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A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, bl

A lot of people trying to defend being a jerk as necessary in these circumstances. I think Google culture proves the opposite: Googley code and peer reviews, blameless postmortems, and a host of other mechanisms that de-escalate and de-personalize things. The Meltdown work at Google probably didn't begin with a rant about morons. It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize others without inducing flame wars. It only works for Linus because people won't go nuclear in the response, but for rank and file engineers, especially of equal stature, if you call someone a moron in a thread, it's likely to kill productivity and create a negative testosterone ladden atmosphere of people trying to avoid being wrong, and counter attacking others. I've worked at a lot of places where engineer got into heated shouting matches. It's is not a way to increase the probability of zeroing in on a problem, or reaching agreement faster.

jessaustin 9y ago
Is this public discussion an attempt to "zero in" on this problem? Does anyone outside of Intel "agree" with their current approach? This is a more reasonable situation for the Torvalds method than many others in which he uses it.
- quotheth 9y ago
  http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html I would recommend reading this response. Here are some great excerpts: > That's why my initial idea, as implemented in this RFC patchset, was to stick with IBRS on Skylake, and use retpoline everywhere else. I'll give you "garbage patches", but they weren't being "just mindlessly sent around". If we're going to drop IBRS support and accept the caveats, then let's do it as a conscious decision having seen what it would look like, not just drop it quietly because poor Davey is too scared that Linus might shout at him again. :) > If we can be done with the shouty part, I'd actually quite like to have a sensible discussion about when, if ever, we do IBPB on context switch (ptraceability and dumpable have both been suggested) and when, if ever, we set STIPB in userspace. Those seem relevant to the thread. That said - it's really a good read for a technical overview of the issues and patches.
quotheth 9y ago
This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic. The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend only reading the response and avoiding the Linus 'rant'. The rant contains no valuable information, the response is excellent and far more informative. I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool!
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Complaining about downvotes is never cool.
  - quotheth 9y ago
    I'm not complaining. Merely expecting, given that this is not the first time I've posted something similar, and I felt the need to point out the double standard ahead of time this time. Downvote away! I just hope that the hypocrisy is clear. edit: Or there may be a totally non hypocritical reason to downvote me, which I would also encourage.
    - adventured 9y ago
      > I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool! And > Downvote away! You're being far over the top dramatic. It's unnecessary, your setup text did a perfectly fine job of making the argument. The two comments about downvoting detract from the substance.
      - quotheth 9y ago
        Is it over the top dramatic because of the exclamation mark? Regardless, I feel it's important to point out a consistent hypocrisy I've witnessed and experienced. I think it's totally relevant and substantive. edit: I have no desire to continue a metadiscussion on downvoting. I don't care about downvotes, the downvotes are a symptom of an entirely relevant issue; a community that has a ridiculous double standard for Linus. It was not an attempt to attract or prevent downvotes, or to discuss downvotes, or downvoting, or the culture of voting on HN. I brought up downvotes as an example of the underlying issue. Clearly I did a poor job of that as it's led to a number of unrelated comments. I apologize for the clutter that a one-off comment on hypocrisy has caused.
BRAlNlAC 9y ago
>it's likely to kill productivity Possibly, but I don't think that arguments, even heated ones, aren't without benefits that may not be otherwise obtainable. Arguments require passion and commitment, you have to care about something to get heated over it face-to-face and when you, as an adult, get upset over something you are putting your reputation on the line to some extent. This motivates some people. This provokes an interesting question-does googles desire for a very... harmonious work environment have any relationship with their reputation for project ADD?
eevilspock 9y ago
Counter point is that Google, like Intel, puts profits ahead of doing the right thing, selling out its users to advertisers with virtual impunity because those same users are addicted to the "free" stuff that Google gives them. So maybe we need more prominent people like Torvalds calling bullshit on them too. Finally we are starting to get such voices re Facebook, but even those not as honest as Torvalds. See the bashcoder thread for a more hardnose analysis of this article, Torvalds and Intel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539
- cromwellian 9y ago
  Even if I agreed with your sell-out criticism, what makes you think that hurling obscenities and insults at the executives would change that, vs a well written argument that the behavior is wrong and will have consequences that could harm the company? Simply calling something garbage doesn't elicit change, our political system is the perfect example of that. It creates polarization which, due to human nature, makes can make people less motivated to work with you. There's no even any evidence Intel did anything wrong. For decades, the market demanded performance, and VM based cloud computing was created long after speculative execution became an industry wide (not just Intel) optimization. The way we use CPUs has changed, our OSes have changed, the threat model has changed, and the sophistication of attacks has changed. Future CPUs need to be designed from the ground up with modern cloud computing in mind and that's going to take 2 years at least given industry cycles. What do we do in the meantime with our current silicon is the question. Intel seems like they're trying to do the right think by handling failures in retpoline to offer full protection. But maybe the conspiracies are right, but when has an accusation of some conspiratorial behavior ever been solved by people yelling and screaming moron and garbage? It's just not the right way to perform an investigation IMHO.
  - he0001 9y ago
