10 ms·

> people who are able to accomplish their goals by rallying others to their cause. Like Linus.

jjeaff 8y ago
Is anyone really rallied to the cause by Linus himself? I think the product is the only real draw. With the exception of a select few that simply want to work with someone as high profile and legendary as Linus.
- nomel 8y ago
  Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obviously a happy medium somewhere in there, and Linus isn’t it, but I would much prefer working with a Linus than someone polite. From the history I’ve read, he’s not holding grudges, or necessarily attacking people, he’s attacking dumb approaches and ideas, which happen to be authored by people. At least that’s how I’ve always interpreted his rants.
  - quadrangle 8y ago
    Politeness should be low-cost. People going out of their way to make everything super nice are treating everyone as though they have fragile egos. What people really want is to just know technically and precisely what is right and what is wrong so they can improve — leaving out all of the personal crap, positive and negative, except in the ways that people working together have normal human social relationships. So, like we can chat about our lives in downtime, water-cooler talk, and we can get to know one another. Extra politeness doesn't do that, it's just superficial. This is what I'm saying: https://www.npr.org/2018/06/04/616127481/when-everything-clicks-the-power-of-judgment-free-learning https://www.npr.org/2018/06/04/616127481/when-everything-cli...
    - picsao 8y ago
      >Politeness should be low-cost. People going out of their way to make everything super nice are treating everyone as though they have fragile egos. Sir, your brunt attack on the concepts of honor and identity disgusts me. If I had my pistols with me, to silence that dissent in a duel.
    - marmot777 8y ago
      It's quite possible to be direct without being an asshole. Some people never learn this for some reason.
  - mindways 8y ago
    > If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! ...but that can be done politely, or not(†). In my experience, being polite doesn't add a high cost to calling someone out, makes the person being called out less upset on average, and generally improves the quality of ensuing answers/discourse (because those involved aren't burning emotional energy on pushing their anger to the background). Both of those latter two things are good. Sure, there are some people who can take a flaming load of unfiltered criticism to the face and remain unfazed, but assuming that that's the _norm_ doesn't seem especially realistic. († = Or in between - "polite" is not a boolean. It's not even a numeric measurement; one can be polite/rude in different sorts of ways.)
    - efaref 8y ago
      The cost of excessive politeness can be that the person doesn't get the message. I've seen people waste hours on the wrong problem because the person giving feedback was overly polite, and also things just reach an impasse with no progress made because everyone's being too polite to point out the elephant in the room. I think a better word is "respectful." You can be direct and blunt, as long as you're respectful.
      - JohnBooty 8y ago
        Is anybody really suggesting politeness as a substitute for clearly stating the problem and expectations? I mean there are really two axes here, right? You can be rude+vague, or polite+precise, etc. Precision ^ | | Rudeness <-----|-----> Politeness | | v Vagueness
  - lovich 8y ago
    I don't know that I agree with your idea of polite To me, at least, polite in a code review is, "This commit is bad because of [X]" Brilliant assholes are the the second best to work with because they give the information polite coworkers do concatenated with ", and that's because you are a completely incompetent engineer and should rethink your career" or something similar. The kind of polite you are referring to would be one of two people. Option A:The sociopaths trying to control their image in an organization so they can gain more money/power Option B:Actually incompetent people trying to protect their job because the brilliant asshole who is the leader would rather fire anyone who annoyed them instead of mentoring them
    - bena 8y ago
      I think people get confused. They see people they think are hard-assed, no nonsense types, but don't exactly get what's happening. They conflate how they felt with what was said. For instance, Bob is just starting out as a junior dev. He gets pulled in by Carl. Carl is project lead and everyone admires him. Carl is smart, quick, and insightful. He's seen as a bit of a hard-ass, but he's never wrong. He cuts through bullshit. So he pulls Bob in. And he tells Bob, "I've reviewed your last commit, and here are problems X, Y, and Z with it. X causes this. Y is deprecated and B is how we should be handling the issue now. Z gives the wrong result for this set of cases." And Bob leaves and Bob feels bad. He feels just reamed. Seemed like nothing he did was right. So he gets this impression in his head that Carl really laid into him. Fast forward 10 years and Bob is now a project lead and he wants to emulate Carl. Because despite how hard Carl was, Bob learned a lot. He's a lot better than he was back then. Now, he doesn't think he'll ever be Carl, but he's still good. And Bob is reviewing Dave's code, and Dave's code is just as bad as Bob's was 10 years ago. So Bob calls in Dave. And he lays into Dave, "Just what the fuck do they teach in school now? Look at what you did here. You fucked it up. Don't you know about A? Or B? You have to do better." And Bob feels good, he gave a "Carl"-style rant and now Dave will get better. But reread how each approached their junior. Carl didn't attack Bob at all. He focused on the code itself. Bob internalized the criticisms of the code and took it personally. So when it was Bob's turn to criticize, he made it personal. Of all the lessons he was given that day, he missed the most important one. So, you see "This commit is bad because of [X]" as polite, because you aren't the type to internalize criticism of work as criticism of you. People who do internalize it, see it as one and the same and feel that comment as "brilliant asshole". The kind of brilliant asshole you describe, aka Bob, hangs on a bit longer because he's not bad at his core job, it's just that he has a tendency to handle people poorly.
