| blob | dea2e66c9a101dc2f45341bacac5d3ef2256f0ee |
1 .. _managementstyle:
3 Linux kernel management style
4 =============================
6 This is a short document describing the preferred (or made up, depending
7 on who you ask) management style for the linux kernel. It's meant to
8 mirror the CodingStyle document to some degree, and mainly written to
9 avoid answering [#f1]_ the same (or similar) questions over and over again.
11 Management style is very personal and much harder to quantify than
12 simple coding style rules, so this document may or may not have anything
13 to do with reality. It started as a lark, but that doesn't mean that it
14 might not actually be true. You'll have to decide for yourself.
16 Btw, when talking about "kernel manager", it's all about the technical
17 lead persons, not the people who do traditional management inside
18 companies. If you sign purchase orders or you have any clue about the
19 budget of your group, you're almost certainly not a kernel manager.
20 These suggestions may or may not apply to you.
22 First off, I'd suggest buying "Seven Habits of Highly Effective
23 People", and NOT read it. Burn it, it's a great symbolic gesture.
25 .. [#f1] This document does so not so much by answering the question, but by
26 making it painfully obvious to the questioner that we don't have a clue
27 to what the answer is.
29 Anyway, here goes:
31 .. _decisions:
33 1) Decisions
34 ------------
36 Everybody thinks managers make decisions, and that decision-making is
37 important. The bigger and more painful the decision, the bigger the
38 manager must be to make it. That's very deep and obvious, but it's not
39 actually true.
41 The name of the game is to **avoid** having to make a decision. In
42 particular, if somebody tells you "choose (a) or (b), we really need you
43 to decide on this", you're in trouble as a manager. The people you
44 manage had better know the details better than you, so if they come to
45 you for a technical decision, you're screwed. You're clearly not
46 competent to make that decision for them.
48 (Corollary:if the people you manage don't know the details better than
49 you, you're also screwed, although for a totally different reason.
50 Namely that you are in the wrong job, and that **they** should be managing
51 your brilliance instead).
53 So the name of the game is to **avoid** decisions, at least the big and
54 painful ones. Making small and non-consequential decisions is fine, and
55 makes you look like you know what you're doing, so what a kernel manager
56 needs to do is to turn the big and painful ones into small things where
57 nobody really cares.
59 It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a
60 small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards. Any decision
61 can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and
62 you **will** be wrong), you can always undo the damage later by
63 backtracking. Suddenly, you get to be doubly managerial for making
64 **two** inconsequential decisions - the wrong one **and** the right one.
66 And people will even see that as true leadership (*cough* bullshit
67 *cough*).
69 Thus the key to avoiding big decisions becomes to just avoiding to do
70 things that can't be undone. Don't get ushered into a corner from which
71 you cannot escape. A cornered rat may be dangerous - a cornered manager
72 is just pitiful.
74 It turns out that since nobody would be stupid enough to ever really let
75 a kernel manager have huge fiscal responsibility **anyway**, it's usually
76 fairly easy to backtrack. Since you're not going to be able to waste
77 huge amounts of money that you might not be able to repay, the only
78 thing you can backtrack on is a technical decision, and there
79 back-tracking is very easy: just tell everybody that you were an
80 incompetent nincompoop, say you're sorry, and undo all the worthless
81 work you had people work on for the last year. Suddenly the decision
82 you made a year ago wasn't a big decision after all, since it could be
83 easily undone.
85 It turns out that some people have trouble with this approach, for two
86 reasons:
88 - admitting you were an idiot is harder than it looks. We all like to
89 maintain appearances, and coming out in public to say that you were
90 wrong is sometimes very hard indeed.
91 - having somebody tell you that what you worked on for the last year
92 wasn't worthwhile after all can be hard on the poor lowly engineers
93 too, and while the actual **work** was easy enough to undo by just
94 deleting it, you may have irrevocably lost the trust of that
95 engineer. And remember: "irrevocable" was what we tried to avoid in
96 the first place, and your decision ended up being a big one after
97 all.
