Hector Martin

<fellow fail0verflower> I'm so incredibly proud of us failing at drama so badly

I feel like it’s hard to distinguish between “we only hack and ignore inequity, so we don’t have drama” and “we manage to communicate internally as a team and thus avoid drama”. The latter seems ideal; but the former comes at a cost to those who aren’t in the majority.

At fail0verflow, we hack *and* we care about each other. We're not just some single-purpose team, we're a group of 20-odd close friends of over 10 years and we share a hell of a lot of things. There has been a single major instance of internal drama you're unlikely to know about.

We don't need to talk about "inequity" because it's not necessary; because we're human beings and we care about each other, and that covers basic human decency like not discriminating. We have or have had people of various ages, wealth, and yes, gender identity.

But how well do you treat people who aren't part of your team? Do you think about how your words and deeds impact on others?

I like to think we do. This isn't some in-group-friends screw-everyone-else deal. The whole point is the people in the team are decent people.

People are complex - I have trouble interpreting the "devkitFAIL" thing as decent behaviour for instance. It's also rather hurtful to find f0f members "correcting" people who think what I do has value. Unintentional harm perhaps but ...

Yeah, and I’ve definitely seen f0f-affiliated folk be less than decent sometimes. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes— but this can be helped with a good moral compass for the group, and accountability. I find that makes building teams around “we’re all just good people” hard.