I feel like you’re building the argument in a way that’s convenient for yourself there.

A non-hostile work environment doesn’t mean you won’t get reprimanded, especially when you go out of your way to sabotage somebody. Someone has to step in to stop the madness, and if all they do is to say stop (which I heard Linus did earlier), that’s not actually going to stop the conflict because nobody understands or acknowledges where the root of the conflict comes from.

And Linus is not even hostile here imo. There’s a lot of “you” language, but none of it was personal, and he’s not doing his old thing where he tells others to go end themselves. He seemed analytical and dissected the root of the issue so that people understand where things are actually coming from.

And no, I am by no means asking people to make that choice. I am simply suggesting that if all you do is surround yourselves with people who will never get mad at you for doing the wrong things, and that you will never accept anyone reprimanding you, then you’ve made a bad choice in life.

And yeah, “thin skinned” is subjective, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be thin-skinned. Some people have less capacity to take criticisms for various reasons, and that’s fine. If your colleagues don’t know how to mince their words (and let’s assume the intentions are good here), and you don’t have the right mental capacity to slice through those words yourself, then you can’t work effectively together. If the people you have to work closely with are all such clumsy people (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just unrefined), then there’s a problem, and it’s probably best that you don’t work with them or there at all, cause it’d only lead to chaos. If this is where you think I’m asking people to make the choice between livelihood and mental well-being, first off, I think this is an exaggeration because there’s almost always someplace else you can work at, and if you can’t, then there’s a bigger problem, and two, well, I think you’re idealizing the workplace a little too much. Sure, in an ideal world where people can immediately assume a professional and cordial personality at work, then you shouldn’t have to make the choice between livelihood and mental well-being. But people are imperfect. There are hostile work environments. There are non-hostile work environments with some hostile people. You can enforce policies that dictate how people should conduct themselves, but you can’t stop it from happening, and you can’t stop them fast enough.

So people do have to make that choice, even if they don’t want to, and even if we think it shouldn’t be a choice and that people should just have both.