99 Happily, both of these reasons can be mitigated effectively by just
100 admitting up-front that you don't have a friggin' clue, and telling
101 people ahead of the fact that your decision is purely preliminary, and
102 might be the wrong thing. You should always reserve the right to change
103 your mind, and make people very **aware** of that. And it's much easier
104 to admit that you are stupid when you haven't **yet** done the really
105 stupid thing.
107 Then, when it really does turn out to be stupid, people just roll their
108 eyes and say "Oops, he did it again".
110 This preemptive admission of incompetence might also make the people who
111 actually do the work also think twice about whether it's worth doing or
112 not. After all, if **they** aren't certain whether it's a good idea, you
113 sure as hell shouldn't encourage them by promising them that what they
114 work on will be included. Make them at least think twice before they
115 embark on a big endeavor.
117 Remember: they'd better know more about the details than you do, and
118 they usually already think they have the answer to everything. The best
119 thing you can do as a manager is not to instill confidence, but rather a
120 healthy dose of critical thinking on what they do.
122 Btw, another way to avoid a decision is to plaintively just whine "can't
123 we just do both?" and look pitiful. Trust me, it works. If it's not
124 clear which approach is better, they'll eventually figure it out. The
125 answer may end up being that both teams get so frustrated by the
126 situation that they just give up.
128 That may sound like a failure, but it's usually a sign that there was
129 something wrong with both projects, and the reason the people involved
130 couldn't decide was that they were both wrong. You end up coming up
131 smelling like roses, and you avoided yet another decision that you could
132 have screwed up on.
135 2) People
136 ---------
138 Most people are idiots, and being a manager means you'll have to deal
139 with it, and perhaps more importantly, that **they** have to deal with
140 **you**.
142 It turns out that while it's easy to undo technical mistakes, it's not
143 as easy to undo personality disorders. You just have to live with
144 theirs - and yours.
146 However, in order to prepare yourself as a kernel manager, it's best to
147 remember not to burn any bridges, bomb any innocent villagers, or
148 alienate too many kernel developers. It turns out that alienating people
149 is fairly easy, and un-alienating them is hard. Thus "alienating"
150 immediately falls under the heading of "not reversible", and becomes a
151 no-no according to :ref:`decisions`.
153 There's just a few simple rules here:
155 (1) don't call people d*ckheads (at least not in public)
156 (2) learn how to apologize when you forgot rule (1)
158 The problem with #1 is that it's very easy to do, since you can say
159 "you're a d*ckhead" in millions of different ways [#f2]_, sometimes without
160 even realizing it, and almost always with a white-hot conviction that
161 you are right.
163 And the more convinced you are that you are right (and let's face it,
164 you can call just about **anybody** a d*ckhead, and you often **will** be
165 right), the harder it ends up being to apologize afterwards.
167 To solve this problem, you really only have two options:
169 - get really good at apologies
170 - spread the "love" out so evenly that nobody really ends up feeling
171 like they get unfairly targeted. Make it inventive enough, and they
172 might even be amused.
174 The option of being unfailingly polite really doesn't exist. Nobody will
175 trust somebody who is so clearly hiding his true character.
177 .. [#f2] Paul Simon sang "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover", because quite
178 frankly, "A Million Ways to Tell a Developer He Is a D*ckhead" doesn't
179 scan nearly as well. But I'm sure he thought about it.
182 3) People II - the Good Kind
183 ----------------------------
185 While it turns out that most people are idiots, the corollary to that is
186 sadly that you are one too, and that while we can all bask in the secure
187 knowledge that we're better than the average person (let's face it,
188 nobody ever believes that they're average or below-average), we should
189 also admit that we're not the sharpest knife around, and there will be
190 other people that are less of an idiot than you are.
