5 ms·

The problem was fixed. The goal was reached. Not everything in life is about getting a golden star in your grade book.

vore 3y ago
Is it so wrong for people to want to feel appreciated for their work? So they have a good experience and want to contribute again?
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  Low expectations is a helpful part of living a peaceful life. Everything nice that happens is a bonus, but I’d recommend not staking your happiness on what others do and don’t do.
  - krzyk 3y ago
    Low expectations is recipe for a very sad life
    - devoutsalsa 3y ago
      If you can be happy with nothing, you win life!
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      compared to ...? the secret of a happy life is trying to be happy, whatever that means to you, and making it, the secret of a sad life is trying to be happy and failing at it. regardless of the expectations.
    - baq 3y ago
      Exactly the opposite, actually.
      - marcinzm 3y ago
        Humans aren't machines. In my experience it's very hard to actually have universally low expectations and be content with them in the long run. Usually people who say that either have low expectations in only certain areas (ie: material wealth, etc.) or are bottling up resentment (ie: the classic midlife crisis).
        baq 3y ago
        That's the point! It's very hard to have small expectations especially if you see your friends, colleagues or generally other people to 'be better' or 'have more', but if you can not care about this, you'll be happy. It is against human nature, though.
      - bowsamic 3y ago
        I'm literally in extensive therapy because of the huge emotional and psychic damage that having low expectations for everything has caused. Literally immense self-sabotage. Huge feelings of hopelessness and inability to do basic work without feeling suicidal because I expect the worse. So no, it isn't always the opposite. For many of us, our pessimistic attitude has been extremely damaging. Someone else here said > You have control over the inputs but not the outcomes :) I can't speak for others, but for me personally, having low expectations has caused me to become lackadaisical or even destructive with my inputs. What is the point if it will just go wrong? EDIT: I can't reply because /u/dang has blocked my account again > That... isn't what I mean by low expectations? For me, it means to be grateful for what you've got, to question feelings of envy and to not feel that you deserve something. That's called "gratitude", not "low expectations" "Low expectations" means you expect low, i.e. bad. It's pessimism.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        baq 3y ago
        That... isn't what I mean by low expectations? For me, it means to be grateful for what you've got, to question feelings of envy and to not feel that you deserve something. Definitely not to be pessimistic about anything, quite the contrary - be optimistic that you'll be positively surprised! Regardless of all that I hope you work out your depression, it sucks.
  - aiunboxed 3y ago
    You have control over the inputs but not the outcomes :)
  - vore 3y ago
    Yes, but you can also do things for other people to make their day better. Saying that happiness comes from within doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try help others feel happy.
    - danw1979 3y ago
      The best leaders never take credit themselves. It doesn’t matter if it’s a paid job or as a volunteer on an OSS project, if you lead, you give all the credit to those who work under your direction.
      - marcinzm 3y ago
        Then you're just shifting the same unhappiness the person who wrote this blog feels to the leaders. That sort of flies when the leaders get a ton of money or other benefits but this is an OSS maintainer. Going for extremes tends to lead to worse outcomes than aiming for a good middle ground.
        ZephyrBlu 3y ago
        It doesn't create unhappiness when you're a leader because that's part of the deal. There is no need to try and take explicit credit when you get implicit credit simply from the visibility of leading the project.
        marcinzm 3y ago
        >It doesn't create unhappiness when you're a leader because that's part of the deal. Having spoken to a lot of low level leaders I'd disagree. It does create unhappiness because in the end they are no less human. That unhappiness may be worth it for the other benefits and the happiness they gain from them but saying they don't experience unhappiness is dismissing their very human emotions. But often the unhappiness dominates, they burn out and then get replaced by some narcissist/sociopath. That person is fully happy and rises up the ranks.
        3y ago
  - mfru 3y ago
    This is a very sad way to live life. Expect the worst and be happy when things are better than your basically non-existent expectations? No thanks.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- tasubotadas 3y ago
  No. That's normal. But life is not fair and it's not going to happen always. Not being able to accept that shows immaturity.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    >But life is not fair and it's not going to happen always. The world would be a much much much much much much shittier place if everyone accepted things and never pushed back. >Not being able to accept that shows immaturity. I find not being able to accept that other's have a different but equally valid approach to life shows immaturity.
  - vore 3y ago
    Why can’t we try and change things we feel are unfair? Sure, we can’t change everything and we don’t always get what we want, but surely we can try, like asking someone to improve their behavior?
  - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
    Either you're high status enough to not care about these things, or you get walked all over. For most people fighting for recognition on important or valuable things is worthwhile.
    - derangedHorse 3y ago
