Linked by David Adams on Wed 6th Aug 2008 15:28 UTC, submitted by estherschindler
In an "as told to" article for CIO.com, Linus Torvalds explains how he keeps the Linux people and software on-track. Arguably the most surprising facet of Linus' management style is that he's perfectly willing to flame people when he thinks they're wrong--though he's also happy to be corrected himself. "Part of that, by the way, is not feeling shy about saying impolite things or showing some emotion. So I'd rather flame people for doing stupid things and call them stupid, rather than try to be too polite to the point where people didn't understand how strongly I felt about something." That's particularly interesting in light of several OSCON presenters who believe that the way to grow the open source community is to make projects more welcoming to would-be contributors. Do these attitudes actually contradict one another?
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Member since:
2006-11-17
Old and grumpy here. I think you're kind of missing the point. Linus can flame people because he knows what he's doing. But comparing Linus Torvalds to the typical IT Manager is like comparing a once a month golfer to Tiger Woods. In 20 years, I've only had one manager that I thought was technically sophisticated enough to understand what I do. The rest... well, I'm sure you all have stories just as bad or worse than mine. But my biggest peeve is the completely arbitrary nature of most management decisions. I can't count the number of times I've worked over to get a project done on deadline and then sat and watched for weeks and sometimes months before it went into production. So, why did it have to get done on such and such day. Mainly because some clueless middle manager said so.