I know what you mean, but just pointing you're being to much of a pedantic person here.

Yes, toxicity in general is relative, does X cause harm to Y, depends on both X and Y.

But if Y is the general category of human beings. And with what we know as humans and of our feelings and that of others to some approximation. Then we can definitely predict some big categories of very likely to be toxic behaviors such as: shouting, insulting, punching, silent treatment, interrupting, denigrating, avoidance, ridicule, deprivation, personal attacks, lack of consideration, not listening, etc.

These become a pretty simple framework to have an objective measure of toxic interactions.

And that then can be codified into HR policies and societal norms and expectations.

Shouting at people during collaborative meetings is objectively toxic behavior. I'm not sure how else it could be seen unless one is themselves a shouter with no self-awareness.

> Shouting at people during collaborative meetings is objectively toxic behavior.

Absolutely. I can't imagine a situation where I'd want to shout at another adult at work, I can't imagine being shouted at work either. In person, or on a web call. Hell, I don't even think I've had a shouting match with anyone outside of work. It just seems a silly way overall to try and resolve differences.

> I can't imagine a situation where I'd want to shout at another adult at work

As an impartial observer I've seen several appropriate instances of an adult raising their voice over another adult. Usually related to some kind of repeated socially inappropriate behavior like offensive comments, interrupting, things that could be construed as harassment, comments which could create legal trouble, etc.

A shouting match is something entirely different and is a really bad sign. But there are absolutely appropriate times to raise one's voice to speak over another, to correct something intolerable that demands immediate intervention.

It shouldn't happen regularly. The underlying behaviors necessitating raised voices should be addressed, likely in a private setting.

> It just seems a silly way overall to try and resolve differences.

Yes, yelling is clearly not an appropriate tool for dispute resolution. But it does have a place.

My favourite line manager and I were both extremely opinionated people, and once every six months or so we'd end up borrowing a conference room and having a straight up shouting match about a set of design decisions where we both had strongly held views on how it should be done.

By the end of the shouting match though we'd pretty much always come up with a third design that was far better than either of the two we'd had in mind going in, and we both regarded it as a matter of passionate advocacy rather than being a personal attack.

However, we were very much temperamentally suited to that dispute resolution approach, and neither of us would have ever attempt to use it with any of our other coworkers because none of them would've found it remotely pleasant.

(to be clear, given the way Chris Lattner seems to have come away from the interaction feeling, somebody absolutely fucked up in this case, but it seemed worth noting that there do exist cases where things are different)

I'm sure you think the person you're responding to is just an apologist for toxic behavior, and you might be right, but it's true that different behaviors are insulting in different cultural contexts. What is toxic is feeling that you are being treated as less than, with less respect than other people, and that is communicated through behavior in the context of norms. "Shouting" is a word that seems safely toxic, but that's because it's a pretty elastic word that adjusts to the norms of the people using it. I personally came from an extremely quiet household, and I am often asked to speak louder (by my wife, my therapist, by my friends when we're at a noisy bar) while my parents often used to complain in restaurants that they had to "shout" to make themselves heard. When they came to visit me, I had to choose restaurants carefully. Eating in even a moderately noisy restaurant could be unpleasant for them, because speaking loudly enough to be heard in that environment had unpleasant emotional connotations for them. Growing up in a family like mine no doubt contributed to my social anxiety as a young adult because I constantly felt that everyone around me was shouting in an alarming way, but I learned to look around and see that there was no panic, no hard feelings, nothing except people speaking at the volume that was normal for them.

Echoing and turn-taking can also vary dramatically by culture. My family were very strict turn-takers and did virtually no echoing at all. I have to go out of my way to echo back what people are saying, in a way that feels unnatural to me, so that they don't think I'm silently disagreeing and looking down on them. I also had to learn that people talking over the ends of my sentences is sometimes a calculated insult (as it would be in the household where I grew up) and sometimes just a cultural norm for them.

Business is ruthlessly doing away with all forms of difference, of course, and I will venture a guess that you, like me, belong to a group with a lot of power to drive this erasure under the banner of progress, power that we avoid acknowledging whenever we can. Shared norms can help prevent misunderstandings, but it is the sameness that helps, not the superiority of one particular norm about (e.g.) speaking volume, and the people who are helped most by shared norms are the most powerful, who have no adjustment to make because their own norms become the ones that other people conform to.