      My thoughts exactly.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  I mean the maintainers fix really does look better... op can and is credited with finding the bug because and that literally is all he did in concern of the code that ended up in the kernel. If you look at the initial commit and the linked stackoverflow answer I understand that the maintainer was hesitant to merge and wrote a clean implementation of it. Not even going into the "laying words into someones mouth" shit he did. He found a bug (even that is questionable because it got reported prior), copy&paste-developed a fix and is angry that it doesn't get merged and now throws a hissy fit that he got attributed with the exact thing he did. Looking at his employer makes this even funnier.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  > Is it so wrong for people to want to feel appreciated for their work? Is it so wrong to not be awarded a medal everytime someone does something? The title says "I got robbed", the reality is the solution has been discarded for something the maintainer, who's going to maintain that code, liked better. The handling wasn't great, sure, but the real appreciation comes from within, from knowing you found a solution to the problem, not from others. It is like going to the doctor with the solution and being upset if the doctor replaces it with something he can trust
  - vore 3y ago
    It’s hard for me not to empathize with the author when they: - diagnosed a longstanding bug - contributed an initial patch - actively reached out to the maintainer, who said they would reach out in private - contributed additional versions that were reviewed just to have the maintainer take over the contribution wholesale. How would you feel when you put in all that work and receive basically no recognition for it? Maybe you are truly ascetic and have no need for it, but most people appreciate being credited and being encouraged to contribute again.
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      > How would you feel when you put in all that work and receive basically no recognition for it? I would feel that nothing bad happened and that my code was actually reviewed by a kernel maintainer, that acknowledged the problem, and found a solution based on mine, which is in itself a big ego boost. But probably it's just because I have been programming for over 25 years, because I like solving problems, and I don't do it for the recognition, which is basically a false coin. The recognition at work is the salary, the recognition when I volunteer is that I contribute to help people when I can, not that the people I help are grateful to me. Sometimes they are ungrateful too, but that's not why I do it, so I don't care. In my opinion it is childish otherwise, you do things you think they are right because you think they are right, not for some prize. Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. > ---------------- - diagnosed a longstanding bug - contributed an initial patch - actively reached out to the maintainer, who said they would reach out in private - contributed additional versions that were reviewed That's basically what I used to do when my car had a problem and I brought it to the mechanic, because I grew up in my uncle's body shop. but the mechanic does it professionally and of course he wants to do all the process again, so he can be sure what the real problem is. At that point he probably found a solution which is slightly better than mine or that solves the root of the problem, not just the symptom. So now I just go there and tell him what is that I feel it's wrong (e.g. the motor keeps stalling) and I let him fix it. If I wanted to become a real contributor, I would start from the bottom, as everyone does: changing oil (here's a bug you can fix)
throwawaysleep 3y ago
Great! So I can hand you all my work and you will do it, I will take credit, and you will be happy?
trustingtrust 3y ago
My thoughts too. A bug existed, the maintainer looked at a contribution and as the maintainer picked the best solution which happened to be his own solution. That’s how the kernel community works. The community picks what’s best for the kernel. Not what looks good on your resume.
- rootlocus 3y ago
  Someone spent 5 days debugging and giving the explicit details of the problem and a proposed solution. They should be given some credit, even if the exact lines of code that fix the problem weren't the ones proposed. The maintainer could've just given the feedback required for the contributor to submit the desired patch. Or some metadata on the commit could've offered attribution to the contributor. From the article, this was 90% the work of the contributor and 10% (maybe?) the work of the maintainer. Considering that being mentioned as a contributor to the kernel is a Big Thing, completely neglecting to give any mention is poor taste.
hmottestad 3y ago
That’s quite harsh. And also a very simplistic tautology. This post is literally about not getting credit for one’s work. If you don’t believe that the author deserved recognition for their work then you should say that outright.
cryptonym 3y ago
There is a data field to store that information: who contributed a change. Writing your name instead of the actual author seems wrong and I wouldn't blame him to feel unrecognised. I agree it's probably not a big thing but remains a valid feeling in that situation.
yard2010 3y ago
Everything in life is about golden star stickers
dotancohen 3y ago
> Not everything in life is about getting a golden star in your grade book. No, but being a kernel contributor could affect his job prospects in the future. One of the prides that I can discuss in job interviews are my contributions to upstream software stacks (mostly PHP frameworks such as Laravel and Magento). I have had a patch rewritten by a maintainer that arguably made the patch worse - that left a very sore feeling for me and I think that it was the very last patch that I sent to that particular project (Wordpress, which I am glad to be rid of).
- yencabulator 3y ago
  I sure hope nobody's getting a job based on a single patch.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    A Wordpress patch, no. But an accepted Linux Kernel patch is a prestigious hurdle, albeit minor, and could easily put the OP over other applicants without.
kklisura 3y ago
I agree, although I do understand that some people might have a problem with it. Last year I spent the whole friday night debugging an issue in a lib I've been using at work. I found an issue, wrote tests to demonstrate it, fixed the issue, write more tests and opened a PR. Maintainer months later closed an issue and I saw it has been fixed within one of his owns PRs. It did sting a bit, but I remembered I learned A LOT while debugging it and I fixed an issue that was bugging us on work.
- thedoctor79 3y ago
  Maybe the connection to this topic won't be obvious, but I used to read Animal Farm and think that the Donkey was supeior to the Horse. Nowadays I don't think that anymore. The Horse was never alone for a day in his life. The Donkey survived the Horse but was left alone. So I now think "I will work harder" is the right approach most of the time.
jbombadil 3y ago
Sure, this problem was fixed. But with this attitude and lack of recognition, the next bug that this person could have fixed, won't be.