    Like most things we only see one part of these discussions. It might be so that this have built up under several weeks/conversations etc and when nothing happens something needs to be done. In a non-cooperative there’s no boss you can turn to when you are unhappy with the situation, in linux’s case few other actual platforms to “turn” to. What do you do when, online, mostly only have your reputation to influence people. I’m not defending Linus per se, but he do have a really unique position and it’s probably not easy to be in that position and AFAIKT it works. Maybe if it would have been someone else the world would look, most probably, rather different. It’s really easy to criticize, but frankly none of us knows how it is to be in his situation and I guess he has to deal with his fair share of trolls, morons and energy thieves.
p0rkbelly 9y ago
Not just Google. This is standard in any major tech company. His behavior and abhorrent and there is no excuse. Tech should embrace mentoring, learning, constructive criticism, and learning from failures. Yes, this is hopefully a once in a lifetime situation -- but our values need to transcend that. This is not the first time that Linus has swept decency under the carpet. Linus would be such an HR issue at most companies and likely shown the door. If anyone is championing or approving his behavior, this will not win you support and 'points' long term.
- amazingman 9y ago
  I think the context in which Linus exists professionally is perennially misunderstood. IMO he basically has to be this way, or else the kernel would have been effectively stolen by [insert powerful tech company] at various crucial moments throughout its history. I see his particular position in technology as being truly unique, and that it essentially just requires somewhat exaggerated rhetoric and even superficially childish antics to protect the independence of the kernel. This is not to say that Linus’ behavior is a good model for “how engineers should generally behave”. It just isn’t, and anyone behaving this way in a company should almost certainly be fired. I think he’d probably agree, to boot. But I could be wrong about that. P.S. I hope I don’t come across with disagreeing with you about any of what you think tech “should” be. I totally agree with you.
  - quotheth 9y ago
    Can you show me an example where a leader of an OSS project had reasonable discussions with other developers (read: n steps below calling them morons who write garbage code), and as a result their project was "stolen" by a powerful tech company?
    - amazingman 9y ago
      Your question is constructed in just such a way as to make your point for you. Hopefully you’ll see that it’s far too specific of a demand as to truly support your position. Would you provide me with a less specifically bounded question that you think still captures your position on this?
hailk 9y ago
This. For me, one of the more difficult type of engineers to work with aren't people low in tech skills or other traditional lacking, but engineers who can't deal with failings generated by other people, in a rational and civilised manner.   Anyone building anything of modicum importance is going to fail. Moreover, failures can be institutional, i.e any process or lack of process, which significantly increases the chances of failure. These have to be dealt with at an institutional level. If the failure is personal, I.e caused by traits specific to the person, can it be resolved by having a better feedback loop. Many reasons to be angry but very few to express it in a confrontational manner. I have many brilliant friends I wouldn’t work with for the above reason.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
I am finding the comments here about how Linus needs to behave properly, like they do at Google, amusing given how often Google and other for profit companies are portrayed as evil empires and FOSS is portrayed as the only moral antidote to the evils of capitalism. Let Linus swear a little and suddenly those roles are entirely reversed? Really?
- somestag 9y ago
  Isn't that kind of a non sequitur? The idea that "Google is evil" (not that I agree with it) and the idea that "It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize others without inducing flame wars [like at Google]" are arguments that have nothing to do with each other. There is no role reversal, even if we unreservedly accept both premises.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    No, it is not a non sequitur. There is no separating out corporate culture from the fact that it is a corporation. FOSS is not a for profit corporation. Expecting it to function like one is not reasonable. Trying to impose corporate culture as the standard for FOSS is not only not reasonable, it is counterproductive. If you want corporate software, cool. But if you want FOSS to exist at all, there has to be a fundamental acceptance of the fact that it will have a different culture and a different process. I will add that his cussing spree here is in response to a for profit corporation trying to shit all over his project. But, hey, must be totes okay for them to shit on it since they didn't use any cuss words or raise their voice. There is your so called corporate etiquette right there.
    - somestag 9y ago
      I think we disagree on your assumptions. Positive team environment and corporate culture are not inextricably linked. They may overlap depending on the corporation in question, but they are not one in the same. This should be obvious since you can have a positive team environment on teams where no corporation is involved (e.g., hobby projects). Clearly the suggestion that FOSS should have a positive team environment cannot be the same as the suggestion that FOSS should have a corporate culture. Think about how your logic would look flipped around. If leads at Google were encouraged to slap people down when they disagree with their suggestions, then you'd have to suddenly argue that Linus should change his tune because otherwise he'd be fostering a corporate culture, and FOSS must have a different culture than that. Clearly that, too, would be a non sequitur. As for the rest of what you said, I think you know no one is suggesting anything of the sort. There's no reason to straw man here.
peterwwillis 9y ago
Google culture is Google culture, it doesn't prove anything other than what works for Google. Linus culture proves what works for Linus. I've worked at a lot of places with different cultures. You don't need "Google culture" to not work with assholes.
nnq 9y ago