  - marmot777 8y ago
    > I can’t stand working with polite people. LOL. I think you mean you can't stand working with people who don't get right to the point. I'm guessing anyone reading HK agrees.
  - rnmjr 8y ago
    Are we not perhaps mistaking political correctness and politeness?
    - sverhagen 8y ago
      We're probably more confusing political correctness and politeness with not speaking up.
  - bluecalm 8y ago
    You're in the minority but you're not the only one. You can see the sentiment expressed about Rust community a lot. Super nice - don't ever say anything that may upset someone - kind of atmosphere is off-putting to many. I for one wouldn't want to work in such environment but I would love to work with Linus. The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others. They will keep quiet or look to move somewhere else but will rarely complain. Meanwhile easily upset and less stable people complain more readily and usually louder to force others to adopt their preferred style of communication (which often comes down to "don't criticize me and use the kind of language I prefer")
    - mathw 8y ago
      You can be super nice and not upset anybody without compromising on technical rigour. > The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others. I would argue this is entirely false. If they can't adjust to others finding their behaviour offensive by not being offensive, they're not "better at adjusting to others". Yes, this is a two-way street, but that doesn't automatically mean everyone has to be comfortable with the guy who swears at you and calls you an idiot for writing a patch they didn't like. We can have technical discussions without personal attacks, without rude language, without racial or sexist slurs. We manage it at my work all the time, although I for one think I could still do this better. It's difficult when we grow up in a culture which glorifies violence and "macho" behaviour, where most of us in the field are male and have been told all our lives that we're expected to be strong and independent and assertive. And honestly, if you can't find a way to explain why an idea is bad on a technical level without offending someone, maybe you don't have a good enough reason to criticise it, or you need to think about it some more to figure out why you don't like it apart from your initial reaction.
      - repolfx 8y ago
        You can be super nice and not upset anybody without compromising on technical rigour. That's the ideal. In practice there are always people, a minority, who can't or won't separate criticism of their work from criticism of themselves regardless of how nicely it's put. And then you have a problem. Fortunately these people are mostly outside the technical realm, where direct criticism of work is very rare.
  - olavk 8y ago
    So you are equating politeness with not halting bad ideas. That is not politeness, that is incompetence. Competent people would halt bad ides, but it can be done in different ways: - Abrasive: This idea is the dumbest ever and you are an idiot that deserves to die. - Constructive: This idea have problems X, Y and Z. - Polite: Thank you for the effort, but I see problems X, Y and Z with the idea in its current form. A lot of the discussion here is confusing the question of competence with the question of tone. You can be competent and have a nice tone and you can certainly be incompetent and have an abrasive tone. I can understand not having the patience for politeness, but personal insults are obviously counterproductive.
    - jdmichal 8y ago
      Your "polite" has moved way too far into manipulative / passive-aggressive with weasel words like "I see" and "in its current form". If you are in a position of power like Linus, where your perception is the project's reality, couching such realities as if your perception is the only problem will lead to fights and a lot more resentment. Just saying, "Thanks, but I won't accept this until X, Y, and Z are corrected," is still polite, but also gives a clear course of action for the recipient. And yes, some people read directness as rudeness. You can't help them.
      - olavk 8y ago
        Why would you start fighting and/or feel resentment if you received a reply like the "polite" example? Genuine question, I don't see the issue but I'm ready to learn.
