4 ms·

I think a good leader could get the point across without resorting to bullying.

by 13of40 9y ago

otabdeveloper1 9y ago
Your comment deserves a 4chan-style meme arrow: > getting an incompetent bozo fired > "bullying"
adamnemecek 9y ago
The guy does seem like he was shifting blame around.
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  I think most people agree with you, he screwed up more with his handling of the situation. Occasional good faith mistakes shouldn’t get people in trouble, but he was weaseling. The interesting issue is more of leadership. 1) Is it possible to get equally direct and effective results in a different style? 2) Does Linus care about the answer to question (1), or would he act out of emotion even if he knew knew there was a equal or more productive way?
ams6110 9y ago
Nothing in TFA is bullying. Impolite, rude, brash yes.
vorpalhex 9y ago
I wouldn't call it bullying. He isn't attacking the committer personally or due to anything outside the issue. He isn't hounding the committer. Bluntly telling someone they really screwed up and need to stop denying it isn't bullying. Someone being mean isn't bullying.
- WhitneyLand 9y ago
  Dressing someone down publicly, in a tone based on anger and frustration, is a form of humiliation, and humiliation is a form of bullying.
  - dmix 9y ago
    Brutal honesty isn't for everyone. I personally grew up with friends who would deal out this kind of thing and I wouldn't feel bullied or humiliated. Sometimes it got to you but, there's no way around that, but over time you learned to develop thicker skin and bounce back without getting feelings hurt. Especially when it's a personality style combined with the fact it comes from a place of caring deeply about the subject... then the motivation is not just trying to hurt the other person. This is the maturity, the point you learn to see in people. Clearly Linus is heavily attached to the project and the person he replied to has been pushing an unpopular position for 3 weeks. It didn't come out of nowhere. He's also not new to this game. He's not some new intern, who doesn't know the deal, getting bullied by a CEO. There has been a big culture trend to treat every small comment as potentially devastatingly hurtful, training kids to be thin skinned, and in my opinion, this highly disincentivizes honesty and will create a lot of inefficiency in business. As it requires a significant time investment to make sure even seemingly harmless statements are not 'hurtful', employing subtlety and skirting around an issue indirectly requires significant cognitive load. In a high volume, high pressure projects like the Linux mailing list this could really add up and generate bad decision making, as people will rather avoid an issue then invest in saying it carefully. The ROI in that trend is questionable, as you can train people to see beyond the words and look at the person's real motivation and meaning, as it is not a given raw honesty is coming from a place of personal attack. That said, obviously otherwise real hurtful and mean attacks, without an underlying purpose and genuine motivation other than to hurt the person, should never be tolerated. But sacrificing full honesty and non-heavily filtered emotional opinions in order to never have these personal attacks is just not worth it IMO.
    - WhitneyLand 9y ago
      Yeah but the thing is, I don't see how our points conflict. Yes, by all means people should try to develop a thick skin and would benefit from that throughout life. That would lead to X% improvement and Y% who still were dealt with in a counterproductive way. There's a wide range of capacity for dealing with this stuff. General Macarthur was infinitely strong minded, but when he saw someone with war induced PTSD in a hospital bed he slapped him across the face for being a coward. I give him the benefit of the doubt that his own strength made it difficult to see what was a much less understood thing back then. This case is not even close to PTSD, but the concept is the same in that emotional capacity varies widely, even when we practice resiliency. Linus caring passionately about the project I think is irrelevant, the question is what leadership approach yields the desired results with the least downsides. >...a culture trend to treat every small comment as potentially devastatingly hurtful, >training kids to be thin skinned...this highly disincentivizes honesty and will... >create a lot of inefficiency in business... That's the fallacy right there. There's nothing stopping people from demanding excellence, demanding results. Indeed, high standards should be the bar, and if their are multiple ways apparent to achieve them, the one with the least negatives should be applied. That's smart for both business and morality. >>sacrificing full honesty and non-heavily filtered emotional opinions in order >>to never have these personal attacks is just not worth it This is another critical point. I do not advocate (and I think many others as well) for one second that honesty, directness, fidelity, and impact of communication be sacrificed. I think in some cases you do have to break eggs to make an omelette. I just believe the cases where being an asshole is required to achieve a certain level of effectiveness is in general exceptional, and that it also wasn't the only way in this particular case. Btw, none of this is really a critique of Linus. Yes I think he could have done better, but there are thousands of conversations like this everyday. This just happens to be a mini case study in leadership styles and the options for achieving the required results.
- dmix 9y ago
  Agreed, and if this a fundamental concept in kernel development, as he says it is, I believe he has every right to feel frustrated as the debate thread has been going on for three weeks. Linus has been known to have some hostility to 'security developers' in the past, so I'm also going in with some skepticism. But I'm not seeing him be unreasonable here. These are human processes, a lot of personality, dedication, and sacrifice is involved in these projects.

