I'm glad to see that he's got both of us defending him.
I'm talking about the same tptacek who I've personally butted heads with where he couldn't even accept being wrong about how to make stew (looking back, that was exactly 1 year ago to the day!)
I respect tptacek very much for his domain knowledge and expertise. He has great theories on hiring practices and cooking among others. He's one of the names I look for on HN.
But he requires lots of care and effort. I have to mentally peel back about half of his posts to remove the snark and assholery and get to the juicy bits. But those bits are usually there and usually worth the effort to get to.
That's okay, I'm a grown up and can deal with high friction in order to enjoy interacting with somebody who's truly intelligent. tptacek is just one of those types that comes with lots of smarts and lots of difficult personality and that's okay.
And for the record I'm also aware that I can be rather high friction and assholish as well, and not nearly as insightful as tptacek.
EDIT: You know what, I'm not going to dignify this any further, other than to say that I don't want HN to be however you think HN should be. By saying "he requires lots of care and effort," you're discouraging people like Thomas from participating, and therefore making our community worse as a result. How would you feel if you saw someone talking like that about you?
I'm not even sure what your responding to?! In no way am I insinuating that tptacek shouldn't participate here or that his voice isn't extremely valuable. I'm not being facetious when I said I'm glad we're both defending him.
I'm logically one of the last people to defend him here having butted heads with him so much, but in fact I deeply value his presence here.
> How would you feel if you saw someone talking like that about you?
I'd probably agree with them. I'm not a high-school kid afraid of how my peers will see me and neither is tptacek. I've said as much about his communication style to him directly.
I highly doubt that tptacek doesn't have enough self-awareness to know that he's a high maintenance debate partner. There's no reason to paint him as a saint, he's just a guy. A very smart guy, but he has his foibles and flaws, which are far outweighed by his contributions. But to ignore those more difficult parts of his personality does him a disservice by not seeing him in his entirety.
I respect the entire person (as much as I can see through the limited lens of HN) not just the parts I think are praiseworthy.
I'm talking about the same tptacek who I've personally butted heads with where he couldn't even accept being wrong about how to make stew (looking back, that was exactly 1 year ago to the day!)
I respect tptacek very much for his domain knowledge and expertise. He has great theories on hiring practices and cooking among others. He's one of the names I look for on HN.
But he requires lots of care and effort. I have to mentally peel back about half of his posts to remove the snark and assholery and get to the juicy bits. But those bits are usually there and usually worth the effort to get to.
That's okay, I'm a grown up and can deal with high friction in order to enjoy interacting with somebody who's truly intelligent. tptacek is just one of those types that comes with lots of smarts and lots of difficult personality and that's okay.
And for the record I'm also aware that I can be rather high friction and assholish as well, and not nearly as insightful as tptacek.