        OmIsMyShield 8y ago
        Not the parent - but I think it's because it can be seen as too subjective and too open for debate. Like: Oh, so one person opines that x, y, and z are not for them, let's debate it (or outright dismiss it). And the resultant debate might well be polarising or destructive by itself. Without knowing what the parent experienced to cause their take on this type of politeness I'm just guessing, though. It is interesting because I think I see a cultural thing here too: in some cultures "I feel" and "I see" and "currently" are as firm as "unacceptable until it changes" - just worded in a way that conveys respect for the author. But in other cultures it is read as vacillating. Dunno. Guesswork, as I said.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - crispyambulance 8y ago
    In the email Linus indicated that this is result of a confrontation with his community. They basically performed an intervention and he has accepted it. The guy himself admits that something is seriously wrong, and for years he clearly has attacked people, personally, and folks have quit, and many have called him out for it. This is a positive change. No need to convert it into an slam on politeness. It's not like the world is being overrun by well-meaning polite people being ineffectual. Assholes who don't know when to stop, on the other hand, that's a serious problem!
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Absolutely. A big part of the problem with many projects, or even companies, is that leadership is too soft and so you end up surrounded by incompetent individuals who either through delusion, or Dunning Kruger, have difficulty assessing their own ability. This results in incredibly inefficient and 'noisy' (as in signal:noise ratio) working environments. 'Hard' leadership gets rid of the slack and is willing to tell people when they're screwing up. This means you're going to be surrounded by the best, and anybody that's not carrying 100% of their weight is going to get removed. Of course you can have a problem there if the leadership is brutal and incompetent, but brutal and competent is a phenomenally desirable mix -- and that really sums up Linus, perhaps to extreme on both sides of the equation. And in my opinion that really sums up many of the most successful leaders, both past and present. Though of course one huge difference between a Steve Jobs and a Torvalds is that Linus' work and behavior is, like Linux, completely open. Steve Jobs' was able to keep his persona restrained to within corporate avenues, with the rest of the world shown an extremely sculpted and fake image, the depths of contrast between the two only coming out after his death.
  - marmot777 8y ago
    There are plenty of examples of great leaders who were direct, driven, and hard, yet still treated people with respect. It's not an easy trick to pull of, which is why people like Steve Jobs just said fuck it.
    - Lio 8y ago
      Could you post a few examples? Woz seems like a nice guy and Warren Buffet likewise. Both seems to have worked in small teams.
      - marmot777 8y ago
        What are Larry Page and Sergey Brin's reputation in this regard? Since we're talking about the open source world, how about Guido van Rossum? Paul Graham seems like he's probably a direct yet civil guy. http://paulgraham.com/safe.html http://paulgraham.com/safe.html Elon Musk isn't abusive. He extremely driven and demanding but that's not the same as abusive. I could expand the list quite a bit if you want but do you really believe it'd be a challenge for me to list important leaders who aren't assholes? BTW, I don't know these people so I might get it wrong regarding some of the people I'd list.
- Accacin 8y ago
  It's not just about him being the creator of Linux, it's about how much you could learn from working with him.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
JohnBooty 8y ago
Certainly he has done far, far, far more good than bad. I don't think anybody feels otherwise. I would say he's something of a hero to me! He has certainly rallied many to his cause. As much good as he has done, could he do some things better? Linus certainly feels so. Interesting that so many here seem doubt Linus' own assertion.
- supernovae 8y ago
  Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. It creates a vicious cycle of absurdity - the one where people appease the anger to try and achieve some good not realizing how much the bad influences the culture of the movement/organization/group. No one is perfect, but the community for far to long treated an imperfect man as if he could do no wrong - to its own detriment. Not in quality of software, no one disputes that - but in quality of life and respect for other human beings and other views/ideas. I think it's terrible we accept this idea that it takes an asshole to make a community
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    > Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. I have. The problem was not so much the things he wrote in public but what he said (that couldn't be documented) or probably told the bosses (which also could not be documented.) He was a (mostly) well mannered and soft spoken guy esp. compared to the image of Linus, but he made me quit my then dream job and I'm pretty sure I'd preferred working with Linus. Also in school I had another one: well behaving, soft spoken (mostly) but who turned out didn't care about others except as a way to get what he wanted. I'm really happy to not work a place where I get yelled at either but at least Linus seems fair so I think I'd prefer him. It's also interesting to see him admitting it might be a problem in his own way: wanting to ralk to someone, joking about tooling, asking for ideas.
    - serversystem 8y ago
      I think he's like that in maillists and not in person as are many real life geeks/keyboard warriors?
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
You gain followers when you work for a the benefit for others. You lose followers when you treat people badly. Belittling people in a public forum is bad behaviour. I'm amazed its taken so long for the penny to drop. This is in any half decent company's Anti-Bullying training. It's not like you need to be particularly empathetic to learn this stuff.

