17 ms·

Linus is dead wrong here. When he says acting professionally means "fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness

• hannibal5 13y ago
  About professionalism. Have you ever been meetings filled with vice presidents when somebody screws up. What Linus does in mailing list is very mild compared to how CEO's behave in competitive business. Rest assured, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs treated their lieutenants much worse. https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407 https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407 " I really fundamentally believe that being honest and open about your emotions about core/process is good. And because it's damn hard to read people over email, I think you need to be more honest and more open over email. I'm generally nicer in person. Not always."
• seivan 13y ago
  That's what it ends up being. Also way to go to ignore all the other arguments he made, before talking about office politics, it seems like you just skipped to the end.
  • ealexhudson 13y ago
    No, I didn't just skip to the end: I pointed out that his version of "acting professionally" doesn't match any I recognise. There's no point engaging in arguments over a straw man.
• Ygg2 13y ago
  Just gonna post these two gems I found at a previous thread about Linus (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6050443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6050443): http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=44291653 http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=442916... http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=44290909 http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=442909... To me Linus is kinda like Wagner, I do like and enjoy his work, but as a person he is not someone I'd aspire to emulate.
  • claudius 13y ago
    Regarding the last bit, I don’t quite see the point. If I had a wife and she ripped off the sink, put a plastic tub there and called it an improvement, because the metal in the sink could rust, I would be quite clear with her that I think this is a ludicrously stupid idea and she should feel extremely dumb for even thinking of it, her being my wife or not. (Nitpick: Do you mean Richard Wagner or someone called Vagner I’ve never heard of?)
    • anthonyb 13y ago
      Pretty sure there's a reason that you don't have a wife, if that's your attitude...
      • mordae 13y ago
        Yeah, also probably a reason why he has life and does not spend most of his free time tiptoeing around an abusive bitch like some many others.
      • scotty79 13y ago
        Funny thing is most wives wouldn't think twice to critcise their husbands in such way is such circumstances.
      • Ygg2 13y ago
        That was low, I don't agree with him, but seriously that ad hominem was disgusting and out of place. I am now poorer for the time wasted replying to your post.
• geuis 13y ago
  That's not what he's saying at all. He's giving examples of exactly the kind of shit he doesn't put up with.
• stephenr 13y ago
  You've obviously never worked in an office, or you have taken a big step away from reality. The things Linus mentions are what happens as a result of supposed "professionalism". People are emotional, reactionary creatures with very different needs. These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it. As was shown on a recent post - Linus reverted to swearing in his native tongue because English wasn't sufficiently rude enough for him, and those who let the fuckup slip through all admitted their fault and identified that they would take steps to ensure it didn't happen again.
  • oellegaard 13y ago
    Just a note. Once I worked at a tele provider and I accidentally messed up some contract and we lost $6000 - that was in a very professional working environment. I was called into the office of the manager and was told (not in a specifically pleasant way) how stupid my actions were. This taught me an important lesson about caring for details. In open source, the office is the mailing list. Life is tough. Say sorry and make sure it doesn't happen again. Move on - and outside the US, I think swearing is pretty common if you do something stupid - working environment or not. I don't think this means that we all have to adhere to US standards.
    • Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
      The important difference is that the mailing list is public, your humbling was private. I'm guessing your co-workers knew you'd been chewed out but how much worse would you have felt (I guess plenty) and how much more would you have learned (I guess nothing) had your dressing down been in public? Much of this isn't about some artificial standard for the sake of it, it's about getting the best out of people. Public beatings have been shown not to do that. If the OSS community wants to behave this way then it can but ultimately it's going to drive a bunch of people away, or cow them into not really speaking up for fear of retribution and as a result will likely miss out on valuable contributions.
      • nknighthb 13y ago
• Nrsolis 13y ago
  The real danger here is that once you've developed the habit of berating people who screw up, you'll continue to do it when it's not really called for. I'm no shrinking violet. I got a good ass-chewing from time to time in the Navy and each time I deserved it. That said, you'd be surprised to hear that ass-chewing doesn't happen NEARLY as often as you'd expect it to in a hyper-aggressive life-or-death type world like the military. I can't imagine anyone in the civilian world getting their panties bunched up enough to justify the kinds of shit I see from people who get their nose bent out of shape when someone screws up, but see it I do. Often, I think it's an over-reaction. It's one thing to yell at someone who makes a mistake that might get people killed. It's another to flip out because it might make someone's browser run slower or crash. YMMV.
  • bmj 13y ago
    This reminds me of stories and discussions about athletic coaches who belittle and insult their players. There is the same sort of division between reactions to them...some folks will say someone like Bobby Knight is a great coach and leader of men, while others will call him out as wacko who gets off pushing guys around.
    • nknighthb 13y ago
      This serves to illustrate the serious disconnect between the Linus the general public sees through these occasional stories, and the Linus people who actually follow kernel development see. Some of the coaches you're talking about display apoplectic aggression as a matter of routine. Linus is never genteel, but his serious rants are unusual. You just don't hear much about him the rest of the time, because most of what he says is completely uninteresting to non-kernel-devs. It seriously skews your perception.
  • Lapsa 13y ago
    Man, you were in navy. You got completely different prism to look through.
  • vickytnz 13y ago
    I know a designer who used to be a psychologist working with disabled children. He has a similar perspective: "it's design, not brain surgery!"
• antirez 13y ago
  So what is the profesional way to refuse to work with somebody you don't want to, or to mark the work of somebody else as bad? Of course options that will require a lot of time are not good, like gently showing how a "few" things could be improved.
  • arrrg 13y ago
    "I do not want to work with you because of reasons A, B, C." Leaving out the reasons would also be ok, but don't be surprised if this results in confusion and anger. (However, the abusive alternative to this will likely not help reducing the confusion or anger.) "This work is bad because of reasons A, B, C." Leaving out the reasons would also be ok, but don't expect other people to agree with you if you do that. Being straightforward doesn't require one to be abusive.
  • hahainternet 13y ago
    After a few years of tangible disdain for me and after ridiculing me saving his business, I recently refused to work for someone with a succinct 'I quit'. Of course it was later followed up by telling him to go fuck himself but that's how things go.
• arrrg 13y ago
  I also don't really understand how not abusing other people is somehow fake politeness. I mean, who's to say that the abuse isn't fake abuse? This distinction just makes no sense at all to me.
• Dylan16807 13y ago
  He's sarcastically showing the negative consequences of attempting to enforce professionalism. This is very different from a strawman. His argument is not 'you want bad thing B'. His argument is 'your desire for A causes bad thing B'. The only thing worse than someone using a fallacy is someone calling out a fallacy that isn't there.
• ekianjo 13y ago
  > fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords that describes pretty well what is happening in so called professional environments. I have been pissed up at people and told them in their face what I thought of them when they fucked something up for the 4th time in a row, and I was reprimanded for this several times. Office politics does not like honesty. It encourages fake politeness and you indeed end up with people talking in your back like women. This sucks bad and I applaud Linus for taking the stance of saying what needs to be said.
• metaphorm 13y ago
  Linus' entire message just whooooshed right over your head.
• philjackson 13y ago
  I think he might have a point. Every now and again I receive an email from a customer (of ApiAxle) who is asking questions obviously not having read documentation or replies or something else which riles me. I respond to them in a calm, polite manner which might not be how I'm feeling, so, it's a lie, of sorts.