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> To answer your question, the root cause of my decision to leave the core team is a toxic environment in the meetings themselves. The catalyst was a specific m
by klelatti 5y ago
> To answer your question, the root cause of my decision to leave the core team is a toxic environment in the meetings themselves. The catalyst was a specific meeting last summer: after being insulted and yelled at over WebEx (not for the first time, and not just one core team member), I decided to take a break. I was able to get leadership to eventually discuss the situation with me last Fall, but after avoiding dealing with it, they made excuses, and made it clear they weren't planning to do anything about it. As such, I decided not to return. They reassure me they "want to make sure things are better for others in the future based on what we talked about" though.
Seems incredibly disrespectful.
- bitL 5y agoSo they wanted him gone, figured out his sensitivities and he fell into the trap. Sad but common if some higher up decides to remove you "voluntarily".
- threeseed 5y agoYou know what's even more common and isn't a conspiracy theory ? Engineers letting technical disagreements turn personal. And Chris himself said he disagreed with the technical direction of the project.
- klelatti 5y agoI'd be a bit skeptical of that. Sounds more like a team under stress and lashing out when someone questions the direction they are going. In any event though not good.
- qaq 5y agoThey act like real a### on the forum so can only imagine how things are in private. Chris always came off really humble and down to earth.
- mpfundstein 5y agolink?
- notreallyserio 5y agoIt's possible for an environment to be objectively toxic without regard to someone's "sensitivities".
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
- notreallyserio 5y agoShouting at people during collaborative meetings is objectively toxic behavior. I'm not sure how else it could be seen unless one is themselves a shouter with no self-awareness.
- gkop 5y agoI disagree with parent, there is such thing as objectively toxic behavior. That said, defining what is and is not shouting, I have never seen that done objectively.
- gkop 5y agoWould somebody explain why I am wrong? I’m OK replacing “objective” with “intersubjective” if that’s it. But maybe it’s that people have seen shouting defined intersubjectively - if that’s it, would someone share an example definition of shouting that could be useful for intersubjectively labeling toxic behavior in a professional environment? My curiosity is in the spirit of this nearby comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30419969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30419969
- _ea1k 5y agoI think that you make a fair point, tbh. Its easy to think that shouting is clearly defined, but we OPERATE IN AN ENVIRONMENT where people will think that I just shouted four words. One persons shouting can be another person's virtually normal tone but in a more tense discussion.
- oaiey 5y agoStill incredible toxic. Maybe not uncommon but still toxic.
- GeekyBear 5y ago> they wanted him gone, figured out his sensitivities and he fell into the trap It's also possible that there are people who feel that yelling is an acceptable part of debate. Misguided people, sure, but they do exist.
- touisteur 5y agoThen they should be taught, quick. Once is grounds for an apology, twice is bye-bye land. Who cares about 'objective' toxicity, WTF is wrong with people defending yelling at people.
- nyokodo 5y ago> people defending yelling at people. The probability is unusually high that they personally yell at people in collaborative meetings.
- touisteur 5y agoTrying not to make assumptions about people here, but yes, probably. Many have been taught by abusive parents or figures of authority, or whatever shit television, that it's normal. "Some 'light' yelling is to be expected.", "Different styles of management/debate", "whatever works for them, I'm sure everyone does it a bit". What next? Corporal punishment? Like in the old days, when kids really respected their elders - or else - and were taught /right/ and women stayed in their place? Those people need to be taught that no one, ever, should have yelled or should ever yell at them for being wrong or just disagreeing. It's not OK, it never was, it never is. Parents, friends, teachers, colleagues. You spend 8 hours a day at work, if it's not a safe place, and you can find another job, GTF away as fast as possible, or have the perpetrators get the hell away, if you have this power. I'm sorry we even have to say that.
- GeekyBear 5y agoIf you're defending people yelling at people, you probably won't be pointing out that they are misguided if they think yelling is acceptable. However, the claim being made was that this yelling was a trap that was intentionally set to drive Chris out and not just a case of someone who thinks yelling is acceptable behavior.
- Hokusai 5y agoIn many parts of the world that goes against labor laws. You cannot harass or ostracize someone to make them leave. That is not just a toxic environment but way worse as there is intent to make the employee leave.
- petters 5y agoI don't think there was an employment involved here.
- jcims 5y agoI don’t generally pay much attention to this space. However, I’ve heard two interviews with Chris, both on Lex Fridman‘s podcast, and I don’t get a sense that he is an emotionally fragile person. The space he’s been operating in for ~20 years is filled with strong and often ideological opinions. Just sounds to me like he felt like he was wasting his time.
- ithkuil 5y agoThen why didn't he just say that he wanted to "pursue other challenges" or something like that, especially if he'd actually mean it?
- fasteo 5y ago>>> not for the first time, and not just one core team member Playing devil's advocate here, but we should hear the same history from the other side, more so if these "insulting and yelling" happened more than once with different team members.
- klelatti 5y agoThat's fair. Also presumably Apple's rules mean that we probably won't be hearing the other side.
- staticassertion 5y agoYes, true. But also, there are very few situations where what's being called out here is justifiable.
- manquer 5y agoYes there are situations where it is justified, but we shouldn't draw that conclusion with knowing all sides. I don't know any details to question legitimacy of the issue, however in my experience I am constantly surprised how many times it is just communication breakdown or gap in what each party perceives. Also the pandemic has made things more stressful for everyone and outbursts do happen with more frequency perhaps it is easier virtually to shout at some one i suppose. Torvalds was known for his infamous roasts on LKML, he only goes on a triade when he feels the situation warrants and person should know better. That doesn't make it right , but someone had to really explain it to him before he toned it down recently. I don't think his intent was ever to be toxic or aggressive. Effectively communicating problems can be hard.
- myfavoritedog 5y ago
- throwawayboise 5y agoTLDR, life is too short to work with assholes, an attitude I fully endorse. Or maybe he's the asshole, who knows? Either way it works out.
- nefitty 5y agoOne of the strongest predictorsof work satisfaction is satisfaction with one's coworkers. It beats money and autonomy.
- amyjess 5y agoJust imagine: if this is how they treat someone with Chris Lattner's reputation, think about how they'll treat a new contributor writing their first new feature proposal. It's not a project I'll ever want to touch.
- klelatti 5y agoIndeed, astonishing really. Seems to me to probably reflect a high degree of insecurity: if you're not secure and feel the need to protect your position I can imagine some people reacting this way if Chris is telling everyone he thinks your idea is a bad one.
- caycep 5y agoI've heard great teams at Apple and toxic teams - maybe more on Software than hardware (see the writeup / postmortem on Aperture which started off great but middle managers under time constraints ruined it/made it toxic). Not sure if Apple silo-ing off teams lets this perpetuate, but then again, it's not like Google or FB have their own share of toxic groups. You'd think something like that whole Apple university MBA program would figure out better ways of managing large numbers of people with commensurate egos, but it seems like an unsolved problem.
- manmal 5y agoI don't believe the silo-ing of teams is a problem in itself. If teams are not silo-ed in a company of 150k employees, things will grind to a halt quickly.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y agoSucks because Apple has hired a lot of really talented developers to work on Swift. I hope they aren't being treated to this kind of toxicity.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]