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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."
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.
A manager of a group that reads slashdot all day and still get things done.
That is impressive.
Actually, Jobs made the "repeat performers" section of the article, along with Meg Whitman of eBay.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Although the image of Linus walking around with kernel developers hanging from his clothes while assorted groupies carry scorecards is pretty funny.
(You mean that Linus is adored by many people and scorned by everybody else.)
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
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.
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.
Remarkable people can do remarkable things, often regardless of training or upbrining or what-not. But don't forget about the countless people without management training that have botched things as well. It is naive to imply that management training is going to make people less likely to do well at it.
Bash.org #35955
<EyesofPrisms> and ou are an uytter newb
<KC48348751> dude
<KC48348751> how did that y move over like 12 characters
Direct away from face when opening.