FreeBSD/Linux Kernel Cross Reference
sys/Documentation/ManagementStyle

     
                     Linux kernel management style
     
     This is a short document describing the preferred (or made up, depending
     on who you ask) management style for the linux kernel.  It's meant to
     mirror the CodingStyle document to some degree, and mainly written to
     avoid answering (*) the same (or similar) questions over and over again. 
     
     Management style is very personal and much harder to quantify than
    simple coding style rules, so this document may or may not have anything
    to do with reality.  It started as a lark, but that doesn't mean that it
    might not actually be true. You'll have to decide for yourself.
    
    Btw, when talking about "kernel manager", it's all about the technical
    lead persons, not the people who do traditional management inside
    companies.  If you sign purchase orders or you have any clue about the
    budget of your group, you're almost certainly not a kernel manager. 
    These suggestions may or may not apply to you. 
    
    First off, I'd suggest buying "Seven Habits of Highly Effective
    People", and NOT read it.  Burn it, it's a great symbolic gesture. 
    
    (*) This document does so not so much by answering the question, but by
    making it painfully obvious to the questioner that we don't have a clue
    to what the answer is. 
    
    Anyway, here goes:
    
    
                    Chapter 1: Decisions
    
    Everybody thinks managers make decisions, and that decision-making is
    important.  The bigger and more painful the decision, the bigger the
    manager must be to make it.  That's very deep and obvious, but it's not
    actually true. 
    
    The name of the game is to _avoid_ having to make a decision.  In
    particular, if somebody tells you "choose (a) or (b), we really need you
    to decide on this", you're in trouble as a manager.  The people you
    manage had better know the details better than you, so if they come to
    you for a technical decision, you're screwed.  You're clearly not
    competent to make that decision for them. 
    
    (Corollary:if the people you manage don't know the details better than
    you, you're also screwed, although for a totally different reason. 
    Namely that you are in the wrong job, and that _they_ should be managing
    your brilliance instead). 
    
    So the name of the game is to _avoid_ decisions, at least the big and
    painful ones.  Making small and non-consequential decisions is fine, and
    makes you look like you know what you're doing, so what a kernel manager
    needs to do is to turn the big and painful ones into small things where
    nobody really cares. 
    
    It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a
    small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards.  Any decision
    can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and
    you _will_ be wrong), you can always undo the damage later by
    backtracking.  Suddenly, you get to be doubly managerial for making
    _two_ inconsequential decisions - the wrong one _and_ the right one. 
    
    And people will even see that as true leadership (*cough* bullshit
    *cough*).
    
    Thus the key to avoiding big decisions becomes to just avoiding to do
    things that can't be undone.  Don't get ushered into a corner from which
    you cannot escape.  A cornered rat may be dangerous - a cornered manager
    is just pitiful. 
    
    It turns out that since nobody would be stupid enough to ever really let
    a kernel manager have huge fiscal responsibility _anyway_, it's usually
    fairly easy to backtrack.  Since you're not going to be able to waste
    huge amounts of money that you might not be able to repay, the only
    thing you can backtrack on is a technical decision, and there
    back-tracking is very easy: just tell everybody that you were an
    incompetent nincompoop, say you're sorry, and undo all the worthless
    work you had people work on for the last year.  Suddenly the decision
    you made a year ago wasn't a big decision after all, since it could be
    easily undone. 
    
    It turns out that some people have trouble with this approach, for two
    reasons:
     - admitting you were an idiot is harder than it looks.  We all like to
       maintain appearances, and coming out in public to say that you were
       wrong is sometimes very hard indeed. 
     - having somebody tell you that what you worked on for the last year
       wasn't worthwhile after all can be hard on the poor lowly engineers
       too, and while the actual _work_ was easy enough to undo by just
       deleting it, you may have irrevocably lost the trust of that
       engineer.  And remember: "irrevocable" was what we tried to avoid in
       the first place, and your decision ended up being a big one after
       all. 
    
    Happily, both of these reasons can be mitigated effectively by just
    admitting up-front that you don't have a friggin' clue, and telling
    people ahead of the fact that your decision is purely preliminary, and
    might be the wrong thing.  You should always reserve the right to change
    your mind, and make people very _aware_ of that.  And it's much easier
    to admit that you are stupid when you haven't _yet_ done the really
   stupid thing.
   
   Then, when it really does turn out to be stupid, people just roll their
   eyes and say "Oops, he did it again".  
   
   This preemptive admission of incompetence might also make the people who
   actually do the work also think twice about whether it's worth doing or
   not.  After all, if _they_ aren't certain whether it's a good idea, you
   sure as hell shouldn't encourage them by promising them that what they
   work on will be included.  Make them at least think twice before they
   embark on a big endeavor. 
   
