It's okay to bring some "natural" language in technical communication. It feels more humane. All the whitewashed corporate language, riddled marketing bullshit feels so soul dead.
It's okay to bring some "natural" language in technical communication. It feels more humane. All the whitewashed corporate language, riddled marketing bullshit feels so soul dead.
You can express dissatisfaction and anger „naturally“ without calling people losers and monkeys.
> You can express dissatisfaction and anger „naturally“ without calling people losers and monkeys.
I can't speak for others. But if I am screwing up as badly as GitHub is, I'd rather someone calls me a loser and monkey for it. It's like someone splashing ice cold water on my face and showing me the reality. It's going to be very uncomfortable, yes. But I'll learn from it and try not to screw up so badly again. I find this kind of natural outburst refreshing really.
Imo there is a big difference between insulting a person's work and insulting a person themself. People can and do mess up colossally without being losers or monkeys.
That’s a theoretically admirable attitude if true (I don’t doubt you believe it, and maybe even do it successfully, but often how we react differs from how we think or say we’d react) but definitely not universal. A more common and probable outcome is people clamming up and becoming defensive, actively rejecting the criticism because of how it was delivered.
Though best case scenario, the people working on these features agree and can point their managers to the post as an example of growing discontent. I doubt it’ll have an effect, though. GitHub is now under the AI division at Microsoft.
I think it's a breath of fresh air. Don't want to be called out like this then stop fucking up.
I could try to explain that most jobs are way more nuanced than just 'failing and deserving to be called a monkey' or 'not failing.' Or, I could just call you names for not seeing that, you could call me names back, and we can keep doing this forever.
Your argument is lacking nuance, declaring that the criticism being levied here must be a simple binary.
The specific error they are criticizing is extremely egregious, akin to builder declaring a house without a roof complete. “failing and deserving to be called a monkey” is a criticism being levied against a 0/100 level mistake, not a mere minor mistake as you are claiming.
While it might be desirable to use less colorful language, it is frankly challenging to express the sheer level of grossly incompetent organizational ineptitude on display here in a reviewed and delivered product actively causing negative customer impact for literal years which is trivially fixed and yet has been ignored.
Customers of Github should be infuriated that Github gleefully foists such utterly defective software upon them. It is hard to get that across in dispassionate writing.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
> Your argument is lacking nuance, declaring that the criticism being levied here must be a simple binary.
That isn't my argument. I am arguing against the idea that there is an "objective" threshold of failure where, once crossed, it becomes acceptable to call people names.
> Customers of Github should be infuriated that Github gleefully foists such utterly defective software upon them. It is hard to get that across in dispassionate writing.
See, while it has its bugs, I don't see a major problem with GitHub as a software product (setting aside the monopoly concerns). I encourage passionate discussion, but calling people names doesn't communicate passion; it communicates impatience. It suggests you don't have the patience to actually make a case for something you're supposedly passionate about, so you're choosing a shorter, more aggressive form instead.
I'm sure getting called a monkey will stop them from ever making a mistake again.
If this was true, teachers and trainers would have the easiest job in the world: just insulting their pupils would stop them from failing an exam, race or whatever again.
The comment is clearly sarcasm.
Not everyone is that robust. People get hurt over things like that. Not everyone is a wizard who does not give a fuck and does not need to care.
These are people for God's sake. Empathy!
Treating grown up people like little kids is a major problem. If that was a stressor which requires defensive actions such as this one, what are you good for in life?
From my perspective your take and actions in this thread is itself completely devoid of empathy.
The reason for colorful language breaking through professionalism is because there is real human emotion behind those words. Real pain and suffering, lost time in the life that will never be regained, an ever widening bald spot from the stress. That type of thing yearns to be expressed in a way that generic corpo speak is by design unable to communicate.
Your response to these emotions is to simply stick your head in the sand(aka refuse to read the blog post)? Worse yet, even without that context, you are here trying to convince those around you to also stick their heads in the sand?
To dream up scenarios where theoretical someones in a giant faceless corp might maybe possibly be offended? Instead of trying to listen and understand the person already in front of you who has actually been offended?
Again everything is a matter of perspective, but from mine your comments severely lack the empathy you supposedly call for.
Feeling empathy for their pathetic fragile existence doesn't mean you sympathise with said fragility.
Not being able to control your anger issues and name calling ppl as a public face of your org sounds pretty fragile to me.
I think this is called projection. Not everyone is angry when name calling someone.
Yeah the tone matters.
If people get hurt over that they need to take some courses on building confidence...
Right, those black people who get offended by being called that just need confidence, right? Those LGBT are so sensitive and can’t handle the colorful names we call them! Imagine that. This kind of comment shows how HN commenters can be so incredibly hateful while thinking they are righteous, which is the worst kind of people, it’s the atitude that leads to the most terrible policies and behavior ever seen on this planet.
Or you grow up and see these kinda things within the right context and brush off whats easy to brush off. Obvious racial slurs or discriminating insults towards a whole community is obviously something different. But you sound like the type of person to cancel a comedian over a joke.
People indeed need a thicker skin
[flagged]
Yeah, its rude to actual monkeys - they did nothing wrong!
If he had gone on a rant purely about the product - eg “GitHub actions is a garbage product that never works”, I think that wouldn’t have left such a bad taste in my mouth. Calling the developers all “losers” crosses a line.
Sure. If you feel the need to write "this is shitty code", fair enough, I'm fine with making allowances for that kind of language. But please leave it at that, instead of also insulting the people who wrote it. There are, unfortunately, plenty of ways for bad incentives to result in competent people creating bad products.
But not when it's against coc
As a corporate drone it's refreshing. Already planning to dedicate some of the holiday season to learning Zig and this latest move only makes it more enticing.
And if he cleaned it up, an even larger number of people would be calling it written with AI.
Shrug.
If he were berating a specific person, I might flag it. Berating Github and Microsoft as an organization? Nah.
Given that CEOs seem to now live in a Post Shame Reality(tm), I'll allow bringing some shame to the situation.