Comment by linsomniac
4 months ago
>not intellectually curious or open
This checks out. I once was at a conference where they (Azure) had a giant booth. A fairly well known person in the community brings me over to talk to his manager who is working the booth. "We should hire him, he's really smart." Within a minute of talking to this manager he says "You're a Linux guy? We do Windows." and physically turns away from me, conversation over. You know, fair enough, was an easy way to find that it wasn't a good fit. But the lack of curiosity about "what do you bring to the table" was pretty stunning.
Be curious.
edit: Clarifying "they"
Wait, is this Azure or GitHub who had the booth? If it was GitHub, I’m super confused and there must have been some serious missing context. I was at GitHub from 2020-2023 and am not aware of _any_ Windows usage in the service. The only meaningful Windows footprint was for client dev (`gh`, GitHub Desktop, etc.) and even there, Windows was the exception. Service side is all Linux; most engineers worked from a Mac.
If the context was an Azure booth, I’m still mildly surprised (they’ve long been invested in beyond-Windows) but not shocked.
(Edit: I forgot about the Actions stack. Some of that was on Windows. I was pretty far removed from that world and much closer to the classic Ruby monolith side.)
Sorry about the ambiguity: I was replying to the Azure part, this was a Azure booth.
Oof, that’s rough, especially considering that GitHub used to be a Linux shop. I wonder what happened to all the Rails folks who built the OG platform.
They’re happy and vested probably :)
Happy and definitely gone, haha. Not my circus not my monkeys.
If they were curious they wouldn't "do Windows"
Your story (and the other posts commenting on lack of intellectual curiosity) fits into a larger model of the world that I prescribe to. Being labeled "well-known" or "smart" doesn't seem to require intellectual openness anymore. In fact, openness seems to be penalized. Being open means potentially exposing yourself to scenarios where you are not the smartest/authoritative, and that reduces your authority, so you avoid those scenarios to preserve your authority. Even when you are not "the authority", being open could be a threatening signal to the authority, where you and your "openness" could be a vector that introduces ideas/scenarios that reduces their authority. So long as authority is solidified by this lack of openness, actually being open could limit your career potential.
Seeing this happen in real time is helping me understand how authoritarian regimes/institutions/movements rise to power.
Wow - why anyone would build a serious Saas platform this day and age on Windows is beyond me.