Rambling

Posted Feb 12, 2025 20:36 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
In reply to: Rambling by LtWorf
Parent article: Resistance to Rust abstractions for DMA mapping

If you are going to accuse people of not understanding, you should make sure you understand things yourself.

Your analogy falls down because that is not what happened. At all.

What would you say if your boss said: "We need some extra capabilities to stay competitive. It is going to mean some new skills and some extra work. So, Pedro here is going to help you. He is going to do this part and you are going to do that part. There may be some small changes to the way you do things in the future but, good news, it will not be any extra work for you because of Pedro here."

Can you honestly say you'd be like "uh, forget it boss. I do not share your opinions. We do not need to do that work. We do not need those outcomes. I won't do it. Not happening. Get over it."

Because, if you did, the proper outcome in that case is probably that your boss would fire you and that Pedro would take over. He would probably need to hire somebody to help.

See the difference?

The objection here was not to "the extra work". It was to the intended result. He flat out rejects that a mixed language code-base is better. He does not agree that adding Rust to Linux will make it a better kernel. So, he is blocking it. Sure, the "boss" (Linus) already decided that it was a good idea and that it should happen. He disagrees. So he does not care what the boss said. He is not playing ball.

Re-read your analogy and mine. See the difference?

Rambling

Posted Feb 12, 2025 23:53 UTC (Wed) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (2 responses)

> Because, if you did, the proper outcome in that case is probably that your boss would fire you and that Pedro would take over. He would probably need to hire somebody to help.

This capitalistic view that any worker is replaceable at any time with any other worker clashes very hard with the reality where this doesn't work at all :D

Sure you can try. But the chances of you succeeding to do that are really slim.

Rambling

Posted Feb 13, 2025 10:16 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> Sure you can try. But the chances of you succeeding to do that are really slim.

Is the guy a genius? Or is he a liability? Or is he both and which one outweighs the other? Managers are paid megabucks to make that decision (and if they take the money and don't do it, THEY are the liability ...).

But you pays your money and you makes your choice. I've actively declined (or pushed the manager for that decision) to hire somebody who was extremely capable. Because I (and everybody else) thought he would be a personal liability despite being clearly a technical genius.

Cheers,
Wol

Rambling

Posted Feb 13, 2025 16:04 UTC (Thu) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

Don't take this the wrong way but given the amount and content of comments you post here, I think in your team you're most likely to be the most hard to deal with.