Is anyone really rallied to the cause by Linus himself? I think the product is the only real draw. With the exception of a select few that simply want to work with someone as high profile and legendary as Linus.

nomel 8y ago
Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obviously a happy medium somewhere in there, and Linus isn’t it, but I would much prefer working with a Linus than someone polite. From the history I’ve read, he’s not holding grudges, or necessarily attacking people, he’s attacking dumb approaches and ideas, which happen to be authored by people. At least that’s how I’ve always interpreted his rants.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  Politeness should be low-cost. People going out of their way to make everything super nice are treating everyone as though they have fragile egos. What people really want is to just know technically and precisely what is right and what is wrong so they can improve — leaving out all of the personal crap, positive and negative, except in the ways that people working together have normal human social relationships. So, like we can chat about our lives in downtime, water-cooler talk, and we can get to know one another. Extra politeness doesn't do that, it's just superficial. This is what I'm saying: https://www.npr.org/2018/06/04/616127481/when-everything-clicks-the-power-of-judgment-free-learning https://www.npr.org/2018/06/04/616127481/when-everything-cli...
  - picsao 8y ago
    >Politeness should be low-cost. People going out of their way to make everything super nice are treating everyone as though they have fragile egos. Sir, your brunt attack on the concepts of honor and identity disgusts me. If I had my pistols with me, to silence that dissent in a duel.
  - marmot777 8y ago
    It's quite possible to be direct without being an asshole. Some people never learn this for some reason.
- mindways 8y ago
  > If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! ...but that can be done politely, or not(†). In my experience, being polite doesn't add a high cost to calling someone out, makes the person being called out less upset on average, and generally improves the quality of ensuing answers/discourse (because those involved aren't burning emotional energy on pushing their anger to the background). Both of those latter two things are good. Sure, there are some people who can take a flaming load of unfiltered criticism to the face and remain unfazed, but assuming that that's the _norm_ doesn't seem especially realistic. († = Or in between - "polite" is not a boolean. It's not even a numeric measurement; one can be polite/rude in different sorts of ways.)
  - efaref 8y ago
    The cost of excessive politeness can be that the person doesn't get the message. I've seen people waste hours on the wrong problem because the person giving feedback was overly polite, and also things just reach an impasse with no progress made because everyone's being too polite to point out the elephant in the room. I think a better word is "respectful." You can be direct and blunt, as long as you're respectful.
    - JohnBooty 8y ago
      Is anybody really suggesting politeness as a substitute for clearly stating the problem and expectations? I mean there are really two axes here, right? You can be rude+vague, or polite+precise, etc. Precision ^ | | Rudeness <-----|-----> Politeness | | v Vagueness
- lovich 8y ago
  I don't know that I agree with your idea of polite To me, at least, polite in a code review is, "This commit is bad because of [X]" Brilliant assholes are the the second best to work with because they give the information polite coworkers do concatenated with ", and that's because you are a completely incompetent engineer and should rethink your career" or something similar. The kind of polite you are referring to would be one of two people. Option A:The sociopaths trying to control their image in an organization so they can gain more money/power Option B:Actually incompetent people trying to protect their job because the brilliant asshole who is the leader would rather fire anyone who annoyed them instead of mentoring them
  - bena 8y ago
    I think people get confused. They see people they think are hard-assed, no nonsense types, but don't exactly get what's happening. They conflate how they felt with what was said. For instance, Bob is just starting out as a junior dev. He gets pulled in by Carl. Carl is project lead and everyone admires him. Carl is smart, quick, and insightful. He's seen as a bit of a hard-ass, but he's never wrong. He cuts through bullshit. So he pulls Bob in. And he tells Bob, "I've reviewed your last commit, and here are problems X, Y, and Z with it. X causes this. Y is deprecated and B is how we should be handling the issue now. Z gives the wrong result for this set of cases." And Bob leaves and Bob feels bad. He feels just reamed. Seemed like nothing he did was right. So he gets this impression in his head that Carl really laid into him. Fast forward 10 years and Bob is now a project lead and he wants to emulate Carl. Because despite how hard Carl was, Bob learned a lot. He's a lot better than he was back then. Now, he doesn't think he'll ever be Carl, but he's still good. And Bob is reviewing Dave's code, and Dave's code is just as bad as Bob's was 10 years ago. So Bob calls in Dave. And he lays into Dave, "Just what the fuck do they teach in school now? Look at what you did here. You fucked it up. Don't you know about A? Or B? You have to do better." And Bob feels good, he gave a "Carl"-style rant and now Dave will get better. But reread how each approached their junior. Carl didn't attack Bob at all. He focused on the code itself. Bob internalized the criticisms of the code and took it personally. So when it was Bob's turn to criticize, he made it personal. Of all the lessons he was given that day, he missed the most important one. So, you see "This commit is bad because of [X]" as polite, because you aren't the type to internalize criticism of work as criticism of you. People who do internalize it, see it as one and the same and feel that comment as "brilliant asshole". The kind of brilliant asshole you describe, aka Bob, hangs on a bit longer because he's not bad at his core job, it's just that he has a tendency to handle people poorly.
