an hour ago by Kalium
Most of us in software engineering have, at some point, encountered someone who does not see a difference between technical criticisms of a system and personal attacks on its designers and authors. This is an understandable error in a junior engineer, an irritating bad habit in a mid-tier engineer, and a problem in a senior person. In all cases, the answer often winds up being finding a way around them, much as this describes.
I've been places where such people have found their way to technical leadership. Finding ways to improve things can rapidly become exceptionally difficult.
At this point my only way forward is to have a personal blocklist of people whose technical leadership decisions I refuse to ever be subject to again. It's a shame, because some of them are also brilliant engineers.
27 minutes ago by annoyingnoob
Seems like there is missing context here. Part of doing your job is communicating changes and explaining your reasoning when needed, "Unbuntu is doomed" doesn't really cover the need for communications. From the story I have no idea why there would be a need to switch form Ubuntu to Fedora - seems like a personal preference choice and that might look like change for the sake of change and no meaningful benefit to someone in a another group. Feeling like there is another side to the story here.
19 minutes ago by wilsynet
Author is saying that the company already decided they are migrating from Ubuntu to Fedora. Thatâs not the controversy.
In a Slack channel, someone said âUbuntu is doomedâ. Not because Ubuntu, as a distro, will soon reach end-of-life, but because at $COMPANY, Ubuntu will be replaced by Fedora. That is to say, âUbuntu is doomed (at $COMPANY)â.
What author is objecting to is people joining the conversation several hours later and expressing unhappiness that someone is predicting the end of Ubuntu everywhere.
But thatâs because the new person wasnât in the conversation, lacks context, and maybe should start by assuming the best intent rather than the worst intent.
21 minutes ago by Certhas
It seems to me that this is kind of irrelevant to the point of the post. Also, if you would like more context, there is a first sentence to this post that links the post that explains the context. Specifically:
> What would happen is this: a couple of people would get to talking (on Slack, for that is what they used) about something technical. There might be a topic at hand, like "Ubuntu is doomed", and they'd be hashing it out, figuring out what that meant. Then, invariably, someone would pop in two or three hours later, hit the hated "start thread" button on one of the comments, and would start shitting all over them.
> "OMG why are you hating on Canonical" "Ubuntu is NOT DOOMED"
> And then the people involved would have to walk this person back and say, look friend, Ubuntu at this company is doomed, because the company has decided that everything is moving from flavor X to flavor Y, and all of the flavor Y images are built from Fedora (yeah, I know, ignore that for this story) instead of X's Ubuntu. So once we're done with the migration, Ubuntu at this company is a goner!
38 minutes ago by hn_throwaway_99
I obviously don't know all the details here, as this is, by definition, just one person's version of events. That said, I'm always highly skeptical of any account that essentially paints many/most others in the org as the source of the dysfunction, and if only they implemented my brilliant idea would things get fixed.
All large organizations have varying degrees of dysfunction, some more than others. Sometimes that dysfunction is toxic, but other times it's just a result of people being human with different opinions of how best to do things. Coming in to a new organization and making an announcement that is some version of "you're doing it wrong", unless you're very high up in the org, is rarely successful.
27 minutes ago by anonymousab
> if only they implemented my brilliant idea would things get fixed.
That is not how "Did it work? Kinda" reads to me.
an hour ago by sneak
I think every organization above a certain size necessarily ends up with informal (or sometimes formal) groups of "adults in the room" that handle important things in good faith, as a coordinated team. It's inherently discriminatory against a certain type of employee (one who would rather metagame the organization itself rather than address the market/customers/ops) but quite necessary.
an hour ago by noir_lord
One of the best things you can do when you join a new organisation is figure out who those people are.
They often know where the bodies are buried (or that obscure document stored on a documentation system from two generations ago that was deprecated but never removed "just in case" that describes exactly the system you are currently looking at wondering "wtf").
In an idealised world it wouldn't happen but I've never managed to work anywhere close to that.
8 minutes ago by hitekker
I've heard a strategy to start with asking "who do you respect the most in this org?" or "who is the most knowledgeable person in the org?". Keep repeating that across every 1:1 and you may eventually uncover the adults.
13 minutes ago by hitekker
> one who would rather metagame the organization itself rather than address the market/customers/ops
Saved for future reference. My company has an exploding number of metagamers with an ever shrinking number of "adults in the room". It's stagnating hard.
an hour ago by h2odragon
Im not sure but i think the only place to have that "we're here to work, not play soap opera at work" environment may be open warfare.
an hour ago by noir_lord
Open warfare or enterprise development.
Though at least the former has the Geneva Conventions.
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