Comment by rayiner
3 years ago
It’s not my personal style, but there’s plenty of high functioning teams in different domains headed by leaders who communicate like Torvalds. From Amy Klonuchar throwing binders (https://www.businessinsider.com/amy-klobuchar-throwing-binde...) to tons of high level folks in banking, law firms, etc.
Put differently, you can construct a high functioning team composed of certain personalities who can dish out and take this sort of communication style without burning out on it.
I've definitely seen teams that were low functioning because they were so worried about consensus and upsetting someone else that no one ever criticized any decisions any team member made even if they were both impactful and objectively terrible.
This is worse
You've just described Japanese work culture.
That’s too cliche. As a counterpoint, HP and IBM are US firms and also get no shit done. And Japanese groups have their share of jerks, in spades.
Issue is not jerks vs consensus, it’s way more complicated than that.
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> but there’s plenty of high functioning teams in different domains headed by leaders who communicate like Torvalds
Maybe in the past. It is not acceptable now.
A lot of men from the "old days" are finding that their table thumping "plain talking" (obscenity shouting) ways are getting them sidelined and ignored.
Good.
Some of us would love to work on a team like this. It would be nice to have the option. Your definition of "acceptable" might not actually result in teams that can take on the big challenges we face as a species as men who did find this kind of thing acceptable retire out of the workforce.
We might all die but at least no one's feelings would be hurt, no matter what they did or didn't do.
I am only half joking. It's a good thing no one is being forced to work with Linus. People really need to keep that in mind
If "We've always done it this way and it's a risk to do it differently" was the argument that carried the day, few of us would have to worry about these questions at all because we'd never have gotten out from under feudalism.
> Some of us would love to work on a team like this. It would be nice to have the option
Be the change you wish to see.
You're literally responding to an Amy Klobuchar cite, with a sweeping implication that being a jerk in the workplace is a "men" thing. Wow.
Kamala Harris too: https://www.businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-former-staffer...
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Touché
If a person works best in this fashion, who are you to say it is unacceptable?
Are the teams high functioning because of that, or despite that?
I would assume a little of both. I've seen weeks wasted just because someone wouldn't say "that's a bad idea". I've also seen whole projects turn to crap, and then get canceled, when people that new better decided to remain silent, to avoid conflict.
Through my years, it seems to be increasingly rare to find disagreeable people, and that agreeableness is being favored/demanded. I'm not one to judge if it's working or not, but when I see people getting upset at managers because the manager criticized their work/explanation during the presentation of that work, which is literally meant for criticism, I know quality coming from that group will be impacted. Maybe not surprising, but many of these people are new graduates. The few "senior" people I know, like this, are from companies who are in the process of failing, in very public ways.
I think the ideal scenario is a somewhat supportive direct manager, and a disagreeable, quality demanding, manager somewhere not far above, keeping the ship from sinking.
I don't work in IT, but in the medical field. We have the advantage/disadvantage of working in many teams during our training (around 20-30). There are varying cultures in teams, and what I found was that teams with high levels of criticism / conflict generally functioned the poorest. Patient care was delivered despite the dysfunction and toxic culture, but it also created an environment where staff were unhappy, fearful of mistakes, and avoidant. The best and most effective teams I worked in had a less hierarchical structure, but were led strongly, with good team working and communication.
That's anecdote, but there's evidence that certain team styles lead to more effective work [1], and suggestion that serious failures of organisations relate to cultural workplace toxicity and leadership [2].
I've seen in the thread a slight strawman argument that 'people too timid to say what they think about something leads to poorer working' or similar. I totally agree with that, but good communication is not what we're talking about here, and people can be clear, confident and respectful.
[1] https://www.civilitysaveslives.com/theevidence [2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/30566/
My unsubstantiated guess is that the Kernel team has a lot of intelligent people but not on the emotional and empathy field. And some of them are really full of themselves, so you need to get them off their high horses
That probably works if people get bribed with interesting enough projects (Linux) or money (banks, lawfirms...). Most other projects probably fall apart before you can blink an eye