Re: [Gdbheads] Trust

[Stan Shebs]

Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 11:37:18AM -0800, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> > So where does all this lack of trust come from? Well, I suspect there
> > is some internal politics at Red Hat, so that while the engineers are
> > honest, their management *is* telling lies about projects or
> > priorities whatever, and that puts the engineers in a tough spot.
> > Some of it I know is history; some of the suspicions I've heard
> > expressed recently have their origins in Cygnus days, when as mgmt I
> > got to witness some of the lying firsthand, and saw the corrosive
> > effect it had on engineers. Especially for persons prone to feelings
> > of insecurity or self-doubt, the scars last a long time. Some lack of
> > trust comes from personality; some people just naturally tend to be
> > suspicious and distrustful of others.
>
> Stan,
> Except for this paragraph, I was shaking my head in agreement over your
> message.  I hemmed and hawed about responding but I can't let the slurs
> to Red Hat management go without remark.
Heh, forgot there were managers reading this. I still miss the oldest
days of Usenet; before managers discovered it, we could say what we
liked about them... :-)

> I think you know and have worked with everyone in Red Hat management.
> I'm not sure who you think is doing the lying.
The bad Cygnus managers I know about are long gone, and those are the
only ones for which I have firsthand knowledge. From my point of view,
they were lying; based on discussions with acquaintances in business,
a lot of what goes on is apparently considered normal. Or to use a
current phrase, they would "emphasize some things, and deemphasize
other things". :-)

For current Red Hat I can only surmise, but it's really really
unusual to have bad blood between employees spill out into a
multiple-month dispute visible outside Red Hat. Not the kind of
thing us large stockowners like to see happening with our investment!

> Also, IMO, and as long as I am responding, offering general assessments
> of your take on people's personalities is guaranteed to be met with
> resentment by anyone who thinks you're talking about them and, IMO, that
> greatly detracts from your otherwise excellent message.
Ah, but carefully phrased not to tied to any specific person. Like a
Rorschach test, if you see yourself in it, that tells you more about
yourself than I could!

> I don't think we're going to get very far in this process if we get
> bogged down in ascribing psychological motives or evil corporations
> behind the problems.  Can't we just deal with the actual issues?
Sorry, but that's one of the reasons I've taken a while to weigh
in - my intuition was telling me the process change proposals were
likely to be ineffective, but for a long time I couldn't say exactly
why I thought that. It's a little like a real-world Maslow hierarchy;
all of our development process is built on layers of trust, and when
the trust is eroded, the process starts breaking down too.

Stan