I didn't realize certain accomplishments allowed someone to be a total and utter dick - to ignore all decorum, respect, and human kindness to others. The more you know...
That's not what's being discussed. Tyrannosaurs made a descriptive claim, mh_ questioned it. You're acting like mh_ made a normative claim.
(And you're using the shitty rhetorical tactic of sarcasm, which allows you to tell someone that they're wrong without making any claims of your own, or even understanding what they're saying.)
Your adding the modifier "shitty tactic" to the use of sarcasm gives away your inability to understand that tone is notoriously difficult to infer from online comments, and predisposition to try to prove how smart you are. But you're unable to see the irony in placing rules around the decorum of conversation in a topic about the lack of that very thing.
But that's just supposition, not a normative claim.
Edit: I wonder if I'd be down-voted so harshly if I was Linus Torvalds.
I wonder if I'd be down-voted so harshly if I was Linus Torvalds.
From me, the answer is yes, and I hope that is true for others on HN as well. I'm sure it's not always appreciated, but I think it's important for influential people to receive honest feedback. Although in the rare cases when I downvote 'pg' on this board, I do wonder if some 'all-future-downvotes > /dev/null' switch might get flipped. For what it's worth, I downvoted your sarcastic grandparent, and upvoted this somewhat more constructive reply.
I think it was a question of whether it was or not (devil's advocate) but I was questioning, in what I realize now was difficult to discern over written comment, whether gains in management effectiveness was a good enough excuse for abusive tactics.
I can show you evidence (China, etc.) of supreme levels of output in the most abusive of situations. That doesn't mean that society doesn't place value on a balance between productivity and the way we treat fellow human beings.
You're veering wildly off-topic. Tyrannosaurs said that "the evidence" shows that Linus's behavior hurts productivity, and that is what was being disputed here. You might value other things, but that isn't what's being discussed.