vore 3y ago

Is it so wrong for people to want to feel appreciated for their work? So they have a good experience and want to contribute again?

devoutsalsa 3y ago
Low expectations is a helpful part of living a peaceful life. Everything nice that happens is a bonus, but I’d recommend not staking your happiness on what others do and don’t do.
- krzyk 3y ago
  Low expectations is recipe for a very sad life
  - devoutsalsa 3y ago
    If you can be happy with nothing, you win life!
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    compared to ...? the secret of a happy life is trying to be happy, whatever that means to you, and making it, the secret of a sad life is trying to be happy and failing at it. regardless of the expectations.
  - baq 3y ago
    Exactly the opposite, actually.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      Humans aren't machines. In my experience it's very hard to actually have universally low expectations and be content with them in the long run. Usually people who say that either have low expectations in only certain areas (ie: material wealth, etc.) or are bottling up resentment (ie: the classic midlife crisis).
      - baq 3y ago
        That's the point! It's very hard to have small expectations especially if you see your friends, colleagues or generally other people to 'be better' or 'have more', but if you can not care about this, you'll be happy. It is against human nature, though.
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      I'm literally in extensive therapy because of the huge emotional and psychic damage that having low expectations for everything has caused. Literally immense self-sabotage. Huge feelings of hopelessness and inability to do basic work without feeling suicidal because I expect the worse. So no, it isn't always the opposite. For many of us, our pessimistic attitude has been extremely damaging. Someone else here said > You have control over the inputs but not the outcomes :) I can't speak for others, but for me personally, having low expectations has caused me to become lackadaisical or even destructive with my inputs. What is the point if it will just go wrong? EDIT: I can't reply because /u/dang has blocked my account again > That... isn't what I mean by low expectations? For me, it means to be grateful for what you've got, to question feelings of envy and to not feel that you deserve something. That's called "gratitude", not "low expectations" "Low expectations" means you expect low, i.e. bad. It's pessimism.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - baq 3y ago
        That... isn't what I mean by low expectations? For me, it means to be grateful for what you've got, to question feelings of envy and to not feel that you deserve something. Definitely not to be pessimistic about anything, quite the contrary - be optimistic that you'll be positively surprised! Regardless of all that I hope you work out your depression, it sucks.
- aiunboxed 3y ago
  You have control over the inputs but not the outcomes :)
- vore 3y ago
  Yes, but you can also do things for other people to make their day better. Saying that happiness comes from within doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try help others feel happy.
  - danw1979 3y ago
    The best leaders never take credit themselves. It doesn’t matter if it’s a paid job or as a volunteer on an OSS project, if you lead, you give all the credit to those who work under your direction.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      Then you're just shifting the same unhappiness the person who wrote this blog feels to the leaders. That sort of flies when the leaders get a ton of money or other benefits but this is an OSS maintainer. Going for extremes tends to lead to worse outcomes than aiming for a good middle ground.
      - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
        It doesn't create unhappiness when you're a leader because that's part of the deal. There is no need to try and take explicit credit when you get implicit credit simply from the visibility of leading the project.
        marcinzm 3y ago
        >It doesn't create unhappiness when you're a leader because that's part of the deal. Having spoken to a lot of low level leaders I'd disagree. It does create unhappiness because in the end they are no less human. That unhappiness may be worth it for the other benefits and the happiness they gain from them but saying they don't experience unhappiness is dismissing their very human emotions. But often the unhappiness dominates, they burn out and then get replaced by some narcissist/sociopath. That person is fully happy and rises up the ranks.
        3y ago
- mfru 3y ago
  This is a very sad way to live life. Expect the worst and be happy when things are better than your basically non-existent expectations? No thanks.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
