ManagementStyle 13 KB

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