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by oreganoz
2940 days ago
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Well, look up what companies like IBM, Google, Amazon, etc. are doing with thousands of workers and all the organizational and cultural diversity you want. I don't get what is "necessary" with his insults. Would delivering the message calmly not be understood? There's nothing to make anyone believe it's an "effective" strategy. Some people are deterred from contributing because this guy can't act professionally. The only reason people still want to contribute is because of the importance of the project (aka thousands of projects depend on a good linux kernel). He can accomplish the same things, without going ballistic, in shorter time and with the respect of others earned. It's still using the same few management tools and he can retain his bad temper for when a situation actually calls for it (which is almost never). Blowing everything out of proportion is crying wolf. Maybe he is not that bad of a person to work with. Hopefully lower than how bad Gates and Jobs were. But he sure seems to hide it well since that's all I ever hear about him. But I guess bad publicity is still publicity. |
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Does any of these companies run a team with 5,000 people contributing to the same codebase?
Do you have it on good authority that most of the people in IBM, Google, and Amazon that manage those 5,000 people teams are nice and polite? Because I've heard a lot about Amazon to the contrary. Do consider your selection bias: You know everything Linus tells the world, you only hear about Ballmer's chair throwing, but not any other profanities,
> Would delivering the message calmly not be understood?
Yes, he tries/tried occasionally. The wikipedia entry for LKML has more info.
> He can accomplish the same things, without going ballistic, in shorter time and with the respect of others earned
That goes counter to Linus' experience, and a few other people's.
> It's still using the same few management tools and he can retain his bad temper for when a situation actually calls for it (which is almost never). Blowing everything out of proportion is crying wolf.
Are you on the LKML? He almost never does it. You hear about it when he does. He is not shy with criticism, and he never sugarcoats anything, sure, but he goes ballistic very rarely.
> But he sure seems to hide it well since that's all I ever hear about him. But I guess bad publicity is still publicity.
You admit that you have no idea what happens between the times you hear of him. You implicitly say your model is "IBM, Amazon and Google", in which you hear nothing of how disagreements are handled, and none of which have the scale and diversity of the LKML in a single team.
It is my impression that your beliefs are not grounded in data or even anecdata. It does not make them wrong, and I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying you have not made any convincing argument to say you are right.