My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.
> My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.
I had a boss who was a manager at one of Google's flagship products, and he made it his point to not let anyone forget it. He pushed people to work nights and weekends, he berated team members and threatened firing them during daily meetings, he overrode engineer's calls to not release a product to claim he released it before schedule, he threatened the same engineers if anything went wrong during the illadvisable release, etc.
He was since hired as a VP of engineering of another global company.
After being in multiple orgs and having been in touch with c-suite, I have suspicions that lack of total empathy and psychopathic tendencies are a must to get to really high social-based positions.
They are practically a must just to get there... to thrive in this 'layer' of society, a person is quite far away from regular average human in various worst ways possible
I know headhunters that specialize in identifying highly functioning sociopaths for leadership roles. But experiencing total dehumanization of others first-hand and subsequent rise of that person is something one never forgets.
Self-host, easy. No matter the hordes of detractors who will tell you this is impossible and that all your mail will be /dev/nulled by all the usual suspects (Microsoft, Microsoft and Microsoft being the main culprit here, Gmail comes in second) the truth is that you'll be fine as long as you make sure to configure things like SPF and DKIM correctly and you're either using a smarthost for outgoing mail (ask your IAP whether they provide one) or are on a reputable network.
A SBC like a Raspberry Pi is sufficient to host mail services for a fairly large number of people. Filter out spam with Spamassassin and a greylist, run sieve to organise your incoming mail flow, use specific mail addresses when communicating with commercial and government organisations and you'll end up asking yourself why so many people insist that self-hosting mail is not an option.
Now that you're self-hosting mail you can also self-host XMPP using the same address making it possible for people to reach you through either SMTP (mail) or XMPP (instant messaging/voice/video calling) using that address. This can be hosted on that same SBC without problems.
Source: my own experience self-hosting mail (and more) since the 90's. If it worked on a 486DX2-66 it should work on a quad-core 1.5GHz 64-bit ARM...
It would be interesting to hear why the armchair experts clicked that vote-down arrow instead of reacting. The fact that you think self-hosting mail can not be done does not mean others can not do it. If you happen to work for a mail hosting company and feel you need to grey out potential competition that'd be understandable (if fraudulent) but otherwise I do not understand this reaction. Does the fact that others can self-host make you feel insecure? Does the fact that this gives those people freedom and the opportunity to evade censorship threaten you? Let's hear it, I'm interested in understanding the background for this ever so common reaction to any suggestion of not letting the experts handle things like this.
I'll bite. I am willing to bet the majority of people down voting you are more than capable of hosting an email server. But like me, see it as not worth the potential risks involved.
Before even considering why someone might not choose to do so, I would like to point out that selfhosting email is not even that hard to do nowadays. I spent a couple hours a few years back manually setting up a stack on a dummy domain just to see if its as hard as developer circles make it out to be. It was not. Furthermore a quick search today nets half a dozen docker containers you can spin up that claim to be one stop solutions for email. If even a fraction of them succeed in what they claim you could self host email with one command and an env file. You could even use the dockerfiles as a template to run the software on metal, its all there.
Even with this newfound knowledge, and as someone who tries to selfhost equivalents to any service I find myself using regularly, I would never attempt to host my own main emails. My bank accounts are linked to my emails, my investment accounts, my insurance, my loans, things that I am not willing to risk compromising my ability to access as the result of some sort of overly prideful sentiment.
Just because someone has the ability and knowledge to host their own email does not mean they should or would even consider it.
Those are all good reasons not to self-host, but none are good reasons to downvote someone advocating self-hosting and providing some useful info about it. I don't get the downvote-brigading here either, especially on a hacker website.
What is wrong with the tone? Is it wrong to point out that those who advocate taking care of one's own digital needs - a.k.a. self-hosting - tend to get shouted or voted down on this here Hacker News site which, if going by its name only would be just the place you'd expect to be the refuge for those who like to tinker and who value self-sufficiency?
If you’re in a business still in control of your own destiny, you could do what we did and keep a weather eye out for sociopathy-aligned behaviours and gently work them out while minimising danger.
It worked reasonably well at one place I was at for about 8 years, estimating one of those characters popping up every 200-500 hires.
It’s the strategic side to your internal integrity function. Typically recruit folks who are lightning rods for these kinds of behaviours: young, female, brown, queer members of staff - don’t forget reception annf cleaning personnel! - and train them (often not necessary!) to spot abuse of power, bullying, threats and gaslighting and to confidentially report it.
Catch people with these behaviours early and divert the smart ones, fire the dumb ones. Sure, you’ll lose your next CEO, but did you want to work for that kind of person?
