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Comment by rkomorn | Hacker News Reader

I've spent time in restaurant kitchens around chefs that believed "some people need to be shocked awake".

The people that got yelled at didn't do markedly better after getting yelled at, but they sure had a worse attitude towards their peers and chefs.

None of the chefs I talked to about it had anything better than "that's how it was when I started in kitchens" as actual justification.

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The methods for influencing results within an organization exist on a spectrum, and failing to adequately utilize the breadth of that spectrum is always counter-productive.

If you want to measure the language used by the productivity of the desired outcome. I'd encourage you to survey the ratio of comments talking about the problems with github's very broken CI and UX, with how many people expressed an objection to the language and words used in the announcement. Failure to convey ideas with tact and respect, is demonstrably more counter productive.

I assume you'll choose to dismiss those who object as fragile birds... but then you don't really care about the productivity towards the goal then do you? You just want to be ok with being mean because it doesn't bother you.

Why do you consider that a useful metric? Hit dogs holler, after all.

> Why do you consider that a useful metric? Hit dogs holler, after all.

you do...

> The methods for influencing results within an organization exist on a spectrum, and failing to adequately utilize the breadth of that spectrum is always counter-productive.

Or did you have a different expectation for result in mind? The one you thought would be counter-productive without insults.

My assumption was that ark wanted to put support behind codeberg, and encourage others to take a critical look at how bad github has become, and to consider other options. Not rally additional support and defense of github's actions.

I do about what?

I haven’t actually used harsh language with anyone so I’m not sure what your point is. I have been on HN long enough to know that expressions of strong negative emotion are punished here. That says absolutely nothing about the effectiveness of different methods of influence within an organization.

I think if people are rallying to defend GitHub due to some language that ruffled their feathers and not objective technical merit then they have completely lost the plot as engineers.

As far as Andrew’s goals, I think he has been pretty successful within the framework of the attention economy.

I'm talking about the ideas, threads and conversations that are occupying the head space of others.

> then they have completely lost the plot as engineers.

I think most people who would call themselves software engineers have lost the plot of engineering.

That applies equally to those who are blind to the fact that engineering only exists to create stuff for humans. Most engineers are ignorant to the ability to consider the humans they're supposedly build for.

The point is to make shit better, not worse, and not more inhuman.

If you are hitting the dog unprovoked don’t be shocked if it bites you.

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