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When I worked at Google, Ian Lance Taylor was in the pool of randomly assigned code reviewers. He was polite, firm, and informative. It speaks well of Taylor

by egl2020 1y ago

When I worked at Google, Ian Lance Taylor was in the pool of randomly assigned code reviewers. He was polite, firm, and informative. It speaks well of Taylor and the project that he was doing this kind of review--- it's a version of the YC advice about founders doing customer support. And maybe I'm shallow, but it was a thrill to see his initials show up on my code reviews. Thanks for all your work on golang.

notepad0x90 1y ago
What a nice praise. It is refreshing to see someone being remembered as 'polite'. It is a critical life-lesson I've learned myself, it is better to be considered things like polite, kind and nice instead of smart, 10x <whatever>, capable.
- caprock 1y ago
  I've found a lot of value in the habits of politeness, especially in written communication. It's disappointing when it's not a first class citizen in a company culture for things like code review. There are plenty of rationalizations for how it might not be needed, but that just feels like laziness.
  - robocat 1y ago
    I personally prefer to be given brutal honesty. Overly polite people often annoy me because they hide information or they can't get to the point or their point is hidden within layers of wishy-washy mush that I need to correctly parse and then respond correctly to. Politeness is absolutely necessary, and I hate seeing callous impoliteness in wider society (e.g. towards service workers). I suspect I would severely struggle in a deeply polite society (stereo-typically Asian?). I can relax the most around very direct people (Dutch?). I am continually stressed when dealing with anyone that absolutely needs politeness. Example 1: a very close friend who can be triggered by anything reminding them of their abusive ex. Example 2: a self-centred acquaintance that needs pandering (however isn't polite in return). There's a balance - but it's hard to find. Perhaps I'm confusing two different dimensions, politeness and honesty? Edit: This is a wishy-washy comment. Difficult topic, straight-jacketed conflict, interpersonal stuff that is hard to understand and talk about.
    - cduzz 1y ago
      I think that "polite" and "honest" and "direct" are orthogonal. It is possible to be direct, honest, and polite. You should consider the possibility that you're mistaken in linking "rude" with "direct"
      - Jensson 1y ago
        > I think that "polite" and "honest" and "direct" are orthogonal. They are certainly correlated so not orthogonal, its much harder to not be rude when you communicate a complaint than with praise. You need to put much more effort in when you complain about something to not be seen as rude, that means they are not orthogonal. It also means many will just not do it since its too much work.
        pbh101 1y ago
        Or it means you haven’t practiced and some parts of the space are more difficult for you to traverse individually but still orthogonal objectively. I would say that something isn’t orthogonal if it is impossible to be both. It is clearly possible, just not practiced or easy. I could grant there is also an objective friction surface, a fourth scalar describing how difficult it is to be direct, honest, and polite at once.
    - jimbokun 1y ago
      Being polite and being direct simultaneously can be tricky to realize but not impossible. The best communicators manage to achieve both.
    - notepad0x90 1y ago
      I think you can be polite and direct, but at the cost of being verbose and awkward.
      - pbh101 1y ago
        If you see someone do it well (the word ‘genteel’ comes to mind) you can find that verbos it and awkwardness will detract from both the directness and honesty. ‘Traditional’ etiquette books are actually pretty good at this stuff: one definition of etiquette is to never out another ill at ease or uncomfortable. Discomfort is contagious especially through body language, so the first thing you must do is be comfortable yourself with the feedback you’re giving.
jrockway 1y ago
I also really enjoyed the Go readability process. It made me a much better programmer. I did Python readability at Google and "take this one massive CL and if they make it good by the end of the process they're done" never felt quite as useful as Go's process. I'm glad they made their own rules; it benefited me. (Even if during the process I was thinking "I JUST NEED TO CHECK IN THIS CODE SO I CAN GO BACK TO BED" when getting paged in the middle of the night ;)
- danpalmer 1y ago
  I'm glad you had that experience with Go readability, because mine was far from that. Java readability taught me loads. Go readability taught me almost nothing and took far longer. In the end I was given it when I emailed the admins to say "either give me some feedback or give me readability". I'm fully behind the readability concept, but it's hard to scale and keep the quality high.
  - jrockway 1y ago
    The predictability of the process was not particularly amazing. I just didn't set my expectations very high; with Python and Java... getting readability was on my first quarter OKRs and I accomplished those (my Java readability reviewer was on my team so it was pretty easy). Go... took a while. I have never been quite sure that that's exactly where you want to draw the line. I've been in the position of having a team that's relatively new to Go, and despite being a straightforward language, there's a lot of things you can do, if you know to do them, that makes the code significantly more reliable. I couldn't review every PR on my team, so sometimes stuff slipped through that caused An Incident and it bugged me because a simple "do this instead of that" would have prevented The Incident. I asked some other senior folks that had worked at Google "should we do something like Readability" and the answer was a unanimous "absolutely not, no, never" so clearly other people fell more towards your views than mine. People do just want to get their stuff checked in and go home, which I respect. Someone else is then going to have to go to a bunch of calls with customers when it breaks, though. Guess who that was and where her views are on the matter ;)
ncruces 1y ago
As an “insignificant” outside contributor to Go (I think I worked on half a dozen proposals and PRs), I can say just the same, even for things that in the end got dropped or rejected: polite, firm, informative; I'd add curious. Had a great experience contributing to the project, and Ian was a big part of that. Which for a big project like Go says a lot.
- henvic 1y ago
  Same!
aleksiy123 1y ago
I have something similar except it was Titus Winters on my final c++ readability change. I tried to push back on one of his comments as well. Imo it just feels kinda cool that someone who really really knows what they are doing gave you a stamp of approval on something.
malkia 1y ago
I was at Google 2014-2017, and I think Ian shared how he did his promo package in order to help others (if I'm not mistaken I think it was him). This was just wow!

