An oldie, but a goodie
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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I just wish for all of us to become more accustomed to working on ourselves instead of projecting the need to develop virtue on others. Linus actually did it, doesn't mean that he was an asshole before. Brash, sure, crass, yes, but actual assholes don't calm down as easily.
I kindly disagree with most of what you said. Linus is brilliant, and I appreciate his contributions not just to technology and freedom but also to society. However, this does not pardon the hardships he has also brought upon others.
It's important to be honest in code reviews, but his language, while also honest, goes far and beyond that. We're doing ourselves a disservice defending this behavior as if it's a standard of communication quality that people should strive for, or learn how to behave like.
Current-day Linus wouldn't react much differently. Cut the "shut the fuck up", the one or other "fuck" (but not all, some need to be there for emphasis), done. It's the real personal shit, the "should be aborted retroactively" stuff, that he cut out. "Obvious garbage and idiocy" is a technical term, programmers apply it to their own work all the time. Compilers are more technical in their language but we know what they mean.
And was this mail, seen in its total impact, a hardship? He went down hard, yes, and thousands upon thousands of Linux users breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that Mauro's attitude towards userland doesn't fly.
The hardest-hitting sentence in that mail is actually "You have shown yourself to not be competent in this issue". Absolutely devastating. Taking context into account it's the equivalent of telling a professional cook that their ingredients suck, what they did with them sucks, and most of all that the gall which which they claimed that the customer is wrong about their dinner sucking is completely, and utterly, unprofessional.
Of course that's hard on Mauro. There's no way to tell someone about such an epic cock-up without being hard. But not going that far, avoiding that hardship for some notion of civility, now that would be right-out cruel.
Please defend these statements for me. I'm having a hard time understanding how this is language we should strive for in a code review, even with your explanation.
Additionally, if you can give me any pointers on how I can communicate this way, I'm all ears and would appreciate the help.
It's not a code review. Mauro was gaslighting userspace devs, pretending that kernel bugs he introduced were their fault, and at the end of it all he agrees with Linus.
As to tone: How is "this is not up for discussion" and "obvious mistakes and thoughtlessness" any better? As a reader I'd be inclined to think that you think of me as having the emotional maturity of a toddler.
I believe that excellent communication can be had without engineers swearing at each other, and I don't think there are is any good rationale that warrants such behavior. You believe that there is a time and purpose for the style of conversation that Linus portrayed, and it is warranted and effective behavior.
I'm going to agree to disagree from here. Thanks for the conversation.
For one, the boss setting the tone as to include "shut up" means that you won't get written up for responding in a similar register. It allows for emotionality, instead of burdening the recipient of the dress-down not just with addressing their own behaviour, but also the emotional labour to respond in a way the tone police deems acceptable. Maybe paradoxically (for people lacking emotional intelligence), that makes emotional responses less likely as the recipient isn't as emotionally boxed in, doesn't see walls in every direction.
The line that you shouldn't cross is making things personal -- talking about what someone (presumably) is, instead of what they did. But that applies to any register, "Please come to HR to discuss your identity" isn't someone anyone should ever hear. Persons can be demeaned and belittled, but not behaviour: Behaviour doesn't have emotions, dignity, whatever.