SawyerX has resigned from the Perl 5 steering council. This is unfortunate for a variety of reasons, the worst of which is that it is essentially an unnecessary self-sabotage which won't achieve Sawyer anything productive.

I met Sawyer in a cafe in Riga during the last in-person EU Perl 5/6 con. Thankfully much of the discussion was of a technical nature, but of course the drama of the moment was brought up. Andrew Shitov, a Russian was culturally insensitive to westerners, go figure. He apologized and it blew over, but some people insisted on grinding an axe because they valued being outraged more than getting on with business.

It was pretty clear that Sawyer was siding with the outraged, but still wanted the show to go on. I had a feeling this (perceived) fence-sitting would win him no points, and observed this play out.

This discussion naturally segued into his experience with P5P, where much the same complaints as lead to his resignation were aired. At the time he was a pumpking, and I stated my opinion that he should just lead unrepentantly. I recall saying something to the effect of "What are you afraid of? That people would stop using perl? This is already happening." At the time it appears he was just frustrated enough to actually lead.

This lead to some of the most forward progress perl5 has had in a long time. For better or worse, the proto-PSC decided to move forward. At the time I felt cautiously optimistic because while his frustration was a powerful motivator, I felt that the underlying mental model causing his frustration would eventually torpedo his effort.

This has come to pass. The game he's playing out here unconsciously is called "look how hard I'm trying". It's part of the Nice Guy social toolkit. Essentially the worldview is a colossal covert contract: "If I try hard and don't offend anyone, everyone will love me!"

It's unsurprising that he's like this, as I've seen this almost everywhere in the software industry. I was like this once myself. Corporate is practically packed from bottom to top with "nice guys". This comes into conflict with the big wide world of perl, as many of the skilled perlers interested in the core language are entrepreneurs.

In our world, being nice gets you nowhere. It doesn't help you in corporate either, but corporate goes to great effort to forestall the cognitive dissonance which breaks people out of this mental model. The reason for this is straightforward. Studies have repeatedly shown those with agreeable personalities are paid less.

Anyways, this exposes "nice" people to rationally disagreeable and self-interested people. Fireworks ensue when their covert contract is not only broken, but laughed at. Which brings us to today, where Sawyer's frustration has pushed him into making a big mistake which he thinks (at some level, or he would not have done it) will get him what he wants.

It won't. Nobody cares how hard you worked to make it right. Those around you will "just say things" forever, and play what have you done for me lately on repeat until the end of time. Such is our lot as humans, and the first step in healing is to accept it.

Future people considering hiring Sawyer will not have a positive view of these actions. Rather than seeing the upright and sincere person exhausted by shenanigans that Sawyer sees in himself, they will see a person who cracked under pressure and that therefore can't be trusted for the big jobs.

I hate seeing fellow developers make some of the same mistakes I did earlier in life. Especially if the reason he cracked now has to do with other things going on in his personal life which none of us are or should be privy to. Many men come to the point where it's "Kill the nice guy, before he kills you". Let us hope the situation is not developing into anything that severe, so that he can right his ship and return to doing good work.