Why is the top comment on this about engineering culture?! Linus is valuable precisely because he occasionally d-slaps people around, waking them up, even when what he says may be factually wrong, and reminding them the at the core the tech must be sane, f people and their feelings! Yeah, it's good to have a 1 in 1000 brilliant people being aholes because it keeps the culture balanced. We need a dose of rascality, and Linus can afford to embody it and seems to like doing it, and he's also good at fixing the consequences of his rants by being reasonable afterwards. (If we're mature enough to accept that this can only be accepted of 1 in 1000 people or something like that, and that obviously not all people are born equal, we can move on and enjoy life.)
- vlovich123 9y ago
  For the most part he actually does a good job staying away from personal attacks. The problem is that his approach isn't going to yield great results. For there's 2 problematic parts to this e-mail. The first is the personal attack when he calls Intel engineers morons. That 1 little unnecessary addon is uncalled for because it's quite reasonable that there's a lot of politics going on at Intel that's interfering with the engineering work. Could be that the next chip they're taping out can't be fixed properly without delaying & impacting revenue in a way that execs won't allow. Could be that there's legal reasons whereby Intel's "fix" is desirable from a management perspective to continue their denial of a problem with their chips to win or reduce the costs of the class actions. Or it could be any number of a hundred other reasons that the public isn't privy to. The second, & this is pure speculation on my part that this didn't happen, is that he should have followed this in an offline discussion with the engineer. This public shaming doesn't do any good & just entrenches the frontline representatives of Intel to be antagonistic with Linus rather than to be his allies. I feel like if Linus wanted to be truly effective here in impacting Intel's direction (especially given their constant need to minimize the scale & scope of this problem) he could have followed up with the engineer off-list & gone "your explanation doesn't make any sense. can you clue me in on what's the motivation behind this approach?". It saves the engineer public embarrassment, it gets him an ally within Intel & it lets him have strategic information on what is motivating Intel engineers (consider - did his finger to nVidia in any way improve relations between Linux & nVidia?). Now if he did that & the answer still wasn't OK then he's free to use his bully pulpit as he wishes, but I suspect it was just instinctive & a build up of his frustration with Intel's handling of this whole matter.
throwawayg00g 9y ago
I chuckled when I saw this. Google processes and code reviews are extremely passive aggressive and very much inefficient, focusing on things that do not matter to the end user. Lots of subtle politics going to do the smallest thing. Lack of care and quality shows. Google is hardly what one would want to emulate. It may be a business success but that is about it; it's as dysfunctional as anything of its size. Funnily the first core value is focus on the user. Almost no one there ever cares or thinks from the perspective of the user in decision making. Users are incidental to the things that happen there. Kool-aid much?!
donatj 9y ago
See, I feel the opposite. I dream of working on something where the criticism is so honest. Where I don’t have to read between the lines to understand how big of a deal a person considers an issue. Pussyfooting to lessen the blow benefits no one in the long run. I often end up running my code reviews by other people first to make sure they’re gentle enough because I know people are overly sensitive/attached to their work. It’s a stupid dance and such a waste of everyone’s time. If we could just be honest with each other we could build great things. I single handledly blame this culture of being nice instead of honest on the total undeniable loss of software qualified across the industry.
- Jaxan 9y ago
  Why not both? I think OP means that we should be nice and honest.
  - donatj 9y ago
    I posit there is no nice way to reflect when something is actual garbage. When it should go into the trash bin instead of being merged, even with modifications. It’s never going to be nice to hear. In lessening the blow you lose the message. You lose the true meaning. You lie.
    - russdpale 9y ago
      Or it just means someone lacks a proper grasp of the English language! I find a thesaurus is handy.
      - donatj 9y ago
        Please use your thesaurus and enlighten me to how then I say “this code is garbage” in a nice way, while clearly communicating the full meaning of: - this code is bad - you should reassess your skills and values that lead you to believe this was good - your worldview may be flawed, look into that - don’t do this again - you should probably feel bad too, to attach emotion to strengthen your memories of this to make this a learning experience
supergirl 9y ago
what does work culture have to do with any of this? you want people to always behave as if they are at work? I rather not. companies have no desire to allow any kind of speech that would hamper productivity or create bad PR.
chisleu 9y ago
I agree wholeheartedly that it is not a good way to live. I don't enjoy it. > I've worked at a lot of places where engineer got into heated shouting matches. It's is not a way to increase the probability of zeroing in on a problem, or reaching agreement faster. That hasn't been my experience. A boss at a previous job and I often had heated discussions about technologies and direction. It worked for us. We came to great solutions that neither of us started advocating. Years after I left, we are still good friends. One lady we worked with started keeping a nerf gun on her desk if we got too close to her while arguing. This was the problem for me. It wasn't good for us to fall back on raised voices to accomplish discussion. It accomplished the goals, but it did it in a way that was bad for our psyche. Even if we are both willing participants in that, we were effecting others who were both not willing participants AND unwilling to speak up because we were both her senior. So I say fuck that. There is a way to say what needs to be said without being an asshole or spending time trying to make it politically correct. You just have to say the core of what you are trying to say, without the asshole flair attached to it.
chisleu 9y ago
Google culture is jerky in it's own way though. The demonization of James Damore was disgusting. Trying to silence educated voices from responding to request for comments on the topic is wrong.
qu4z-2 9y ago
For what it's worth, I would definitely rather work under Linus than at Google. Google seems, from speaking to people who work there, thoroughly unpleasant.

