4 ms·

It's so sad to see an excellent engineer such as yourself, building what seems like an excellent filesystem that has the potential to be better than everything

by mort96 1y ago

It's so sad to see an excellent engineer such as yourself, building what seems like an excellent filesystem that has the potential to be better than everything else available for Linux for many use cases, completely fail to achieve your goals because you lack the people skills to navigate working as a part of a team under a technical leader. Every comment and e-mail I've seen from you has demonstrated an impressive lack of understanding with regard to why you're being treated as you are. You don't have to agree with all other maintainers on everything, but if you're working on Linux (or any other major project that's owned, run and developed by other people), you need to have the people skills to at a minimum avoid pissing everyone else off. Or you need to delegate the communication work to someone with those skills. It's a shame you don't.

nullc 1y ago
> minimum avoid pissing everyone else off Which also, at times, means appeasing people even when you are confident that they are wrong because you need their cooperation in the future. In a large complicated system, being able to work together is often more important to the system's reliability, performance, etc. than being as right as possible. Plus even when you're confident you are in the right you might still be in the wrong. After all, the people you are disagreeing with are also superbly competent and they believe they're in the right just as you do. There can be hills worth dying on, but they ought to be very rare.
- mort96 1y ago
  Exactly. An extremely important part of working in some hierarchical organizational structure, be that as a Linux kernel developer or as an employee at a company, is the ability to disagree with a superior's decision yet acquiesce and go along with it. Good organizations leave room for disagreement, but there always comes a point where someone in a leadership position has made a final decision and the time for debate is over.
- motorest 1y ago
  > Which also, at times, means appeasing people even when you are confident that they are wrong because you need their cooperation in the future. Being unwilling to follow basic QA processes in preparation of a release candidate, and then doubling down by attacking the release engineer with claims the QA process doesn't apply to you because you know better, is something that is far more serious than lacking basic soft skills. It's a fireable offense in most companies.
  - nullc 1y ago
    > It's a fireable offense in most companies. In a company there are other employees who have your success as part of their job function. People to train you, to talk you down off a ledge, people to step in and guard you against misunderstanding or criticisms. People to advocate for you or send you home before a dispute crosses a point of no return. You're also paid to be there, to put up with the companies BS, .. the project isn't yours, it's not usually your reputation that's hurt when the company wants to make a decision you don't agree with and it goes poorly. The context is so different, I don't think it's really comparable.
    - motorest 1y ago
      > In a company there are other employees who have your success as part of their job function. Yes, and they enforce basic relase processes to ensure you don't break releases by skipping QA processes or introducing untested and unverified features in release candidates. And you sure as hell don't have primadonna developers stay in the payroll for long if they start throwing tantrums and personal attacks towards fellow engineers when they are asked to follow the release process or are called out for trying to sneak untested changes in mission-critical components.
      - rekoil 1y ago
        > And you sure as hell don't have primadonna developers stay in the payroll for long if they start throwing tantrums and personal attacks towards fellow engineers when they are asked to follow the release process or are called out for trying to sneak untested changes in mission-critical components. You've obviously not been in this industry for very long, about half the places I've been to have had at least one "rockstar developer" that was actually quite mediocre but had the ear of management which thought they were all that and as a result got to do whatever they wanted.
koverstreet 1y ago
I get a ton of comments like this. Pointing the finger at the skills I lack and my inability, while ignoring the wider picture, of the kernel burning out maintainers and not doing well on filesystems. It's wearying.
- rastignack 1y ago
  How about acknowledging you’ve been too sharp with words, apologizing, and attempting to move forward ? I know other people in the kernel do the same mistake as you frequently do on mailing lists. But two wrongs do not make a right.
- mort96 1y ago
  You get a ton of comments like this because it's true. There are real problems in the kernel, I've seen how hostile it can be to people who are just trying to do the right thing and upstream their changes etc. But your case isn't that. Your behavior would get you in trouble at any job where you have to follow rules set by other people. Your refusal to treat your part of the kernel as anything other than your personal pet project has destroyed your project's potential. If this was a month or two ago, I would've written something vaguely optimistic here about how you could still turn this around somehow, about what lessons you could learn and move forward with. But that ship has sailed. Your project is no longer the promising next generation filesystem which could replace ext4 as the default choice. Your role is now that of the developer of some small out-of-tree filesystem for a small group of especially interested users. Nobody wanted this for you, including myself. But you have refused to listen to anyone's advice, so now you're here.
  - sc68cal 1y ago
    Kent has gotten this same feedback across practically every single platform that has discussed his issues. He is unable to take critique and will instead just continue to argue and be combative, therefore proving yet again why he is in this situation in the first place
  - koverstreet 1y ago
    That's because it is my project, and my responsibility. I can't be bowing to the demands of any one person; I have to balance the wants and needs of everyone and prioritize shipping something that works above all else. Repeatedly we've seen that those priorities are not shared, unfortunately. Arguments are just as heated as they ever were, but now instead of arguing over the actual issues - does this work, are we doing this right - people jump to arguing over language and conduct and demanding apologies or calling for people to be expelled. But my core mission is just shipping a reliable trustworthy filesystem, and that's what I'm going to stick to.