tasubotadas 3y ago
No. That's normal. But life is not fair and it's not going to happen always. Not being able to accept that shows immaturity.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  >But life is not fair and it's not going to happen always. The world would be a much much much much much much shittier place if everyone accepted things and never pushed back. >Not being able to accept that shows immaturity. I find not being able to accept that other's have a different but equally valid approach to life shows immaturity.
- vore 3y ago
  Why can’t we try and change things we feel are unfair? Sure, we can’t change everything and we don’t always get what we want, but surely we can try, like asking someone to improve their behavior?
- ZephyrBlu 3y ago
  Either you're high status enough to not care about these things, or you get walked all over. For most people fighting for recognition on important or valuable things is worthwhile.
  - derangedHorse 3y ago
    My thoughts exactly.
Zetobal 3y ago
I mean the maintainers fix really does look better... op can and is credited with finding the bug because and that literally is all he did in concern of the code that ended up in the kernel. If you look at the initial commit and the linked stackoverflow answer I understand that the maintainer was hesitant to merge and wrote a clean implementation of it. Not even going into the "laying words into someones mouth" shit he did. He found a bug (even that is questionable because it got reported prior), copy&paste-developed a fix and is angry that it doesn't get merged and now throws a hissy fit that he got attributed with the exact thing he did. Looking at his employer makes this even funnier.
peoplefromibiza 3y ago
> Is it so wrong for people to want to feel appreciated for their work? Is it so wrong to not be awarded a medal everytime someone does something? The title says "I got robbed", the reality is the solution has been discarded for something the maintainer, who's going to maintain that code, liked better. The handling wasn't great, sure, but the real appreciation comes from within, from knowing you found a solution to the problem, not from others. It is like going to the doctor with the solution and being upset if the doctor replaces it with something he can trust
- vore 3y ago
  It’s hard for me not to empathize with the author when they: - diagnosed a longstanding bug - contributed an initial patch - actively reached out to the maintainer, who said they would reach out in private - contributed additional versions that were reviewed just to have the maintainer take over the contribution wholesale. How would you feel when you put in all that work and receive basically no recognition for it? Maybe you are truly ascetic and have no need for it, but most people appreciate being credited and being encouraged to contribute again.
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    > How would you feel when you put in all that work and receive basically no recognition for it? I would feel that nothing bad happened and that my code was actually reviewed by a kernel maintainer, that acknowledged the problem, and found a solution based on mine, which is in itself a big ego boost. But probably it's just because I have been programming for over 25 years, because I like solving problems, and I don't do it for the recognition, which is basically a false coin. The recognition at work is the salary, the recognition when I volunteer is that I contribute to help people when I can, not that the people I help are grateful to me. Sometimes they are ungrateful too, but that's not why I do it, so I don't care. In my opinion it is childish otherwise, you do things you think they are right because you think they are right, not for some prize. Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. > ---------------- - diagnosed a longstanding bug - contributed an initial patch - actively reached out to the maintainer, who said they would reach out in private - contributed additional versions that were reviewed That's basically what I used to do when my car had a problem and I brought it to the mechanic, because I grew up in my uncle's body shop. but the mechanic does it professionally and of course he wants to do all the process again, so he can be sure what the real problem is. At that point he probably found a solution which is slightly better than mine or that solves the root of the problem, not just the symptom. So now I just go there and tell him what is that I feel it's wrong (e.g. the motor keeps stalling) and I let him fix it. If I wanted to become a real contributor, I would start from the bottom, as everyone does: changing oil (here's a bug you can fix)