jessaustin 9y ago

Is this public discussion an attempt to "zero in" on this problem? Does anyone outside of Intel "agree" with their current approach? This is a more reasonable situation for the Torvalds method than many others in which he uses it.

quotheth 9y ago
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html I would recommend reading this response. Here are some great excerpts: > That's why my initial idea, as implemented in this RFC patchset, was to stick with IBRS on Skylake, and use retpoline everywhere else. I'll give you "garbage patches", but they weren't being "just mindlessly sent around". If we're going to drop IBRS support and accept the caveats, then let's do it as a conscious decision having seen what it would look like, not just drop it quietly because poor Davey is too scared that Linus might shout at him again. :) > If we can be done with the shouty part, I'd actually quite like to have a sensible discussion about when, if ever, we do IBPB on context switch (ptraceability and dumpable have both been suggested) and when, if ever, we set STIPB in userspace. Those seem relevant to the thread. That said - it's really a good read for a technical overview of the issues and patches.

quotheth 9y ago

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic. The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend only reading the response and avoiding the Linus 'rant'. The rant contains no valuable information, the response is excellent and far more informative. I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool!

jessaustin 9y ago
Complaining about downvotes is never cool.
- quotheth 9y ago
  I'm not complaining. Merely expecting, given that this is not the first time I've posted something similar, and I felt the need to point out the double standard ahead of time this time. Downvote away! I just hope that the hypocrisy is clear. edit: Or there may be a totally non hypocritical reason to downvote me, which I would also encourage.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool! And > Downvote away! You're being far over the top dramatic. It's unnecessary, your setup text did a perfectly fine job of making the argument. The two comments about downvoting detract from the substance.
    - quotheth 9y ago
      Is it over the top dramatic because of the exclamation mark? Regardless, I feel it's important to point out a consistent hypocrisy I've witnessed and experienced. I think it's totally relevant and substantive. edit: I have no desire to continue a metadiscussion on downvoting. I don't care about downvotes, the downvotes are a symptom of an entirely relevant issue; a community that has a ridiculous double standard for Linus. It was not an attempt to attract or prevent downvotes, or to discuss downvotes, or downvoting, or the culture of voting on HN. I brought up downvotes as an example of the underlying issue. Clearly I did a poor job of that as it's led to a number of unrelated comments. I apologize for the clutter that a one-off comment on hypocrisy has caused.

