I got some good feedback, but more than my fair share of "this is the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard of" and such. Luckily I know to ignore pretty much all that shit.
I'm gonna tell it like it is:
There are a lot of people in tech who don't have great social skills. They're awkward, feel withdrawn, and have trouble dealing with other people generally.
One quick and easy solution some of them hit upon is to just be an asshole. If you're an asshole, people sort of sometimes defer to you or steer clear of you. It creates the illusion of power and influence while shielding a person from having to do any real work to improve themselves in that area.
If you think it's bad online and with OSS projects, try delving into the meat-space startup scene itself.
In my opinion, it's ridiculous to excuse people somehow on the basis that they don't have great social skills. Maybe that was the problem in the 90s. That really has nothing to do with it today. There are a lot of people in this scene who have plenty of social skills, they just choose to act like raging assholes. Some fraternity brother type in the startup scene is not necessarily any better than a nerd in this regard.
You can disagree if you want, but I think that someone who chooses to act like a raging asshole has a definite lack of social skills.
I'm sick of these two types of assholes, really. The first type is the "I'm an asshole online -- it's my persona. "
The other is the hater / troll.
And I just have to think that both of those kinds of assholes result from a lack of social skills - as in, "I don't know how to get along with other people in society."
Damnit, I just want to code cool stuff and use other people's cool stuff. Can't we all just write cool stuff and help each other out?
Look closely. In many cases they don't actually have good social skills. That's the thing about being an asshole. It covers that up. Blind raging assertiveness is not good social skills anymore than banging on something really hard is craftsmanship.
I have little social skills, anxiety etc. I can't afford to be an asshole, in fact, it's quite risky for me to take a stand even when I think I should. Someone who is consistently a jerk to others and yet has a good job is unlikely to have low social skills.
https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne
I got some good feedback, but more than my fair share of "this is the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard of" and such. Luckily I know to ignore pretty much all that shit.
I'm gonna tell it like it is:
There are a lot of people in tech who don't have great social skills. They're awkward, feel withdrawn, and have trouble dealing with other people generally.
One quick and easy solution some of them hit upon is to just be an asshole. If you're an asshole, people sort of sometimes defer to you or steer clear of you. It creates the illusion of power and influence while shielding a person from having to do any real work to improve themselves in that area.
If you think it's bad online and with OSS projects, try delving into the meat-space startup scene itself.