I think a good leader could get the point across without resorting to bullying.

by 13of40 9y ago

I think a good leader could get the point across without resorting to bullying.

otabdeveloper1 9y ago

Your comment deserves a 4chan-style meme arrow: > getting an incompetent bozo fired > "bullying"

adamnemecek 9y ago

The guy does seem like he was shifting blame around.

WhitneyLand 9y ago
I think most people agree with you, he screwed up more with his handling of the situation. Occasional good faith mistakes shouldn’t get people in trouble, but he was weaseling. The interesting issue is more of leadership. 1) Is it possible to get equally direct and effective results in a different style? 2) Does Linus care about the answer to question (1), or would he act out of emotion even if he knew knew there was a equal or more productive way?

ams6110 9y ago

Nothing in TFA is bullying. Impolite, rude, brash yes.

vorpalhex 9y ago

I wouldn't call it bullying. He isn't attacking the committer personally or due to anything outside the issue. He isn't hounding the committer. Bluntly telling someone they really screwed up and need to stop denying it isn't bullying. Someone being mean isn't bullying.

WhitneyLand 9y ago
Dressing someone down publicly, in a tone based on anger and frustration, is a form of humiliation, and humiliation is a form of bullying.
- dmix 9y ago
  Brutal honesty isn't for everyone. I personally grew up with friends who would deal out this kind of thing and I wouldn't feel bullied or humiliated. Sometimes it got to you but, there's no way around that, but over time you learned to develop thicker skin and bounce back without getting feelings hurt. Especially when it's a personality style combined with the fact it comes from a place of caring deeply about the subject... then the motivation is not just trying to hurt the other person. This is the maturity, the point you learn to see in people. Clearly Linus is heavily attached to the project and the person he replied to has been pushing an unpopular position for 3 weeks. It didn't come out of nowhere. He's also not new to this game. He's not some new intern, who doesn't know the deal, getting bullied by a CEO. There has been a big culture trend to treat every small comment as potentially devastatingly hurtful, training kids to be thin skinned, and in my opinion, this highly disincentivizes honesty and will create a lot of inefficiency in business. As it requires a significant time investment to make sure even seemingly harmless statements are not 'hurtful', employing subtlety and skirting around an issue indirectly requires significant cognitive load. In a high volume, high pressure projects like the Linux mailing list this could really add up and generate bad decision making, as people will rather avoid an issue then invest in saying it carefully. The ROI in that trend is questionable, as you can train people to see beyond the words and look at the person's real motivation and meaning, as it is not a given raw honesty is coming from a place of personal attack. That said, obviously otherwise real hurtful and mean attacks, without an underlying purpose and genuine motivation other than to hurt the person, should never be tolerated. But sacrificing full honesty and non-heavily filtered emotional opinions in order to never have these personal attacks is just not worth it IMO.
  - WhitneyLand 9y ago
    Yeah but the thing is, I don't see how our points conflict. Yes, by all means people should try to develop a thick skin and would benefit from that throughout life. That would lead to X% improvement and Y% who still were dealt with in a counterproductive way. There's a wide range of capacity for dealing with this stuff. General Macarthur was infinitely strong minded, but when he saw someone with war induced PTSD in a hospital bed he slapped him across the face for being a coward. I give him the benefit of the doubt that his own strength made it difficult to see what was a much less understood thing back then. This case is not even close to PTSD, but the concept is the same in that emotional capacity varies widely, even when we practice resiliency. Linus caring passionately about the project I think is irrelevant, the question is what leadership approach yields the desired results with the least downsides. >...a culture trend to treat every small comment as potentially devastatingly hurtful, >training kids to be thin skinned...this highly disincentivizes honesty and will... >create a lot of inefficiency in business... That's the fallacy right there. There's nothing stopping people from demanding excellence, demanding results. Indeed, high standards should be the bar, and if their are multiple ways apparent to achieve them, the one with the least negatives should be applied. That's smart for both business and morality. >>sacrificing full honesty and non-heavily filtered emotional opinions in order >>to never have these personal attacks is just not worth it This is another critical point. I do not advocate (and I think many others as well) for one second that honesty, directness, fidelity, and impact of communication be sacrificed. I think in some cases you do have to break eggs to make an omelette. I just believe the cases where being an asshole is required to achieve a certain level of effectiveness is in general exceptional, and that it also wasn't the only way in this particular case. Btw, none of this is really a critique of Linus. Yes I think he could have done better, but there are thousands of conversations like this everyday. This just happens to be a mini case study in leadership styles and the options for achieving the required results.
dmix 9y ago
Agreed, and if this a fundamental concept in kernel development, as he says it is, I believe he has every right to feel frustrated as the debate thread has been going on for three weeks. Linus has been known to have some hostility to 'security developers' in the past, so I'm also going in with some skepticism. But I'm not seeing him be unreasonable here. These are human processes, a lot of personality, dedication, and sacrifice is involved in these projects.