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Commit ee97d8ab authored by Fox Foster's avatar Fox Foster Committed by Jonathan Corbet
Browse files

Remove gendered language from management style documentation 



This small commit replaces gendered pronouns for neutral ones.

Signed-off-by: default avatarFox Foster <fox@tardis.ed.ac.uk>
Signed-off-by: default avatarJonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
parent 673bb2df

Documentation/process/management-style.rst

+13 −12
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -105,7 +105,7 @@ to admit that you are stupid when you haven't **yet** done the really 
stupid thing.



Then, when it really does turn out to be stupid, people just roll their

eyes and say "Oops, he did it again".

eyes and say "Oops, not again".



This preemptive admission of incompetence might also make the people who

actually do the work also think twice about whether it's worth doing or
@@ -172,10 +172,10 @@ To solve this problem, you really only have two options: 
   might even be amused.



The option of being unfailingly polite really doesn't exist. Nobody will

trust somebody who is so clearly hiding his true character.

trust somebody who is so clearly hiding their true character.



.. [#f2] Paul Simon sang "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover", because quite

  frankly, "A Million Ways to Tell a Developer He Is a D*ckhead" doesn't

  frankly, "A Million Ways to Tell a Developer They're a D*ckhead" doesn't

  scan nearly as well.  But I'm sure he thought about it.
@@ -219,15 +219,16 @@ Things will go wrong, and people want somebody to blame. Tag, you're it. 


It's not actually that hard to accept the blame, especially if people

kind of realize that it wasn't **all** your fault.  Which brings us to the

best way of taking the blame: do it for another guy. You'll feel good

for taking the fall, he'll feel good about not getting blamed, and the

guy who lost his whole 36GB porn-collection because of your incompetence

will grudgingly admit that you at least didn't try to weasel out of it.



Then make the developer who really screwed up (if you can find him) know

**in_private** that he screwed up.  Not just so he can avoid it in the

future, but so that he knows he owes you one.  And, perhaps even more

importantly, he's also likely the person who can fix it.  Because, let's

best way of taking the blame: do it for someone else. You'll feel good

for taking the fall, they'll feel good about not getting blamed, and the

person who lost their whole 36GB porn-collection because of your

incompetence will grudgingly admit that you at least didn't try to weasel

out of it.



Then make the developer who really screwed up (if you can find them) know

**in_private** that they screwed up.  Not just so they can avoid it in the

future, but so that they know they owe you one.  And, perhaps even more

importantly, they're also likely the person who can fix it.  Because, let's

face it, it sure ain't you.



Taking the blame is also why you get to be manager in the first place.