by mort96 1y ago

nullc 1y ago

> minimum avoid pissing everyone else off Which also, at times, means appeasing people even when you are confident that they are wrong because you need their cooperation in the future. In a large complicated system, being able to work together is often more important to the system's reliability, performance, etc. than being as right as possible. Plus even when you're confident you are in the right you might still be in the wrong. After all, the people you are disagreeing with are also superbly competent and they believe they're in the right just as you do. There can be hills worth dying on, but they ought to be very rare.

mort96 1y ago
Exactly. An extremely important part of working in some hierarchical organizational structure, be that as a Linux kernel developer or as an employee at a company, is the ability to disagree with a superior's decision yet acquiesce and go along with it. Good organizations leave room for disagreement, but there always comes a point where someone in a leadership position has made a final decision and the time for debate is over.
motorest 1y ago
> Which also, at times, means appeasing people even when you are confident that they are wrong because you need their cooperation in the future. Being unwilling to follow basic QA processes in preparation of a release candidate, and then doubling down by attacking the release engineer with claims the QA process doesn't apply to you because you know better, is something that is far more serious than lacking basic soft skills. It's a fireable offense in most companies.
- nullc 1y ago
  > It's a fireable offense in most companies. In a company there are other employees who have your success as part of their job function. People to train you, to talk you down off a ledge, people to step in and guard you against misunderstanding or criticisms. People to advocate for you or send you home before a dispute crosses a point of no return. You're also paid to be there, to put up with the companies BS, .. the project isn't yours, it's not usually your reputation that's hurt when the company wants to make a decision you don't agree with and it goes poorly. The context is so different, I don't think it's really comparable.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > In a company there are other employees who have your success as part of their job function. Yes, and they enforce basic relase processes to ensure you don't break releases by skipping QA processes or introducing untested and unverified features in release candidates. And you sure as hell don't have primadonna developers stay in the payroll for long if they start throwing tantrums and personal attacks towards fellow engineers when they are asked to follow the release process or are called out for trying to sneak untested changes in mission-critical components.
    - rekoil 1y ago
      > And you sure as hell don't have primadonna developers stay in the payroll for long if they start throwing tantrums and personal attacks towards fellow engineers when they are asked to follow the release process or are called out for trying to sneak untested changes in mission-critical components. You've obviously not been in this industry for very long, about half the places I've been to have had at least one "rockstar developer" that was actually quite mediocre but had the ear of management which thought they were all that and as a result got to do whatever they wanted.

koverstreet 1y ago

I get a ton of comments like this. Pointing the finger at the skills I lack and my inability, while ignoring the wider picture, of the kernel burning out maintainers and not doing well on filesystems. It's wearying.

rastignack 1y ago
How about acknowledging you’ve been too sharp with words, apologizing, and attempting to move forward ? I know other people in the kernel do the same mistake as you frequently do on mailing lists. But two wrongs do not make a right.
mort96 1y ago
You get a ton of comments like this because it's true. There are real problems in the kernel, I've seen how hostile it can be to people who are just trying to do the right thing and upstream their changes etc. But your case isn't that. Your behavior would get you in trouble at any job where you have to follow rules set by other people. Your refusal to treat your part of the kernel as anything other than your personal pet project has destroyed your project's potential. If this was a month or two ago, I would've written something vaguely optimistic here about how you could still turn this around somehow, about what lessons you could learn and move forward with. But that ship has sailed. Your project is no longer the promising next generation filesystem which could replace ext4 as the default choice. Your role is now that of the developer of some small out-of-tree filesystem for a small group of especially interested users. Nobody wanted this for you, including myself. But you have refused to listen to anyone's advice, so now you're here.
- sc68cal 1y ago
  Kent has gotten this same feedback across practically every single platform that has discussed his issues. He is unable to take critique and will instead just continue to argue and be combative, therefore proving yet again why he is in this situation in the first place
- koverstreet 1y ago
  That's because it is my project, and my responsibility. I can't be bowing to the demands of any one person; I have to balance the wants and needs of everyone and prioritize shipping something that works above all else. Repeatedly we've seen that those priorities are not shared, unfortunately. Arguments are just as heated as they ever were, but now instead of arguing over the actual issues - does this work, are we doing this right - people jump to arguing over language and conduct and demanding apologies or calling for people to be expelled. But my core mission is just shipping a reliable trustworthy filesystem, and that's what I'm going to stick to.