> If someone 'called me out' on a 'violation' of this document, I'm not sure how I'd respond. Probably with laughter? I honestly don't know, perhaps I'm just in a bubble.

Let's say, hypothetically, because this is neither you nor me, that I wrote something like "Were you paying attention in CS100?" to a dumb mistake in your pull request. We all slip sometimes, so generally these shouldn't be big deals. Quick fix and move on.

You said to me: "Hey, in your last code review you openly insulted my competence by saying '______'. Please don't do that."

I responded: "No, you deserved that for the type of mistake you made."

I know 1-2 developers personally who would genuinely believe that. I've encountered far more here and on Reddit that would as well.

I think the real versions of us would both agree that the hypothetical me is being a jerk. Having a guideline that says "Don't criticize the person" gives you a way to take this up your managerial chain with a specific problem, as opposed to a general statement of "munchbunny was being a jerk."

While you might not need this in order to manage the situation, I know of several fresh college grads who have not yet learned the communication and political skills to manage this, and so having a document spelling it out is helpful for both teaching and enforcement, even if the line items are not explicitly rules.

So managers are supposed to be part time kindergarten nannies now? Is this really something that happens to an extent where educated adults cannot resolve such issues among themselves?

This is again a situation that's just hard for me to imagine, from both sides.

In my management experience, I've spent much more time dealing with people's stupid, childish bullshit than doing "real" work.

That's in my management experience as well. You don't believe it's a real thing until it happens, and then you're still left wondering, "Seriously, am I really dealing with this shit?"

> So managers are supposed to be part time kindergarten nannies now?

If their employees act like children, then yes. And I'm pretty sure we can all come up with examples of adults acting like children.

Kindergarten nannies generally don't have the talent for teaching people how to not be jerks - they just put the jerks in timeout. Some eventually grow out of it. Some eventually get medication and/or therapy that addresses the issue. Some eventually respond to a lack of environmental stressors when they move out of their parents' house. And some simply stay that way.

If you've hired someone in the latter category, yes, delivering business value requires you to deal with it. Firing them is an option, if that's really net positive for business value; sometimes it isn't. Seeing if you have the knack for teaching them is another, and likely highly profitable if you can do it. Handing down rigid rules is yet another option - not great, but quick and usually effective.

When the two adults are a man and a woman, yes, the company gets pretty scared pretty fast at the implications. Hence the rules.

> I'm not sure how I'd respond

That might depend on whether or not you were worried about losing your job over it.

Right, hence my comment. I wouldn't be worried at all. It feels like a different working culture (or country).

It seems like one of those cultural things, like how Europeans and Americans have inverse views on the severity of sex and violence.

I think you may have even misinterpreted my comment as me thinking I'm somehow "above the rules" or whatever, even. It's not that. It's that it would have literally never crossed my mind that my continued employment would be related to how I behave in relation to this document.

In my personal life I left behind that sort of 'rules lawyering' when I left school. No job I've ever held has actually functioned like that. The closest I've been is working at a large accounting firm, but even there most people had a mutual understanding that the 'book' (a lot more official than this post) was just a CYA fluff document invented to keep certain people busy and certain other people happy.

I also wonder this when looking at the "Workplace" Stack Exchange site or at Reddit's /r/legaladvice. So much CYA stuff, "you must collect a paper trail", "email yourself your recollection of the situation, so it's time stamped", how quickly you can become a liability for HR and how much companies are scared of getting sued for, to me, frivolous reasons.

Sure this also exists in corporate Europe, but it seems America is more "robotic" in this respect. Well, they'd just call it being professional I guess.

Eh, many of the questions in Workplace are about FUBAR situations. It makes sense to take extreme measures in those cases.

Sure, but I think that is itself the cultural thing. I'll take your word for it that some people experience this, but the idea that anyone would fear being fired for missing fiddly details of a document like this is completely foreign to me. I've never seen a code review checklist that people followed even 75% of.

> I'll take your word for it that some people experience this, but the idea that anyone would fear being fired for missing fiddly details of a document like this is completely foreign to me.

There is currently a very public example of this going on at Stack Exchange over a code of conduct that was still in review status.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336526/stack-overfl...

Yes, that's a good example of what's completely foreign to me. I don't have time to trawl through all the details of the story you linked, but it's incomprehensible to me why Stack Exchange would do what's described here, and I've multiple times made negative comments about a proposed set of rules without facing or fearing punishment.

> I don't have time to trawl through all the details of the story you linked

Having done so myself out of morbid curiosity (and a sense of "there must be another side of the story that we're not getting"[0]) I would not suggest it. It's a rabbit hole that, as far as I can tell, leads back to the post I linked as the most accurate summary of the situation.

[0]: If there is, I have yet to find it after hours and hours of time wasted.