Chris Lattner is a smart and experienced person, and I have no doubt he judged his situation accurately. I just wanted to push back against your assertion that a behavior that someone might sincerely perceive as "shouting" is objectively toxic.

When I do reference checks, nowadays I specifically ask if they "shouted, angrily" or otherwise "demeaned employees verbally" to make it clear that a raised voice, per se, isn't necessarily a disqualifier.

I was turned down for a few key job transfers into a prestigious corporate research department because the gatekeeper said I had "yelled" at somebody before. The conversation in question was "heated" and I certainly pushed hard, but it certainly wasn't anything out of line with what I grew up with. However, I've reprogrammed my entire way of interacting since coming to California, as I found that a surprisingly large number of people will just shut you out otherwise.

> The conversation in question was "heated" and I certainly pushed hard, but it certainly wasn't anything out of line with what I grew up with.

I similarly used to think that having "heated" conversations with raised voices was normal and fine, and just a sign of caring deeply about something. But the more I have worked with different kinds of people, I have realized that it's just straight up unproductive. If you're getting emotional about work, you need to take a step back, and it's not fair to inflict your negative emotions on your colleagues.

I'm glad that the industry puts pressure on people to be less like this. It has made me a better teammate.

Those moments are tough to navigate, because sometimes half the room perceives the mood as "people have strong opinions about this and want to be heard" which is really great but there are also one or two people in the room who are absolutely terrified that a fight is going to break out. In those circumstances I try to find an excuse to break in at the prevailing volume and then, a little more softly, invite an opinion from one of the quieter people at the table. I think that helps the quieter people understand that the noise isn't a crisis and isn't meant to exclude them, and helps the louder people understand that they might not be getting the benefit of everyone's input when voices get raised.

Behaviors also don't exist in a vacuum, they exist as responses to things, and while some of us want more professionalism at work and some of us less (often for good reasons), there are probably also situations in which shouting loudly in response to something, is way less "toxic" that not pushing back against it.

I would say that in a healthy work environment, there is both an awareness that both actions and intentions matter, and that we all bring our own sensitivities to the table, and it matters less whether a person is "right" or "not", that the feelings that come up can be addressed.

For example, I have seen people, from my perspective, take code reviews far too personally. I have also seen people, from my perspective, be far too personally insulting in code reviews. I am sure from others perspectives those lines would have been drawn in different places. But that's less important than can that be resolved - maybe it can be resolved by getting someone to change their PR style, and maybe it can be resolved by helping someone understand that no one on the team thinks they are dumb and actually understanding that no one meant any comment personally is an important part of growth...

But in my experience in both organizations and relationships is that "what comes up" is less important that "how it is resolved" - because stuff always comes up - we're humans, with our big messy selves that feel lots of things, whether we want to or not or whether the feeling even comes from this circumstance or not

All value judgments are inherently subjective.

The problem is that we don't have an easy term for "apparently near-universal consensus" which is what people tend to mean when calling value judgments objective.

'Intersubjective' is that word (or 'intersubjective for the domain of all human beings'), if you want a technical term.

Ah, quite nice. Thanks for that, new to me.

What if he repeatedly interrupted others? I am not saying this is what happened. Just to point out that people can be shouted at for good reasons.

I disagree with parent, there is such thing as objectively toxic behavior. That said, defining what is and is not shouting, I have never seen that done objectively.

Would somebody explain why I am wrong? I’m OK replacing “objective” with “intersubjective” if that’s it. But maybe it’s that people have seen shouting defined intersubjectively - if that’s it, would someone share an example definition of shouting that could be useful for intersubjectively labeling toxic behavior in a professional environment?

My curiosity is in the spirit of this nearby comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30419969

I think that you make a fair point, tbh. Its easy to think that shouting is clearly defined, but we OPERATE IN AN ENVIRONMENT where people will think that I just shouted four words.

One persons shouting can be another person's virtually normal tone but in a more tense discussion.