Ben Cotton

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Lafayette, Indiana

Ben Cotton is a meteorologist by training, but weather makes a great hobby. Ben works as the Fedora Program Manager at Red Hat. He is the author of Program Management for Open Source Projects. Find him on Twitter (@FunnelFiasco) or at FunnelFiasco.com.

Open Sourcerer People's Choice Award Moderator's Choice Award 2017 Developer Fedora Contributor Club Author Comment Gardener Cloud Linux Open science Python SysAdmin Community Manager Creative Commons Open Organization Ambassador

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bcotton
Why your employees should be calling you out

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! How to rebuild the trust is a good question. Flippantly, I'd start with not punishing whistleblowers. Sincerely embracing the reproval when it comes is a good starting point. You can't just say "we need to do better", you need to follow it up with doing better, and doing so in a way that's visible. It takes time for people to begin trusting that your new behavior is sincere and will continue. You have to be willing to say "we were wrong in the past" and then provide specifics on how you will do better.

I think Microsoft provides a great example of this. The Microsoft of 2019 sincerely supports open source, but the Microsoft of the past very much did not. The shift in their behavior happened several years ago, but the community has only recently come around.

bcotton
Letting people work where they want shows how much you value them

Thanks for your great comment. You're right that a good remote presence is a key part of making remote working...work.