- marmot777 8y ago
  > I can’t stand working with polite people. LOL. I think you mean you can't stand working with people who don't get right to the point. I'm guessing anyone reading HK agrees.
- rnmjr 8y ago
  Are we not perhaps mistaking political correctness and politeness?
  - sverhagen 8y ago
    We're probably more confusing political correctness and politeness with not speaking up.
- bluecalm 8y ago
  You're in the minority but you're not the only one. You can see the sentiment expressed about Rust community a lot. Super nice - don't ever say anything that may upset someone - kind of atmosphere is off-putting to many. I for one wouldn't want to work in such environment but I would love to work with Linus. The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others. They will keep quiet or look to move somewhere else but will rarely complain. Meanwhile easily upset and less stable people complain more readily and usually louder to force others to adopt their preferred style of communication (which often comes down to "don't criticize me and use the kind of language I prefer")
  - mathw 8y ago
    You can be super nice and not upset anybody without compromising on technical rigour. > The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others. I would argue this is entirely false. If they can't adjust to others finding their behaviour offensive by not being offensive, they're not "better at adjusting to others". Yes, this is a two-way street, but that doesn't automatically mean everyone has to be comfortable with the guy who swears at you and calls you an idiot for writing a patch they didn't like. We can have technical discussions without personal attacks, without rude language, without racial or sexist slurs. We manage it at my work all the time, although I for one think I could still do this better. It's difficult when we grow up in a culture which glorifies violence and "macho" behaviour, where most of us in the field are male and have been told all our lives that we're expected to be strong and independent and assertive. And honestly, if you can't find a way to explain why an idea is bad on a technical level without offending someone, maybe you don't have a good enough reason to criticise it, or you need to think about it some more to figure out why you don't like it apart from your initial reaction.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      You can be super nice and not upset anybody without compromising on technical rigour. That's the ideal. In practice there are always people, a minority, who can't or won't separate criticism of their work from criticism of themselves regardless of how nicely it's put. And then you have a problem. Fortunately these people are mostly outside the technical realm, where direct criticism of work is very rare.
- olavk 8y ago
  So you are equating politeness with not halting bad ideas. That is not politeness, that is incompetence. Competent people would halt bad ides, but it can be done in different ways: - Abrasive: This idea is the dumbest ever and you are an idiot that deserves to die. - Constructive: This idea have problems X, Y and Z. - Polite: Thank you for the effort, but I see problems X, Y and Z with the idea in its current form. A lot of the discussion here is confusing the question of competence with the question of tone. You can be competent and have a nice tone and you can certainly be incompetent and have an abrasive tone. I can understand not having the patience for politeness, but personal insults are obviously counterproductive.
  - jdmichal 8y ago
    Your "polite" has moved way too far into manipulative / passive-aggressive with weasel words like "I see" and "in its current form". If you are in a position of power like Linus, where your perception is the project's reality, couching such realities as if your perception is the only problem will lead to fights and a lot more resentment. Just saying, "Thanks, but I won't accept this until X, Y, and Z are corrected," is still polite, but also gives a clear course of action for the recipient. And yes, some people read directness as rudeness. You can't help them.
    - olavk 8y ago
      Why would you start fighting and/or feel resentment if you received a reply like the "polite" example? Genuine question, I don't see the issue but I'm ready to learn.
