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I totally agree with this. I actually quit my job at Red Hat because of the culture of non-criticism. I kept getting in trouble for pushing back against stupid

by ggreer 8y ago

I totally agree with this. I actually quit my job at Red Hat because of the culture of non-criticism. I kept getting in trouble for pushing back against stupid decisions, even though I never insulted a single person. For example: When the design team added 10MB of web fonts to the app, I said something like, "Users don't care whether the font is Open Sans or Arial. They care whether things load quickly and don't re-flow. This is a bad decision." I got nothing but condemnation for pointing this out. Today, every user downloads several megabytes of web fonts which have broken kerning and hinting on some platforms.[1] It was a similar story when people wanted to change our build artifact to be based on RHEL instead of Alpine Linux.[2] This would have bloated the build artifact from 11MB to 200MB, introduced a host of security concerns, and drastically increased CI build times. In a meeting I said, "This decision seems totally braindead." I was immediately taken aside and given a stern talking-to by my manager. If that's not a braindead decision, then I don't know what is. I also got in trouble for this comment[3] pointing out flaws in PatternFly. I was told that some of my coworkers felt insulted by my comment, and that I should be more civil and tactful. Who was insulted? What parts of the comment were insulting? I never got answers to those questions. Encouraging civility sounds like a good thing, but in my experience the people leading the charge are doing it to suppress criticism. 1. https://github.com/openshift/console/pull/3 https://github.com/openshift/console/pull/3 My bullet point about reducing the build artifact from 11.3MB to 7.6MB was incorrect. It actually reduced the build artifact from 40MB to 7.6MB. 2. https://github.com/openshift/console/pull/12 https://github.com/openshift/console/pull/12 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17163740

enchexe 8y ago
CoreOS was acquired several months ago. You feel you were able to accurately understand the culture of a corporation attempting to bring in CoreOS to the fold that quickly? And you are confused why co-workers would be less than pleased with public condemnation about a corporate project from someone who joined as an acquisition barely any time ago? If you truly can't put yourself in other's shoes and understand why they may feel that way, justly or not, I would strongly suggest counseling. I mean that with all sincerity.
- ggreer 8y ago
  My coworkers had similar issues with similar results. I estimate that around 2/3rds of the CoreOS team has left Red Hat.
- legostormtroopr 8y ago
  This is where civility culture annoys me. @ggreer provided a technical assessment of a platform and found it lacking. The only non-technical comment was that it was corporately mandated. You have decided to recommend counselling. Who of the two of you is being "uncivil"?
- dang 8y ago
  Internet psychiatric insinuation breaks HN's civility rule. Please keep personal swipes out of your comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
noufalibrahim 8y ago
A related point that occurred to me about the convenant which Torvalds has included is the "Scope" section. It looks like it leaves most of the details to the project maintainer which I suppose is a good thing. However, an explicit statement about where the whole thing doesn't apply would be useful. If a person has a political or other opinion and is very strident about it in every sphere (twitter, personal blog, facebook etc.) outside of the project, the convenant should explicitly allow this. That way, it sounds more like a "this is our house and these are the rules you should follow if you want to enter" vs. "you should be a certain kind of person in all aspects of your life to be allowed in here". The latter has too much overreach IMHO.
jogjayr 8y ago
Effectively critiquing ideas without hurting feelings is a powerful skill, hard to master, and shouldn't be written off. IME there are only 2 reliable ways to get people to do what you want: you have authority to tell them to do it, or you can convince them that it's the best course of action. People often treat their ideas like their children - and calling someone's child "stupid", or "braindead" isn't going to make you popular with them. Good luck convincing them it's a bad idea now - it's a matter of pride, and they'll obstruct you every way they can. Is this rational? No - but it's a reality of working with people, and denying it is futile. I've done it myself in the past, without being aware of my biases, and even then I'll probably do it again in future. If you're actually working with people (and those people's bosses) who can't be reasoned with using facts and data, presented without calling the idea names, then the rational thing to do (which, it seems, you did) is to find a different team or company. Either you're wrong or they are, and time will prove someone right. > Who was insulted? What parts of the comment were insulting? I read the comment and my opinion is "It's a CSS framework! How can it take over a year to make?!" and "The speed and quality of development leaves much to be desired. For example: It took them five months to merge a TTY component. We wrote a similar component in two days." might have been the insulting parts. Those comments could be construed as calling those devs slow and incompetent. I don't know if that was your actual meaning, but it's hard for me to read it any other way - sorry :-( maybe I'm missing some context. Sorry also if any of what I said seemed rude. It took me years of insulting people to learn this stuff, and I'm still nowhere near perfect :-), but I thought I should share - it's possible I'm wrong. I also understand if you feel differently. P.S. I checked out Floobits and it looks super-cool. I'm looking forward to trying it out sometime.
deleted 8y ago
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mattdeboard 8y ago
This is definitely not what coffeemug was saying though. He was complaining about all the people who don't appreciate him calling them stupid, so we has to "be more diplomatic" which he considers lying. That is a different thing altogether from what you're saying.

