Gnome Foundation Hires "Professional Shaman" as New Executive Director
lunduke.locals.comFor all those jumping to defend the choice with things along the lines of "that has nothing to do with her job":
> "My name is Holly Million, and I am a professional shaman, an artist, an herbal medicine maker, and a micro-homesteader." > > "Eight years ago, I realized the best word to describe me must be “shaman.” A shaman is a bridge between the material and spiritual worlds, between the seen and unseen worlds. I am now a professional shaman."
This is a description of someone without a scientific mind. You don't need to be a scientist, but if you believe in magic, maybe a technology organisation isn't the best place for you.
Before you bring up that there may well be some Christians or other theists in the mix, and why don't we treat them the same; I extended this judgement to them too.
Obviously the recruiter misread "GNOME Foundation" as "Gnome Foundation" :)
(She seems to have been exec director of a bunch of non-profits, which is what you want in an exec director of your non-profit, generally.)
> All of which set off my "This doesn't sound like a person with software experience" alarm.
This is a pretty weird take; would they be similarly concerned if the foundation's lawyer or the person who manages the office facilities didn't use GTK+ very much?
>would they be similarly concerned if the foundation's lawyer or the person who manages the office facilities didn't use GTK+ very much?
If they also offered, 'group shamanic energy clearing,' and sold 'spiritual herbs' on venmo? Yes. An organization hiring pseudo-scientists like this obviously gives credence to such people and I find the idea icky.
Eh, it wouldn't bother me that much, or at least no more than any other religion. Actually less than some; this sort of Neo-Pagan stuff is usually pretty benign (where leadership being religious becomes a problem is usually where their religion is heavily into messing with other peoples' lifestyles; that's when you get attempts to exclude birth control from health insurance and similar).
So what, maybe they need to perform exorcism of daemons
Once again Lunduke is just spreading FUD for clicks. Her background seems extremely well suited for the position.
> Holly brings three decades of invaluable experience in nonprofit management, having served as a consultant, director of development, executive director, and board member for numerous organizations. Notably, she founded the nonprofit organization Artists United, dedicated to empowering individual artists and fostering collaboration across artistic disciplines for the collective good. Additionally, Holly served as the Executive Director of the BioBricks Foundation, an international, open-source biotechnology nonprofit.
> Holly holds a Master of Arts in Education from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Harvard University. Her academic background, combined with her extensive professional journey, equips her with a unique perspective that will undoubtedly contribute to the growth and success of the GNOME Foundation.
Shaman is what autocorrect turns "systemctl" into. It's not that complicated.
A witch doctor couldn't make printer installation any worse. This is worth a try.
This reads like a hit piece making fun of someone's hobbies/lifestyle (herbal medicine, spirituality, dislike of corporate social media like Linkedin or X), tinged with masked vitriol.
I think Lunduke has been given the benefit of the doubt one too many times. I have to agree with the other comments on this one, a shame piece shouldn't have a place in HN.
How could you shaman shame?
Does the person running the GNOME foundation need to know anything about software? Does anyone in the organization?
Even the actual software parts of GNOME are all about staying between the user and the real software that does work. It can be argued that function was never a goal, the purpose is to promise, not deliver.
The Foundation seems like the same thing but writ larger: suck up money and "support" from everywhere they can, make sure none of it is wasted doing anything real. AFAIK this is the form all nonprofits mature into within days to at most a few years of formation.
This person's skills may be perfectly on point for the true job she now holds.
The author wouldn't have made this post if the person was a minority. Or just try to replace shaman with a religious position
This just seems like FUD. Either she's suitable for the role or she's not, and the measure of that isn't the presence or absence of shamanism in the resume, but what she's able to do. The proof is in the pudding.
In principle it isn't any more unhinged than the millions of people we work with who think Christianity or Judaism are real. If her Shamanism makes you uncomfortable, this is how many of us non religious people feel about all of you all the time.
I don't think this is the main problem here. We could ask Gnome the same questions if they hired a Catholic bishop for example. Or someone who claims that for the last 8 years their main job was to raise pigeons. It might be perfectly fine but we're curious to know - why them?
EDIT: Well, it might be the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37920624
Bah. yall all heathens who aint seen the light of Eris.
That's the way it's supposed to be tho.
The truly enlightened are buying MacBooks (in gold, of course) if only to use them as frisbees.
inscribed with 'for the 10x dev'
Yeah. Everyone launches some unconventional side hustle at some point. As a shaman, her track record can't be worse than the average psychiatrist (who have yet to cure any single mental illness they themselves identified).
Posing as a theocrat to soak up the money of the gullible is nothing new. Plenty of people in this scene are ordained priests in the church of Satan, UU and others; BFD.
The woman managing ARKK claims to take investment advice from God himself. That one, I'd be more wary of.
>As a shaman, her track record can't be worse than the average psychiatrist
this is absurdly anti-science and pro-pseudo science POV.
'group shamanic energy clearing' and selling 'spiritual medicines' is absurd than a psychiatrist following clearly debated, adjudicated, well-researched cited scientific procedures.
This is not the most horrible of things, but I have a feeling some people would defend GNOME foundation even if they started chucking babies in the air.
To be fair, all science is not equal.
Psychology is basically ground zero for the replication crisis. There's been an insane amount of bunk coming out of that and adjacent fields for decades. When only 20-30% of published findings in a field can be replicated, there's problems.
If it were shamanism as one aspect of her background, sure it’s FUD. If shamanism is her only apparent background… then concern is the only correct response.
“a professional shaman, an artist, an herbal medicine maker, and a micro-homesteader” as the background for gnome kind of needs some justification, because it’s very unclear what anyone was thinking here
She appears to be involved in running a bunch of non-profits; think the author of the article just missed this?
Surely proof is in the pudding is PUD and not FUD. (British joke)
>lunduke
I honestly think at this point HN should auto flag anything from that guy, ever since he stopped with Linux sux series (even then the last one was a weird one), he's gone down a very weird doom and gloom rabbit hole.