all these people are making excuses for terrible behaviors and outrageous claims. Usually following a "he didn't really mean that" playbook of justifications like "productivity" or "politics" like either excuses acting like a child. Why are we afraid to call people out on the shit they say? Is this some new level of political correctness? Or do we just see these people as something to project onto and dismiss anything counter to that? No idea, but it seems we live in strange times where a man's own words are ignored for feel-good conclusions that have no merit or basis in reality.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  It's not about political correctness. It's about what these people make you feel, and how you respond to it. People want to believe that somebody whom they like on one score - Linus's technical achievements, Donald Trump's ability to empathize with the working class and the poor - are likable on all scores. It's much like the classic literary 'harsh father' figure - he may beat you, he may be strict, he may never show love, but he provides for the family and he teaches you to be moral, so everything he did must have been good. The beatings must have had a purpose. It's hard for us to accept that good and bad exist in the same person, and that somebody who does good things may also do very bad things, not just discretely, but often at the same time.

ivraatiems 10y ago

Linus doesn't swear because it's "his culture." He swears to put people down. There's a difference between using harsh language casually to talk about something, and using that kind of language to talk down a person or their work. Linus does the latter. Not only that, but he openly admits it. I don't understand why there's confusion on that score. He knows what he's doing, he knows it's dickish, he does it anyway because people let him, and legions leap to his defense for it. It flabbergasts me, to be honest. That's why he's a jerk, and that's why it's unacceptable.

sssilver 10y ago
Unacceptable by who? Some universal morality? Come on.
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  Unacceptable for communication in a professional setting in North America or Europe. I don't buy the argument that it's acceptable to behave as he does in the workplace in Finland any more than it's acceptable in the US or any other such country. It's also just generally a disrespectful way to treat other human beings, and that is pretty universal, actually. But to be frank, I think that context was perfectly clear in my post.
  - sssilver 10y ago
    I'm an Armenian living in Texas and his communication is completely acceptable to me. If anything the standard American corporate professional speak pisses me off when matters get serious. Why don't we embrace that different things work for different people and there is no communication standard to be imposed per continent or even culture?
    - ivraatiems 10y ago
      I think you're conflating corporatespeak/not being direct with being rude. Compare these three statements: "There's a problem with the function you wrote. I need you to fix it tonight." "The function you wrote is non-optimal for our goals. Please reconsider and reevaluate when you get a chance." "You fucked up that function. Fix up your shit NOW." The first is "standard professionalspeak." It's clear, direct, gets the point across. It isn't rude. The second is worthless corporatespeak. The third is rude and dickish. It's also how Linus tends to communicate. I agree the second is not great, but would you really prefer the third to the first? My point is that you can be totally direct and clear about what must be done without being nasty to the person doing the work, and that is the ideal. I don't think there are many cultures that would prioritize being mean over being direct, but if yours does, I'd be curious to understand what advantage you think that confers. Further, if we're going to embrace different communication styles, then I would say the onus is on people to learn to communicate inoffensively, not to learn to accept offensive communication.

gkya 10y ago

Stop talking nonsense. The first version of Linux came around 1991-1992, with a plethora of GNU programs to be used on it. The oldests of the current open-source BSDs were released 1993. That's why Linux got any success at all.

matthewpersico 10y ago

"You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language." Being born in New York (City), still living close and working there, I have to smile at the distinction between "American inner city" and "parts of New York". It just reinforces our attitude that there is New York and then there is everywhere else! Thank you!