4 ms·

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
    > 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. I believe you mean General Patton here, not Macarthur. I know this story well and I don't think this came from a place of personal attack either. It came from a place of misunderstanding. This is the critical difference I'm getting at. The personal motivation is what matters, not the lack of preemptive filtering of the words or actions themselves. The solution there was an evolution of the understanding of PTSD. The General was caring deeply about such an important thing, such as not letting well-trained soldier be a coward and hiding in the hospital when other men are dying in the field. And he saw many young kids die and it made him raw. It's also been said the General may have had his own PTSD and emotional problems, and he wanted to attack the weaker man who made HIM feel that way. Ultimately he was wrong factually, for misunderstanding the motivations of the soldier. The soldier wasn't being a coward (AFAIK) but suffering from serious mental trauma. If this happened in 2017 it would be a different story because Patton should have known better and what he did was abusive in that context. AND Patton could also have been better informed about his own risks of behavioral problems if he had modern science and education. Does this mean Patton's brutal honesty was the problem? Or was it the general understanding of PTSD? I believe the latter. Ultimately this doesn't mean Patton shouldn't have been brutally honest with his regular troops on the battlefield. Which he was, and he was also brutally effective at running the war too, and he was loved for it by his troops. The guy in the hospital is a different story and should have never happened, but I don't think I would have sacrificed Patton's honesty because society and common sense was wrong about a few subjects.
    - WhitneyLand 9y ago
      You’re right it was General Patton, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_inci.... However the point was not Patton did wrong, as I mentioned I believe he just wasn’t aware. The point was people have massively different reactions to emotional stress. This is why two people with identical wat experience may or may not get ptsd. Training for emotional stress has limits. You keep saying you wouldn’t want to change the virtues of these leaders. I’m trying to say (forget Patton) most times their virtues don’t come inherently from being an asshole. Their virtues come many personality traits, strength, courage, talent. We don’t have to, and shouldn’t give up thes virtues. That doesn’t meant they can never be optimized.

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
  > 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. I believe you mean General Patton here, not Macarthur. I know this story well and I don't think this came from a place of personal attack either. It came from a place of misunderstanding. This is the critical difference I'm getting at. The personal motivation is what matters, not the lack of preemptive filtering of the words or actions themselves. The solution there was an evolution of the understanding of PTSD. The General was caring deeply about such an important thing, such as not letting well-trained soldier be a coward and hiding in the hospital when other men are dying in the field. And he saw many young kids die and it made him raw. It's also been said the General may have had his own PTSD and emotional problems, and he wanted to attack the weaker man who made HIM feel that way. Ultimately he was wrong factually, for misunderstanding the motivations of the soldier. The soldier wasn't being a coward (AFAIK) but suffering from serious mental trauma. If this happened in 2017 it would be a different story because Patton should have known better and what he did was abusive in that context. AND Patton could also have been better informed about his own risks of behavioral problems if he had modern science and education. Does this mean Patton's brutal honesty was the problem? Or was it the general understanding of PTSD? I believe the latter. Ultimately this doesn't mean Patton shouldn't have been brutally honest with his regular troops on the battlefield. Which he was, and he was also brutally effective at running the war too, and he was loved for it by his troops. The guy in the hospital is a different story and should have never happened, but I don't think I would have sacrificed Patton's honesty because society and common sense was wrong about a few subjects.
  - WhitneyLand 9y ago
    You’re right it was General Patton, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton_slapping_inci.... However the point was not Patton did wrong, as I mentioned I believe he just wasn’t aware. The point was people have massively different reactions to emotional stress. This is why two people with identical wat experience may or may not get ptsd. Training for emotional stress has limits. You keep saying you wouldn’t want to change the virtues of these leaders. I’m trying to say (forget Patton) most times their virtues don’t come inherently from being an asshole. Their virtues come many personality traits, strength, courage, talent. We don’t have to, and shouldn’t give up thes virtues. That doesn’t meant they can never be optimized.