      - OmIsMyShield 8y ago
        Not the parent - but I think it's because it can be seen as too subjective and too open for debate. Like: Oh, so one person opines that x, y, and z are not for them, let's debate it (or outright dismiss it). And the resultant debate might well be polarising or destructive by itself. Without knowing what the parent experienced to cause their take on this type of politeness I'm just guessing, though. It is interesting because I think I see a cultural thing here too: in some cultures "I feel" and "I see" and "currently" are as firm as "unacceptable until it changes" - just worded in a way that conveys respect for the author. But in other cultures it is read as vacillating. Dunno. Guesswork, as I said.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  In the email Linus indicated that this is result of a confrontation with his community. They basically performed an intervention and he has accepted it. The guy himself admits that something is seriously wrong, and for years he clearly has attacked people, personally, and folks have quit, and many have called him out for it. This is a positive change. No need to convert it into an slam on politeness. It's not like the world is being overrun by well-meaning polite people being ineffectual. Assholes who don't know when to stop, on the other hand, that's a serious problem!
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Absolutely. A big part of the problem with many projects, or even companies, is that leadership is too soft and so you end up surrounded by incompetent individuals who either through delusion, or Dunning Kruger, have difficulty assessing their own ability. This results in incredibly inefficient and 'noisy' (as in signal:noise ratio) working environments. 'Hard' leadership gets rid of the slack and is willing to tell people when they're screwing up. This means you're going to be surrounded by the best, and anybody that's not carrying 100% of their weight is going to get removed. Of course you can have a problem there if the leadership is brutal and incompetent, but brutal and competent is a phenomenally desirable mix -- and that really sums up Linus, perhaps to extreme on both sides of the equation. And in my opinion that really sums up many of the most successful leaders, both past and present. Though of course one huge difference between a Steve Jobs and a Torvalds is that Linus' work and behavior is, like Linux, completely open. Steve Jobs' was able to keep his persona restrained to within corporate avenues, with the rest of the world shown an extremely sculpted and fake image, the depths of contrast between the two only coming out after his death.
- marmot777 8y ago
  There are plenty of examples of great leaders who were direct, driven, and hard, yet still treated people with respect. It's not an easy trick to pull of, which is why people like Steve Jobs just said fuck it.
  - Lio 8y ago
    Could you post a few examples? Woz seems like a nice guy and Warren Buffet likewise. Both seems to have worked in small teams.
    - marmot777 8y ago
      What are Larry Page and Sergey Brin's reputation in this regard? Since we're talking about the open source world, how about Guido van Rossum? Paul Graham seems like he's probably a direct yet civil guy. http://paulgraham.com/safe.html http://paulgraham.com/safe.html Elon Musk isn't abusive. He extremely driven and demanding but that's not the same as abusive. I could expand the list quite a bit if you want but do you really believe it'd be a challenge for me to list important leaders who aren't assholes? BTW, I don't know these people so I might get it wrong regarding some of the people I'd list.
Accacin 8y ago
It's not just about him being the creator of Linux, it's about how much you could learn from working with him.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

JohnBooty 8y ago

Certainly he has done far, far, far more good than bad. I don't think anybody feels otherwise. I would say he's something of a hero to me! He has certainly rallied many to his cause. As much good as he has done, could he do some things better? Linus certainly feels so. Interesting that so many here seem doubt Linus' own assertion.

supernovae 8y ago
Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. It creates a vicious cycle of absurdity - the one where people appease the anger to try and achieve some good not realizing how much the bad influences the culture of the movement/organization/group. No one is perfect, but the community for far to long treated an imperfect man as if he could do no wrong - to its own detriment. Not in quality of software, no one disputes that - but in quality of life and respect for other human beings and other views/ideas. I think it's terrible we accept this idea that it takes an asshole to make a community
- reitanqild 8y ago
  > Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily. I have. The problem was not so much the things he wrote in public but what he said (that couldn't be documented) or probably told the bosses (which also could not be documented.) He was a (mostly) well mannered and soft spoken guy esp. compared to the image of Linus, but he made me quit my then dream job and I'm pretty sure I'd preferred working with Linus. Also in school I had another one: well behaving, soft spoken (mostly) but who turned out didn't care about others except as a way to get what he wanted. I'm really happy to not work a place where I get yelled at either but at least Linus seems fair so I think I'd prefer him. It's also interesting to see him admitting it might be a problem in his own way: wanting to ralk to someone, joking about tooling, asking for ideas.
  - serversystem 8y ago
    I think he's like that in maillists and not in person as are many real life geeks/keyboard warriors?

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago

You gain followers when you work for a the benefit for others. You lose followers when you treat people badly. Belittling people in a public forum is bad behaviour. I'm amazed its taken so long for the penny to drop. This is in any half decent company's Anti-Bullying training. It's not like you need to be particularly empathetic to learn this stuff.