BRAlNlAC 9y ago

>it's likely to kill productivity Possibly, but I don't think that arguments, even heated ones, aren't without benefits that may not be otherwise obtainable. Arguments require passion and commitment, you have to care about something to get heated over it face-to-face and when you, as an adult, get upset over something you are putting your reputation on the line to some extent. This motivates some people. This provokes an interesting question-does googles desire for a very... harmonious work environment have any relationship with their reputation for project ADD?

eevilspock 9y ago

Counter point is that Google, like Intel, puts profits ahead of doing the right thing, selling out its users to advertisers with virtual impunity because those same users are addicted to the "free" stuff that Google gives them. So maybe we need more prominent people like Torvalds calling bullshit on them too. Finally we are starting to get such voices re Facebook, but even those not as honest as Torvalds. See the bashcoder thread for a more hardnose analysis of this article, Torvalds and Intel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202539

cromwellian 9y ago
Even if I agreed with your sell-out criticism, what makes you think that hurling obscenities and insults at the executives would change that, vs a well written argument that the behavior is wrong and will have consequences that could harm the company? Simply calling something garbage doesn't elicit change, our political system is the perfect example of that. It creates polarization which, due to human nature, makes can make people less motivated to work with you. There's no even any evidence Intel did anything wrong. For decades, the market demanded performance, and VM based cloud computing was created long after speculative execution became an industry wide (not just Intel) optimization. The way we use CPUs has changed, our OSes have changed, the threat model has changed, and the sophistication of attacks has changed. Future CPUs need to be designed from the ground up with modern cloud computing in mind and that's going to take 2 years at least given industry cycles. What do we do in the meantime with our current silicon is the question. Intel seems like they're trying to do the right think by handling failures in retpoline to offer full protection. But maybe the conspiracies are right, but when has an accusation of some conspiratorial behavior ever been solved by people yelling and screaming moron and garbage? It's just not the right way to perform an investigation IMHO.
- he0001 9y ago
  Like most things we only see one part of these discussions. It might be so that this have built up under several weeks/conversations etc and when nothing happens something needs to be done. In a non-cooperative there’s no boss you can turn to when you are unhappy with the situation, in linux’s case few other actual platforms to “turn” to. What do you do when, online, mostly only have your reputation to influence people. I’m not defending Linus per se, but he do have a really unique position and it’s probably not easy to be in that position and AFAIKT it works. Maybe if it would have been someone else the world would look, most probably, rather different. It’s really easy to criticize, but frankly none of us knows how it is to be in his situation and I guess he has to deal with his fair share of trolls, morons and energy thieves.

p0rkbelly 9y ago

Not just Google. This is standard in any major tech company. His behavior and abhorrent and there is no excuse. Tech should embrace mentoring, learning, constructive criticism, and learning from failures. Yes, this is hopefully a once in a lifetime situation -- but our values need to transcend that. This is not the first time that Linus has swept decency under the carpet. Linus would be such an HR issue at most companies and likely shown the door. If anyone is championing or approving his behavior, this will not win you support and 'points' long term.

amazingman 9y ago
I think the context in which Linus exists professionally is perennially misunderstood. IMO he basically has to be this way, or else the kernel would have been effectively stolen by [insert powerful tech company] at various crucial moments throughout its history. I see his particular position in technology as being truly unique, and that it essentially just requires somewhat exaggerated rhetoric and even superficially childish antics to protect the independence of the kernel. This is not to say that Linus’ behavior is a good model for “how engineers should generally behave”. It just isn’t, and anyone behaving this way in a company should almost certainly be fired. I think he’d probably agree, to boot. But I could be wrong about that. P.S. I hope I don’t come across with disagreeing with you about any of what you think tech “should” be. I totally agree with you.
- quotheth 9y ago
  Can you show me an example where a leader of an OSS project had reasonable discussions with other developers (read: n steps below calling them morons who write garbage code), and as a result their project was "stolen" by a powerful tech company?
  - amazingman 9y ago
    Your question is constructed in just such a way as to make your point for you. Hopefully you’ll see that it’s far too specific of a demand as to truly support your position. Would you provide me with a less specifically bounded question that you think still captures your position on this?

