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by TameAntelope
1744 days ago
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My concern is that tomorrow, I'll have to deal with one of the junior devs bringing up Linus Torvalds' comment as the starting point for a suggestion we leave GitHub, which ends up being a lot of work for no material gain for my org. Torvalds isn't wrong, and I'm almost certain he didn't mean, "...and therefore everyone should quit GitHub immediately." but people will interpret it that way. And on the off chance he did mean for everyone to quit GitHub, he's then ignoring a cornucopia of value that GitHub provides unrelated to his expertise as the creator of git, which I don't think he's arrogant enough to do, anymore. |
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What would you rather see? That he just avoid expressing any opinion that might make people question your status-quo? Muddy his own message by weighing down his emails with hedging and qualifying statements that are - at best - superfluous to his target audience?
I'd love it if one of my juniors was tuned in enough to read this and realize there is more to git than github. And maybe they even start learning how to use that tool beyond the lowest common denominator of git knowledge that most people skate by with.
Of course it might mean steering them away from a rash decisions like misinterpreting this email, or wanting to leave github just because someone pointed out it wasn't perfect. But that's what makes them junior. It's my job to make them better than that.
>which ends up being a lot of work for no material gain for my org.
If you would just paternalistically tell them no, or would give a mentoring answer but don't see the value in that, then there is a workplace problem to address. Either you're hiring too junior for what you're willing to support on the team, or you need to reconsider your role within the team.