by ggreer 8y ago

enchexe 8y ago

CoreOS was acquired several months ago. You feel you were able to accurately understand the culture of a corporation attempting to bring in CoreOS to the fold that quickly? And you are confused why co-workers would be less than pleased with public condemnation about a corporate project from someone who joined as an acquisition barely any time ago? If you truly can't put yourself in other's shoes and understand why they may feel that way, justly or not, I would strongly suggest counseling. I mean that with all sincerity.

ggreer 8y ago
My coworkers had similar issues with similar results. I estimate that around 2/3rds of the CoreOS team has left Red Hat.
legostormtroopr 8y ago
This is where civility culture annoys me. @ggreer provided a technical assessment of a platform and found it lacking. The only non-technical comment was that it was corporately mandated. You have decided to recommend counselling. Who of the two of you is being "uncivil"?
dang 8y ago
Internet psychiatric insinuation breaks HN's civility rule. Please keep personal swipes out of your comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

noufalibrahim 8y ago

A related point that occurred to me about the convenant which Torvalds has included is the "Scope" section. It looks like it leaves most of the details to the project maintainer which I suppose is a good thing. However, an explicit statement about where the whole thing doesn't apply would be useful. If a person has a political or other opinion and is very strident about it in every sphere (twitter, personal blog, facebook etc.) outside of the project, the convenant should explicitly allow this. That way, it sounds more like a "this is our house and these are the rules you should follow if you want to enter" vs. "you should be a certain kind of person in all aspects of your life to be allowed in here". The latter has too much overreach IMHO.

jogjayr 8y ago

Effectively critiquing ideas without hurting feelings is a powerful skill, hard to master, and shouldn't be written off. IME there are only 2 reliable ways to get people to do what you want: you have authority to tell them to do it, or you can convince them that it's the best course of action. People often treat their ideas like their children - and calling someone's child "stupid", or "braindead" isn't going to make you popular with them. Good luck convincing them it's a bad idea now - it's a matter of pride, and they'll obstruct you every way they can. Is this rational? No - but it's a reality of working with people, and denying it is futile. I've done it myself in the past, without being aware of my biases, and even then I'll probably do it again in future. If you're actually working with people (and those people's bosses) who can't be reasoned with using facts and data, presented without calling the idea names, then the rational thing to do (which, it seems, you did) is to find a different team or company. Either you're wrong or they are, and time will prove someone right. > Who was insulted? What parts of the comment were insulting? I read the comment and my opinion is "It's a CSS framework! How can it take over a year to make?!" and "The speed and quality of development leaves much to be desired. For example: It took them five months to merge a TTY component. We wrote a similar component in two days." might have been the insulting parts. Those comments could be construed as calling those devs slow and incompetent. I don't know if that was your actual meaning, but it's hard for me to read it any other way - sorry :-( maybe I'm missing some context. Sorry also if any of what I said seemed rude. It took me years of insulting people to learn this stuff, and I'm still nowhere near perfect :-), but I thought I should share - it's possible I'm wrong. I also understand if you feel differently. P.S. I checked out Floobits and it looks super-cool. I'm looking forward to trying it out sometime.

deleted 8y ago

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mattdeboard 8y ago

This is definitely not what coffeemug was saying though. He was complaining about all the people who don't appreciate him calling them stupid, so we has to "be more diplomatic" which he considers lying. That is a different thing altogether from what you're saying.