hailk 9y ago

This. For me, one of the more difficult type of engineers to work with aren't people low in tech skills or other traditional lacking, but engineers who can't deal with failings generated by other people, in a rational and civilised manner.   Anyone building anything of modicum importance is going to fail. Moreover, failures can be institutional, i.e any process or lack of process, which significantly increases the chances of failure. These have to be dealt with at an institutional level. If the failure is personal, I.e caused by traits specific to the person, can it be resolved by having a better feedback loop. Many reasons to be angry but very few to express it in a confrontational manner. I have many brilliant friends I wouldn’t work with for the above reason.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

I am finding the comments here about how Linus needs to behave properly, like they do at Google, amusing given how often Google and other for profit companies are portrayed as evil empires and FOSS is portrayed as the only moral antidote to the evils of capitalism. Let Linus swear a little and suddenly those roles are entirely reversed? Really?

somestag 9y ago
Isn't that kind of a non sequitur? The idea that "Google is evil" (not that I agree with it) and the idea that "It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize others without inducing flame wars [like at Google]" are arguments that have nothing to do with each other. There is no role reversal, even if we unreservedly accept both premises.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  No, it is not a non sequitur. There is no separating out corporate culture from the fact that it is a corporation. FOSS is not a for profit corporation. Expecting it to function like one is not reasonable. Trying to impose corporate culture as the standard for FOSS is not only not reasonable, it is counterproductive. If you want corporate software, cool. But if you want FOSS to exist at all, there has to be a fundamental acceptance of the fact that it will have a different culture and a different process. I will add that his cussing spree here is in response to a for profit corporation trying to shit all over his project. But, hey, must be totes okay for them to shit on it since they didn't use any cuss words or raise their voice. There is your so called corporate etiquette right there.
  - somestag 9y ago
    I think we disagree on your assumptions. Positive team environment and corporate culture are not inextricably linked. They may overlap depending on the corporation in question, but they are not one in the same. This should be obvious since you can have a positive team environment on teams where no corporation is involved (e.g., hobby projects). Clearly the suggestion that FOSS should have a positive team environment cannot be the same as the suggestion that FOSS should have a corporate culture. Think about how your logic would look flipped around. If leads at Google were encouraged to slap people down when they disagree with their suggestions, then you'd have to suddenly argue that Linus should change his tune because otherwise he'd be fostering a corporate culture, and FOSS must have a different culture than that. Clearly that, too, would be a non sequitur. As for the rest of what you said, I think you know no one is suggesting anything of the sort. There's no reason to straw man here.

peterwwillis 9y ago

Google culture is Google culture, it doesn't prove anything other than what works for Google. Linus culture proves what works for Linus. I've worked at a lot of places with different cultures. You don't need "Google culture" to not work with assholes.

nnq 9y ago

Why is the top comment on this about engineering culture?! Linus is valuable precisely because he occasionally d-slaps people around, waking them up, even when what he says may be factually wrong, and reminding them the at the core the tech must be sane, f people and their feelings! Yeah, it's good to have a 1 in 1000 brilliant people being aholes because it keeps the culture balanced. We need a dose of rascality, and Linus can afford to embody it and seems to like doing it, and he's also good at fixing the consequences of his rants by being reasonable afterwards. (If we're mature enough to accept that this can only be accepted of 1 in 1000 people or something like that, and that obviously not all people are born equal, we can move on and enjoy life.)

