Donnie Berkholz
Let us see a practical (and sad) example of how assholes can bring a software development project to its knees, in this case, Gentoo Linux, a very popular distribution during the pre-Ubuntu years from 2002 to 2006, at which point the project lost almost 20% of their developers in the space of a few years. Why did this happen?
This month’s Vidéothèque edition is a recording (with a surprisingly low number of views at the time of this publication) of a 2012 talk called “Assholes are Stealing your Beer” by Donnie Berkholz. Donnie was at the time analyst at RedMonk, a company of programming language ranking fame. Today, Donnie is the founder and chief analyst of Platify Insights. A decade before the talk, Donnie was a Gentoo Linux distribution contributor, leading a team of more than 250 developers in the project.
Starting in 2006, the behavior of a few members of the project drove almost 20% of the developers out of the project, leaving the project with the reputation of a “community with issues” for years after.
Donnie explains at the beginning of the talk that an open source community works as a virtuous (or vicious) circle where the skills and attitudes of developers leads to their contributions, which in turn leads to results, which drive up (or down) the reputation of the project. The ability to get results is, then, a direct function of the quality of your community. Hence, in the words of Donnie, the key issue in open source projects (people) becomes a dichotomy: rock stars, or death stars?
Fortunately, and following a normal Gauss curve, most contributors are “normal” in the sense that they are not either assholes nor geniuses; in the case of Gentoo, just 3 people out of 300 members had a disproportionately negative impact in the whole community! To make things worse, research shows it takes 5 good interactions to cancel a single bad one.
Five to one. Let those numbers sink in.
The end result of masses of “assholish” attitudes was that, from 2006 on, the number of contributors to the project dropped and then flattened substantially; and no, the popularity of Ubuntu was not the primary factor that drove this trend.
Even worse,
“People still think of Gentoo as a community that has issues”
How can you identify assholes to avoid such a situation? The first reaction would be to think that conflicting people are the problem, but this is not the case; conflicts are a healthy thing, if you can keep your emotions out of the loop and focus on the problem instead of the person itself.
To figure out assholes in a group, the best strategy is to identify patterns of repeating negative behavior in the group. You need to keep metrics, yes, but not overly complex ones: the rate of complaints, for example, is a simple one, and can be used to provide justification when taking action against certain individuals.
In minute 10:37 Donnie quoted Robert Sutton (whose hallmark book is discussed in this month’s Library article) enumerating some of the problems assholes can cause in organizations:
- Reduced innovation and creativity;
- Less cooperation and cohesion;
- Impaired ability to attract the best & brightest;
- And the worse of them all: the recruiting of more assholes.
Another interesting insight by Donnie is that in technical people, social and technical abilities are orthogonal. One does not cancel or preclude the other in any way.
So, knowing all this, how can you prevent assholes from joining your project? Ex ante, by setting clear expectations to newcomers about what kind of behavior is and is not tolerated in a community. Ex post, by promoting social interactions in person (remote interactions are fertile ground for assholes), and taking action when receiving complaints; do not just let them rot in your inbox. Do something about them.
And, if all else fails, remember that your community must build a product or a service, and not fix a person; if needed, let the asshole go, and keep your community safe and sound.
Watch this month’s Vidéothèque movie “Assholes are Stealing your Beer” by Donnie Berkholz on YouTube, and start driving assholes out of your projects, products, and communities.
Cover snapshot chosen by the author.
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