Or there was an abrasive jerk who made them to do the wrong thing. Abrasive jerk was likely to be the one doing then shouting down. Abrasiveness does not make you right, the assumption that the most pushy jerk is right is just wrong.

Since it apparently wasn't obvious:

We should be putting "abrasive jerk" in quotes. The point that was being made by both of us is that these abrasive jerks aren't actually abrasive jerks, they're just going against the grain because it's the technically better choice.

And then they get labelled as abrasive jerks and ignored, and then queue the scandal when people talk about how horrible the toyota code is (for example).

How do you know the jerk is jerking for the technically better choice? You don't. These debate always assume that the person who is doing criticism is right. That is not the case in real life. Criticism can be both right and wrong.

Note that these people did not really bought into his theories and opinions nor were able to follow his instructions - the amount of code review complains would go down it that would be the case. He did not managed to change the culture toward good nor to teach them. His reach was limited by what he was able to micromanage at the moment.

No, you're right, I'm sure that somehow Sony managed to hire an entire team of sys admins that were so incompetent that none of them actually realized just how vulnerable their system was.

like... every. single. one. of their sys admin team was really that oblivious. Out of all the people they hired, not even one competent got accidentally picked up somewhere along the way, during all the years they were were running that network before it happened.

Or maybe, their sys admin team was acutely aware, but management didn't give them the autonomy to choose to fix it, and anyone who spoke up and tried to push for the issues to be fixed got labelled as "not being a team player", or a "troublemaker", or even ... gasp ... an "abrasive jerk".

And then they got booted, and everyone else learned the lesson and just shut up and kept collecting the paycheck.

And then suddenly they get hacked, and then finally management was willing to spend the money on securing things better.

1.) It is perfectly possible to have bad hiring process. That might not be just management fault, technical skills needs to be checked by the technical team. Abrasive jerks in it will select for conformity with their opinions instead of knowledge.

2.) It is perfectly possible that abrasive jerks were the ones who prevented others to fix the problems. In particular, they could have created a culture where new employee or junior is not expected to accept all criticism but is shut down when he dish it out.

"This is stupid" is not exactly an argument - if that works then your tech seniors are preferring conformity with jerk over merit of argument. It works somewhat when all working with him are juniors (e.g. less likely to see bigger problems), but makes you impenetrable to valid criticism from other skilled people.

3.) You assume that the problem was lack of autonomy from the management. That is possible, but it is equally possible that tech team screwed up on their own. Organizing larger teams is hard and even super skilled techies, abrasive or not, may completely fail once the group is too big to be micromanaged.

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Being abrasive and being direct/open is just not the same. Abrasiveness makes people comply, because they do not want to be humiliated by you. Abrasive people are just expecting everyone to be conforming to whatever they think, they do not create an environment where bad processes get fixed. It does not make people agree with you and they will revert back to the original behavior the moment you don't see.

I think abrasive people tend to be very contrarian. And when large companies like Sony make terribly boneheaded decisions it's not because every individual simultaneously made the same stupid decision. It's because everyone was drinking the cool-aid. And abrasive people are generally far less likely to drink the cool-aid. So I think when a a large company makes a boneheaded decision the people arguing against that decision are more likely to be more abrasive than general populace.

That, or they had a reputation for "moving fast and breaking things" without submitting to any secure practices, and the abrasive jerk who knows security never bothered to apply there in the first place. Or the polite person who knows security, for that matter.