192 Some people react badly to smart people. Others take advantage of them.
194 Make sure that you, as a kernel maintainer, are in the second group.
195 Suck up to them, because they are the people who will make your job
196 easier. In particular, they'll be able to make your decisions for you,
197 which is what the game is all about.
199 So when you find somebody smarter than you are, just coast along. Your
200 management responsibilities largely become ones of saying "Sounds like a
201 good idea - go wild", or "That sounds good, but what about xxx?". The
202 second version in particular is a great way to either learn something
203 new about "xxx" or seem **extra** managerial by pointing out something the
204 smarter person hadn't thought about. In either case, you win.
206 One thing to look out for is to realize that greatness in one area does
207 not necessarily translate to other areas. So you might prod people in
208 specific directions, but let's face it, they might be good at what they
209 do, and suck at everything else. The good news is that people tend to
210 naturally gravitate back to what they are good at, so it's not like you
211 are doing something irreversible when you **do** prod them in some
212 direction, just don't push too hard.
215 4) Placing blame
216 ----------------
218 Things will go wrong, and people want somebody to blame. Tag, you're it.
220 It's not actually that hard to accept the blame, especially if people
221 kind of realize that it wasn't **all** your fault. Which brings us to the
222 best way of taking the blame: do it for another guy. You'll feel good
223 for taking the fall, he'll feel good about not getting blamed, and the
224 guy who lost his whole 36GB porn-collection because of your incompetence
225 will grudgingly admit that you at least didn't try to weasel out of it.
227 Then make the developer who really screwed up (if you can find him) know
228 **in_private** that he screwed up. Not just so he can avoid it in the
229 future, but so that he knows he owes you one. And, perhaps even more
230 importantly, he's also likely the person who can fix it. Because, let's
231 face it, it sure ain't you.
233 Taking the blame is also why you get to be manager in the first place.
234 It's part of what makes people trust you, and allow you the potential
235 glory, because you're the one who gets to say "I screwed up". And if
236 you've followed the previous rules, you'll be pretty good at saying that
237 by now.
240 5) Things to avoid
241 ------------------
243 There's one thing people hate even more than being called "d*ckhead",
244 and that is being called a "d*ckhead" in a sanctimonious voice. The
245 first you can apologize for, the second one you won't really get the
246 chance. They likely will no longer be listening even if you otherwise
247 do a good job.
249 We all think we're better than anybody else, which means that when
250 somebody else puts on airs, it **really** rubs us the wrong way. You may
251 be morally and intellectually superior to everybody around you, but
252 don't try to make it too obvious unless you really **intend** to irritate
253 somebody [#f3]_.
255 Similarly, don't be too polite or subtle about things. Politeness easily
256 ends up going overboard and hiding the problem, and as they say, "On the
257 internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". Use a big blunt object to
258 hammer the point in, because you can't really depend on people getting
259 your point otherwise.
261 Some humor can help pad both the bluntness and the moralizing. Going
262 overboard to the point of being ridiculous can drive a point home
263 without making it painful to the recipient, who just thinks you're being
264 silly. It can thus help get through the personal mental block we all
265 have about criticism.
267 .. [#f3] Hint: internet newsgroups that are not directly related to your work
268 are great ways to take out your frustrations at other people. Write
269 insulting posts with a sneer just to get into a good flame every once in
270 a while, and you'll feel cleansed. Just don't crap too close to home.
273 6) Why me?
274 ----------
276 Since your main responsibility seems to be to take the blame for other
277 peoples mistakes, and make it painfully obvious to everybody else that
278 you're incompetent, the obvious question becomes one of why do it in the
279 first place?
281 First off, while you may or may not get screaming teenage girls (or
282 boys, let's not be judgmental or sexist here) knocking on your dressing
283 room door, you **will** get an immense feeling of personal accomplishment
284 for being "in charge". Never mind the fact that you're really leading
285 by trying to keep up with everybody else and running after them as fast
286 as you can. Everybody will still think you're the person in charge.
288 It's a great job if you can hack it.