[stavros]

"I'm fucking tired of the fact that you don't fix problems in the code you write" doesn't make any judgement about the person, it makes a factual judgement of what they did. He didn't say "you're a bad coder", he said "you create bugs and then don't fix them".

Sure, he could have omitted the word "fucking" there, which doesn't add much, but "I'm tired of the fact that you don't fix the problems in your code" is really good, direct, honest feedback.

I understand that the person receiving it might feel bad, but they might also feel bad with "I've noticed that sometimes you tend to leave some bugs unfixed, even if perhaps they were caused by your own commits". When you give feedback, you should steer away from making personal judgements, focus on the facts, and deliver the feedback calmly, and Linus' sentence hits two of the three, which isn't too bad.

Anglo cultures really do tend to walk on eggshells to avoid hurting feelings, which other cultures might find tiring and somewhat disingenuous.

[perching_aix]

> "I'm tired of the fact that you don't fix the problems in your code" is really good, direct, honest feedback.

I disagree. I don't see why Linus being tired or not is technically relevant at all. Leading with it makes it sound like he's looking for the guy to stop tiring him, rather than actually remediate his lapses in self-review.

Being courteous is not about avoiding a negative experience at all costs, it's about being considerate of it, keeping in mind that it exists. If you know you're going to tell the guy they're causing issues, then not making that about how fucking tired that makes you feel shows that you're not trying to mess with their head, but trying to actually address the issue. It's specifically to avoid the ambiguity on whether he has a problem with the person or what they're doing, since when insulted, people tend to reasonably assume they're being found to be problematic.

I really don't think this is all that culture specific, and that this is just some freak cultural mismatch having been ongoing for decades. Not ethnic cultural at least.

[_Tev]

Maybe it is not exactly culture-specific, but most of your post definitely sounds to me like "walking on eggshells" stavros mentioned.

Tbh I agree that your citation of Linus' email was an example of not exactly productive conversation. But preventing such emotion ventillation takes effort, same as not feeling insulted when your work is criticized. And who should put in the emotional effort is imo at least partially influenced by cultural expectations.

[perching_aix]

I don't think these are mutually exclusive, and I also don't think that this is a scenario where that Key person just needed to put in effort to not feel insulted when their work was criticized, because it was them and their behavior that was criticized, not their work.

If wanting others to not say things like how they're "fucking tired of someone else or their behavior" is making them walk on eggshells, and can remain elusive to them for decades out of cultural differences, then clearly I'm taking crazy pills, because that's just about the most outlandish proposal I've ever come across.