vlovich123 9y ago
For the most part he actually does a good job staying away from personal attacks. The problem is that his approach isn't going to yield great results. For there's 2 problematic parts to this e-mail. The first is the personal attack when he calls Intel engineers morons. That 1 little unnecessary addon is uncalled for because it's quite reasonable that there's a lot of politics going on at Intel that's interfering with the engineering work. Could be that the next chip they're taping out can't be fixed properly without delaying & impacting revenue in a way that execs won't allow. Could be that there's legal reasons whereby Intel's "fix" is desirable from a management perspective to continue their denial of a problem with their chips to win or reduce the costs of the class actions. Or it could be any number of a hundred other reasons that the public isn't privy to. The second, & this is pure speculation on my part that this didn't happen, is that he should have followed this in an offline discussion with the engineer. This public shaming doesn't do any good & just entrenches the frontline representatives of Intel to be antagonistic with Linus rather than to be his allies. I feel like if Linus wanted to be truly effective here in impacting Intel's direction (especially given their constant need to minimize the scale & scope of this problem) he could have followed up with the engineer off-list & gone "your explanation doesn't make any sense. can you clue me in on what's the motivation behind this approach?". It saves the engineer public embarrassment, it gets him an ally within Intel & it lets him have strategic information on what is motivating Intel engineers (consider - did his finger to nVidia in any way improve relations between Linux & nVidia?). Now if he did that & the answer still wasn't OK then he's free to use his bully pulpit as he wishes, but I suspect it was just instinctive & a build up of his frustration with Intel's handling of this whole matter.

throwawayg00g 9y ago

I chuckled when I saw this. Google processes and code reviews are extremely passive aggressive and very much inefficient, focusing on things that do not matter to the end user. Lots of subtle politics going to do the smallest thing. Lack of care and quality shows. Google is hardly what one would want to emulate. It may be a business success but that is about it; it's as dysfunctional as anything of its size. Funnily the first core value is focus on the user. Almost no one there ever cares or thinks from the perspective of the user in decision making. Users are incidental to the things that happen there. Kool-aid much?!

donatj 9y ago

See, I feel the opposite. I dream of working on something where the criticism is so honest. Where I don’t have to read between the lines to understand how big of a deal a person considers an issue. Pussyfooting to lessen the blow benefits no one in the long run. I often end up running my code reviews by other people first to make sure they’re gentle enough because I know people are overly sensitive/attached to their work. It’s a stupid dance and such a waste of everyone’s time. If we could just be honest with each other we could build great things. I single handledly blame this culture of being nice instead of honest on the total undeniable loss of software qualified across the industry.

Jaxan 9y ago
Why not both? I think OP means that we should be nice and honest.
- donatj 9y ago
  I posit there is no nice way to reflect when something is actual garbage. When it should go into the trash bin instead of being merged, even with modifications. It’s never going to be nice to hear. In lessening the blow you lose the message. You lose the true meaning. You lie.
  - russdpale 9y ago
    Or it just means someone lacks a proper grasp of the English language! I find a thesaurus is handy.
    - donatj 9y ago
      Please use your thesaurus and enlighten me to how then I say “this code is garbage” in a nice way, while clearly communicating the full meaning of: - this code is bad - you should reassess your skills and values that lead you to believe this was good - your worldview may be flawed, look into that - don’t do this again - you should probably feel bad too, to attach emotion to strengthen your memories of this to make this a learning experience

supergirl 9y ago

what does work culture have to do with any of this? you want people to always behave as if they are at work? I rather not. companies have no desire to allow any kind of speech that would hamper productivity or create bad PR.

chisleu 9y ago

I agree wholeheartedly that it is not a good way to live. I don't enjoy it. > I've worked at a lot of places where engineer got into heated shouting matches. It's is not a way to increase the probability of zeroing in on a problem, or reaching agreement faster. That hasn't been my experience. A boss at a previous job and I often had heated discussions about technologies and direction. It worked for us. We came to great solutions that neither of us started advocating. Years after I left, we are still good friends. One lady we worked with started keeping a nerf gun on her desk if we got too close to her while arguing. This was the problem for me. It wasn't good for us to fall back on raised voices to accomplish discussion. It accomplished the goals, but it did it in a way that was bad for our psyche. Even if we are both willing participants in that, we were effecting others who were both not willing participants AND unwilling to speak up because we were both her senior. So I say fuck that. There is a way to say what needs to be said without being an asshole or spending time trying to make it politically correct. You just have to say the core of what you are trying to say, without the asshole flair attached to it.

chisleu 9y ago

Google culture is jerky in it's own way though. The demonization of James Damore was disgusting. Trying to silence educated voices from responding to request for comments on the topic is wrong.

qu4z-2 9y ago

For what it's worth, I would definitely rather work under Linus than at Google. Google seems, from speaking to people who work there, thoroughly unpleasant.