notepad0x90 1y ago

What a nice praise. It is refreshing to see someone being remembered as 'polite'. It is a critical life-lesson I've learned myself, it is better to be considered things like polite, kind and nice instead of smart, 10x <whatever>, capable.

caprock 1y ago
I've found a lot of value in the habits of politeness, especially in written communication. It's disappointing when it's not a first class citizen in a company culture for things like code review. There are plenty of rationalizations for how it might not be needed, but that just feels like laziness.
- robocat 1y ago
  I personally prefer to be given brutal honesty. Overly polite people often annoy me because they hide information or they can't get to the point or their point is hidden within layers of wishy-washy mush that I need to correctly parse and then respond correctly to. Politeness is absolutely necessary, and I hate seeing callous impoliteness in wider society (e.g. towards service workers). I suspect I would severely struggle in a deeply polite society (stereo-typically Asian?). I can relax the most around very direct people (Dutch?). I am continually stressed when dealing with anyone that absolutely needs politeness. Example 1: a very close friend who can be triggered by anything reminding them of their abusive ex. Example 2: a self-centred acquaintance that needs pandering (however isn't polite in return). There's a balance - but it's hard to find. Perhaps I'm confusing two different dimensions, politeness and honesty? Edit: This is a wishy-washy comment. Difficult topic, straight-jacketed conflict, interpersonal stuff that is hard to understand and talk about.
  - cduzz 1y ago
    I think that "polite" and "honest" and "direct" are orthogonal. It is possible to be direct, honest, and polite. You should consider the possibility that you're mistaken in linking "rude" with "direct"
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > I think that "polite" and "honest" and "direct" are orthogonal. They are certainly correlated so not orthogonal, its much harder to not be rude when you communicate a complaint than with praise. You need to put much more effort in when you complain about something to not be seen as rude, that means they are not orthogonal. It also means many will just not do it since its too much work.
      - pbh101 1y ago
        Or it means you haven’t practiced and some parts of the space are more difficult for you to traverse individually but still orthogonal objectively. I would say that something isn’t orthogonal if it is impossible to be both. It is clearly possible, just not practiced or easy. I could grant there is also an objective friction surface, a fourth scalar describing how difficult it is to be direct, honest, and polite at once.
  - jimbokun 1y ago
    Being polite and being direct simultaneously can be tricky to realize but not impossible. The best communicators manage to achieve both.
  - notepad0x90 1y ago
    I think you can be polite and direct, but at the cost of being verbose and awkward.
    - pbh101 1y ago
      If you see someone do it well (the word ‘genteel’ comes to mind) you can find that verbos it and awkwardness will detract from both the directness and honesty. ‘Traditional’ etiquette books are actually pretty good at this stuff: one definition of etiquette is to never out another ill at ease or uncomfortable. Discomfort is contagious especially through body language, so the first thing you must do is be comfortable yourself with the feedback you’re giving.

jrockway 1y ago

I also really enjoyed the Go readability process. It made me a much better programmer. I did Python readability at Google and "take this one massive CL and if they make it good by the end of the process they're done" never felt quite as useful as Go's process. I'm glad they made their own rules; it benefited me. (Even if during the process I was thinking "I JUST NEED TO CHECK IN THIS CODE SO I CAN GO BACK TO BED" when getting paged in the middle of the night ;)

danpalmer 1y ago
I'm glad you had that experience with Go readability, because mine was far from that. Java readability taught me loads. Go readability taught me almost nothing and took far longer. In the end I was given it when I emailed the admins to say "either give me some feedback or give me readability". I'm fully behind the readability concept, but it's hard to scale and keep the quality high.
- jrockway 1y ago
  The predictability of the process was not particularly amazing. I just didn't set my expectations very high; with Python and Java... getting readability was on my first quarter OKRs and I accomplished those (my Java readability reviewer was on my team so it was pretty easy). Go... took a while. I have never been quite sure that that's exactly where you want to draw the line. I've been in the position of having a team that's relatively new to Go, and despite being a straightforward language, there's a lot of things you can do, if you know to do them, that makes the code significantly more reliable. I couldn't review every PR on my team, so sometimes stuff slipped through that caused An Incident and it bugged me because a simple "do this instead of that" would have prevented The Incident. I asked some other senior folks that had worked at Google "should we do something like Readability" and the answer was a unanimous "absolutely not, no, never" so clearly other people fell more towards your views than mine. People do just want to get their stuff checked in and go home, which I respect. Someone else is then going to have to go to a bunch of calls with customers when it breaks, though. Guess who that was and where her views are on the matter ;)

ncruces 1y ago

As an “insignificant” outside contributor to Go (I think I worked on half a dozen proposals and PRs), I can say just the same, even for things that in the end got dropped or rejected: polite, firm, informative; I'd add curious. Had a great experience contributing to the project, and Ian was a big part of that. Which for a big project like Go says a lot.

henvic 1y ago
Same!

aleksiy123 1y ago

I have something similar except it was Titus Winters on my final c++ readability change. I tried to push back on one of his comments as well. Imo it just feels kinda cool that someone who really really knows what they are doing gave you a stamp of approval on something.

malkia 1y ago

I was at Google 2014-2017, and I think Ian shared how he did his promo package in order to help others (if I'm not mistaken I think it was him). This was just wow!