Mastodawn

For any project that relies on collaboration, it doesn't matter how smart an individual is if they drive other people away. The underlying technical points might have a lot of merit, but I would not want to use a tool that would have me interact with people like that that would berate me for filing a bug. I would certainly not want to contribute code to such a project.

I am amazed how many people confuse "being a dick" with "having a personality". I hate the "asshole genius" trope because all it's done is convince assholes that they are geniuses, and non-geniuses to think the way to appear smart is to be an asshole.

If you can't communicate effectively ("play well with others"), you're not nearly as smart as you think you are. Smart people know how to get shit done, and the only way to get shit done at a scale beyond what any given human can do on their own is collaboration. And no one wants to collaborate with an asshole.

William D. Jones 1d ago

@ekuber This goes both ways- if one is filing AI slop bug reports, they're being an asshole. I don't have a problem responding with "immediate close, refuse to interact", which some contributors (hey, myself included :P) would consider being an asshole.

@cr1901 Don't over index on the one example I pointed at. I'm talking about people who fork a project and then say that anyone that rather use the original "because it has more monkeys waving their hands at the code" is stupid. I'm talking about people who fork a project because they flamed out of the main project. People who fork or start a project because the original is "too woke" or some shit. All of those happen often enough that you can think of multiple ones of the top of your head. But they are also a small minority of people, just very loud.
When someone is slopping your project, a terse "no, and don't come back", followed by banning them as needed is different from "go fuck yourself". The later might be cathartic, but ultimately does nothing good, not even to yourself because once you allow yourself to remain in that headspace permanently, it poisons your experience of the world.
Do all you can to improve things, and that includes getting angry. But a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having. Make sure to remember to dance.

divVerent 23h ago

@cr1901 @ekuber The problem is when it's supposedly security vulnerabilities.

If you don't act, you basically may have a published 0day you don't handle.

If you act, you're gonna spend days wading through hundreds of useless report to find the three real ones.

So basically you're forced to wade through that, and fix the real holes. The SNR of these reports is quite bad though.

William D. Jones 21h ago

@divVerent @ekuber The only winning move is not to play. That includes AI generated vulns and 0 days.

If ppl care enough about my bandwidth, others should be willing to present a vuln and/or in a non-AI slop form. It's unfortunate that may mean having to stare at an AI report to extract useful info. But I refuse to become a husk by trying to please the most ppl.

Maybe we temper our expectations and deal with 0days getting solved slower, thanks to slop f***ing it up for everyone.

divVerent 21h ago

@cr1901 @ekuber The other option is to use the slop machine yourself and to fix the worst before others find it. For serious projects that is the only option I can recommend.

It is an arms race.

One other option: not being attackable in the first place - e.g. for my game AAAAXY I can ignore AI vuln reports because it is neither networked nor higher privileged, so what do I care.

So basically, if your software can be designed to run offline, you should design it that way.

Another one in this genre: people who mistake cynicism for wisdom.

@yosh @ekuber if I said, assholes will join a hunt for assholes, I'd like to employ both cynicism and wisdom to establish my doubts and self doubts in a purge being an equal assholism. But I'm wavering on: 👍😃👍 for telling assholes to collaborate. But it scares me because no good deed goes unpunished, so there might be assholes waiting in my future ready to club me for being the projected asshole showing up on the asshole-meter they made up for the job of purging assholes from collaboration.

@ekuber this makes me think of all the times I have seen the lead contributor for a large project go
"I'm sorry, I'm just not good with people."

And it's like, that's a problem you can solve if you want to. Either by learning to be better with people or by hiring someone to do the communication part of your job

Owl Eyes 18h ago

@Wearwolf @ekuber #autism just entered the chat

@ekuber I have an ongoing work situation where some people insist we need to engage with a person because she's very knowledgeable

indeed, she seems like the most knowledgeable person locally

that's because she's such a nasty bully that over the last 20+ years she's driven away everyone else who knew about the subject

@ekuber that's pretty much been my experience in engineering. You have a couple conceited assholes that everyone worships and they sit there and shit on everyone thinking they are amazing. Are they smart, sure. Are they experienced, yup. Are they insufferable, 100%. Why do their egos need to be stroked to the point it needs to be a competition instead of collaboration.

millennial fulcrum 1d ago

@ekuber it is unintelligent to drive others away during collaboration.

the "asshole genius" trope is a fiction. a fantasy for losers.

one cannot be cruel and intelligent, they are mutually exclusive. there is zero possibility of those traits coexisting. it surprises me when I point that out how people show their damage by doubling down in its defense; not on their own behalf but on the behalf of those who've hurt them.

to those people, I am sorry. but you were harmed by a dunce.

