Slashdot Mirror
Linus Makes Business Week's Best Managers List
andhar writes "Linus Torvalds has made Business Week Magazine's 2004 list of Best Managers, where he finds himself in the company of luminaries such as Hector Ruiz (AMD), John Henry (Boston Red Sox) and Steven Spielberg (Dreamworks SKG).
The article lauds the influence of Linux on the server market and drops the names of such heavyweights as IBM, Dell, HP and Intel as Linux supporters.
Linus is quoted, calling all you kernel coders a herd of cats."
"Linus ate at McDonalds!" "Linus uses 2 ply toilet paper!" etc etc. Why not make a section devoted strictly to Linus (linus.slashdot.org) for the fawning and drooling and leave the Linux section to all things about Linux proper? That and some other minor changes would allow the readership to disable stories about what movie Linus watched over the weekend and other fluff if they wanted.
Unless, of course, you're all too busy designing more ugly colour schemes.
This is a great article. I read it most of it last night. Goes through good managers, WHY they are good, how they turned around the company(Xerox as an example) and talks about bad managers and WHY they are bad, mistakes they've made, etc.
This article should be read over and over again by the countries PHB. But I know they won't listen.
Check out the pic of Linus, I think he's in a CORNfield or something LOL
Right up there with "Most Ethical Lawyer."
I think that managing a bunch of know-it-alls is a lot harder than managing people who are just there for a paycheck.
Might as well made the list. He's adorned by many people and scored by everybody else.
He's worked hard with a score of other people (who did not make the list) to make a nice operating system for anybody to use and modify. Before 2.4, it seemed many companies like Microsoft poo poohed the idea of how an open source operating system was going to work, and now that it has, they feel a little threatened. With the success of his kernel, I give him proper kudos.
Oh, it is kind of funny. I do not see Darl McBride on the list. Just kind of interesting.
Some call me Howie Feltersnatch
I can't believe Steve Jobs didn't win best manager of the year--
...they must be holding out for best manager of the century.
A manager of a group that reads slashdot all day and still get things done.
That is impressive.
I guess that's the best title for what he does, but his position doesn't really fit the "manager" role to a T..
He's not anyones boss, he can't "fire" a kernel hacker, or direct them, he can just decide to accept or not accept patches.
That lack of "direction" is somewhat of a problem, noone knows where linux is headed. It seems to be veering away from the desktop to the server room, and locked down incarnations like TiVo.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Many people that have not gone to school have done good things...but if one sought a job sighting management skills, they are quickly turned down for lack of the so called degrees!
This is despite the clear evidence that the so called educated managers have done more havoc than good. Just look at the companies that have folded up!
I think that this issue of "Must have an MBA, LLB etc, etc.." was created purely for financial purposes by educational institutions. All people doing crap at their jobs here are very educauted. One wonders what their education helps anyway.
Disclaimer: I run a fairly successful finacial business on the internet, but have zero training in this. I use my common sense.
Note that Richard Branson (of the Virgin Group), does not have the educational papers that one would think he has. But he is very successful to the extent that he keeps British Airways managers on their toes.
Linus is quoted, calling all you kernel coders a herd of cats.
From the article
Torvalds has quipped that his job is a lot like "herding cats."
"Herding cats" is meant to be an oxymoron. Cats operate in small, tight-knit prides and not large herds; they are strong-willed and typically follow their own program. Linus was just trying to convey the difficulty of managing a large group of programmers who all have their own, unique reasons for doing what they do. As is demonstrated time and time again here at /., most nerds have trouble seeing the other side of an argument (read: we always think we're right). This brings about the cat metaphor.
For those who don't RTFA, this might be taken out of context as an insult to kernel contributors. Just wanted to clear that up.
RTFA and cite your sources or prepare to get pwnd
Frank Dunn Nortel
I'm not sure why the CEO of SCO is not in that list, since SCO's earnings on most products are diminishing.Graig Conway Peoplesoft
Sanjay Kumar Computer Associates International
#include "a_life.h"
He's not anyones boss, he can't "fire" a kernel hacker, or direct them, he can just decide to accept or not accept patches.
But wait... when people are asked to name the managers we like best, we DON'T name administrators (which is the hire/fire abilities you describe and the financial ones implicit in that), we name our LEADERS. Linus made the list because of his leadership skills in accomplishing a task (herding cats, I guess) and the scope of control he must manage there; not for his budgetary or administrative skills.