throwawaysleep 3y ago

Great! So I can hand you all my work and you will do it, I will take credit, and you will be happy?

trustingtrust 3y ago

My thoughts too. A bug existed, the maintainer looked at a contribution and as the maintainer picked the best solution which happened to be his own solution. That’s how the kernel community works. The community picks what’s best for the kernel. Not what looks good on your resume.

rootlocus 3y ago
Someone spent 5 days debugging and giving the explicit details of the problem and a proposed solution. They should be given some credit, even if the exact lines of code that fix the problem weren't the ones proposed. The maintainer could've just given the feedback required for the contributor to submit the desired patch. Or some metadata on the commit could've offered attribution to the contributor. From the article, this was 90% the work of the contributor and 10% (maybe?) the work of the maintainer. Considering that being mentioned as a contributor to the kernel is a Big Thing, completely neglecting to give any mention is poor taste.

hmottestad 3y ago

That’s quite harsh. And also a very simplistic tautology. This post is literally about not getting credit for one’s work. If you don’t believe that the author deserved recognition for their work then you should say that outright.

cryptonym 3y ago

There is a data field to store that information: who contributed a change. Writing your name instead of the actual author seems wrong and I wouldn't blame him to feel unrecognised. I agree it's probably not a big thing but remains a valid feeling in that situation.

yard2010 3y ago

Everything in life is about golden star stickers

dotancohen 3y ago

> Not everything in life is about getting a golden star in your grade book. No, but being a kernel contributor could affect his job prospects in the future. One of the prides that I can discuss in job interviews are my contributions to upstream software stacks (mostly PHP frameworks such as Laravel and Magento). I have had a patch rewritten by a maintainer that arguably made the patch worse - that left a very sore feeling for me and I think that it was the very last patch that I sent to that particular project (Wordpress, which I am glad to be rid of).

yencabulator 3y ago
I sure hope nobody's getting a job based on a single patch.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  A Wordpress patch, no. But an accepted Linux Kernel patch is a prestigious hurdle, albeit minor, and could easily put the OP over other applicants without.

kklisura 3y ago

I agree, although I do understand that some people might have a problem with it. Last year I spent the whole friday night debugging an issue in a lib I've been using at work. I found an issue, wrote tests to demonstrate it, fixed the issue, write more tests and opened a PR. Maintainer months later closed an issue and I saw it has been fixed within one of his owns PRs. It did sting a bit, but I remembered I learned A LOT while debugging it and I fixed an issue that was bugging us on work.

thedoctor79 3y ago
Maybe the connection to this topic won't be obvious, but I used to read Animal Farm and think that the Donkey was supeior to the Horse. Nowadays I don't think that anymore. The Horse was never alone for a day in his life. The Donkey survived the Horse but was left alone. So I now think "I will work harder" is the right approach most of the time.

jbombadil 3y ago

Sure, this problem was fixed. But with this attitude and lack of recognition, the next bug that this person could have fixed, won't be.