🦉👀21h ago

@falcennial @ekuber I believe that intelligence is neither inherently helpful nor hindering, neither inherently good or bad. Rather, I believe intelligence amplifies and accelerates your thinking, your skills. Whatever that may be. There are many intelligent people who are cruel, because intelligence can be as easily channelled into manipulating others instead of collaborating with them, to be conniving instead of kind. And in my opinion, the very belief that intelligence somehow prevents people from being cruel is troublesome. One does not need to be a genius to be kind and respectful. Perhaps it is that very overidentification with or overreliance on being intelligent that leads to many a developer neglecting collaboration and becoming arrogant.

Owl Eyes 18h ago

@falcennial @ekuber your ideas would make more sense if you spoke in turn both about narcissism and autism, comparing and contrasting them

Chris Denton 1d ago

@ekuber A corollary to this is it is necessary for people in a project to talk about how they collaborate, even if those conversations are difficult. I think most people aren't intentionally assholes but they can act in ways which aren't great for collaboration. These conversations needn't always be public; a quiet word with someone receptive can go a long way. But there does need to be some public discussion so people can see how they should and shouldn't collaborate.

I say this because by the time someone gets to the level of "asshole genius" it's probable they've been validated or excused for it a long time before then. I do think we need to teach and help promote effective collaboration so we (in the broadest sense) create an environment that doesn't nurture assholes.

(Note: I am absolutely not trying to paint myself as someone who always gets this right. I know I've fallen short at times.)

Anthony Brian Mallgren 23h ago

@ekuber Why is it an issue? Push comes to shove, tell all these people to go to hell, and do everything on your own. Just switch the repository to private. Problem solved.

@ekuber I used to run an industry standards group. One of the participants was very smart, and exceedingly arrogant. He told people to their face they were idiots if they disagreed with him.

Eventually I asked his management to remove him from the standards activity, because whatever his contributions, they were lost in the friction and anger he caused.

@oddhack It's important to act to remediate the situation, because otherwise you end up driving away everyone else that could have equal or greater contributions that don't have any desire to deal with that bullshit. It's the "paradox of tolerance" or the "Nazi bar" problem, at a less extreme level.

@ekuber yeah, after the third person complained about this, it was apparent it wasn't just my opinion and he wasn't just an asshole, he was a destructive asshole. As the standard group chair I had no actual power over his employer, but thankfully, they took the problem seriously (and I'm sure they had plenty of experience internally with this as well).

These days the employer has become one of the "AI" megacorps and I really wonder if they would be this responsible, any more.

derptron 23h ago

@oddhack @ekuber Everyone has decided that the person who keeps prickling about stuff nobody cares about can be replaced with an ass kissing robot that sure, does a shitty job but does it with a smile.

Aoi_X_Kaizaki 21h ago

@ekuber I've had a problem with me working with people. Either I did all the work and they never contributed or They did the work, but never wanted me to contribute anything.

((Jann Gobble)) 🏳️‍🌈17h ago

@ekuber That first paragraph reminds me of Jeffrey Katzenberg, or the latter days of Michael Eisner at Disney.

Mark Gjøl 17h ago

@ekuber I have had more than one colleague who was good at what he did, but very difficult to work with. Managers never understood that being pleasant is also an important trait for senior personnel. "But he's really good!" Yeah, but he's making everyone else much worse.

@ekuber is it just me, or is this thread indeed displaying some of the attitude issues this post is trying to address?

As someone observed: communication with people is a skill. It needs to be learned.
If you have some autistic tendencies, this learning may take double or triple the effort it takes for some others. And if you really can't get a handle on it, see if you can find someone to help you with that task.

David Fleetwood - RG Admin 12h ago

@ekuber This. I skip a lot of popular shows because of this trope and my experience in community organizing which has demonstrated that yes, these people know they are harming the organization but will contribute juuuust enough to not get banned.

In reality they are predators and leeches and cutting them loose will gain the organization more than it loses.

Daniel Blake 7h ago

@ekuber @Unixbigot You should read Rutger Bregman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind:_A_Hopeful_History).
IIRC he says that Neanderthals were smarter than H. Sapiens, but H. Sapiens were the better collaborators. We still have some Neanderthal genes in the population…

Humankind: A Hopeful History - Wikipedia