   Remember: they'd better know more about the details than you do, and
   they usually already think they have the answer to everything.  The best
   thing you can do as a manager is not to instill confidence, but rather a
   healthy dose of critical thinking on what they do. 
   
   Btw, another way to avoid a decision is to plaintively just whine "can't
   we just do both?" and look pitiful.  Trust me, it works.  If it's not
   clear which approach is better, they'll eventually figure it out.  The
   answer may end up being that both teams get so frustrated by the
   situation that they just give up. 
   
   That may sound like a failure, but it's usually a sign that there was
   something wrong with both projects, and the reason the people involved
   couldn't decide was that they were both wrong.  You end up coming up
   smelling like roses, and you avoided yet another decision that you could
   have screwed up on. 
   
   
                   Chapter 2: People
   
   Most people are idiots, and being a manager means you'll have to deal
   with it, and perhaps more importantly, that _they_ have to deal with
   _you_. 
   
   It turns out that while it's easy to undo technical mistakes, it's not
   as easy to undo personality disorders.  You just have to live with
   theirs - and yours. 
   
   However, in order to prepare yourself as a kernel manager, it's best to
   remember not to burn any bridges, bomb any innocent villagers, or
   alienate too many kernel developers. It turns out that alienating people
   is fairly easy, and un-alienating them is hard. Thus "alienating"
   immediately falls under the heading of "not reversible", and becomes a
   no-no according to Chapter 1.
   
   There's just a few simple rules here:
    (1) don't call people d*ckheads (at least not in public)
    (2) learn how to apologize when you forgot rule (1)
   
   The problem with #1 is that it's very easy to do, since you can say
   "you're a d*ckhead" in millions of different ways (*), sometimes without
   even realizing it, and almost always with a white-hot conviction that
   you are right. 
   
   And the more convinced you are that you are right (and let's face it,
   you can call just about _anybody_ a d*ckhead, and you often _will_ be
   right), the harder it ends up being to apologize afterwards. 
   
   To solve this problem, you really only have two options:
    - get really good at apologies
    - spread the "love" out so evenly that nobody really ends up feeling
      like they get unfairly targeted.  Make it inventive enough, and they
      might even be amused. 
   
   The option of being unfailingly polite really doesn't exist. Nobody will
   trust somebody who is so clearly hiding his true character.
   
   (*) Paul Simon sang "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover", because quite
   frankly, "A Million Ways to Tell a Developer He Is a D*ckhead" doesn't
   scan nearly as well.  But I'm sure he thought about it. 
   
   
                   Chapter 3: People II - the Good Kind
   
   While it turns out that most people are idiots, the corollary to that is
   sadly that you are one too, and that while we can all bask in the secure
   knowledge that we're better than the average person (let's face it,
   nobody ever believes that they're average or below-average), we should
   also admit that we're not the sharpest knife around, and there will be
   other people that are less of an idiot than you are. 
   
   Some people react badly to smart people.  Others take advantage of them. 
   
   Make sure that you, as a kernel maintainer, are in the second group. 
   Suck up to them, because they are the people who will make your job
   easier. In particular, they'll be able to make your decisions for you,
   which is what the game is all about.
   
   So when you find somebody smarter than you are, just coast along.  Your
   management responsibilities largely become ones of saying "Sounds like a
   good idea - go wild", or "That sounds good, but what about xxx?".  The
   second version in particular is a great way to either learn something
   new about "xxx" or seem _extra_ managerial by pointing out something the
   smarter person hadn't thought about.  In either case, you win.
   
   One thing to look out for is to realize that greatness in one area does
   not necessarily translate to other areas.  So you might prod people in
   specific directions, but let's face it, they might be good at what they
   do, and suck at everything else.  The good news is that people tend to
   naturally gravitate back to what they are good at, so it's not like you
   are doing something irreversible when you _do_ prod them in some
   direction, just don't push too hard.
   
   
                   Chapter 4: Placing blame
   
   Things will go wrong, and people want somebody to blame. Tag, you're it.
   
   It's not actually that hard to accept the blame, especially if people
   kind of realize that it wasn't _all_ your fault.  Which brings us to the
   best way of taking the blame: do it for another guy. You'll feel good
   for taking the fall, he'll feel good about not getting blamed, and the
   guy who lost his whole 36GB porn-collection because of your incompetence
   will grudgingly admit that you at least didn't try to weasel out of it.
   
   Then make the developer who really screwed up (if you can find him) know
   _in_private_ that he screwed up.  Not just so he can avoid it in the
   future, but so that he knows he owes you one.  And, perhaps even more
   importantly, he's also likely the person who can fix it.  Because, let's
   face it, it sure ain't you. 
   
   Taking the blame is also why you get to be manager in the first place. 
   It's part of what makes people trust you, and allow you the potential
   glory, because you're the one who gets to say "I screwed up".  And if
   you've followed the previous rules, you'll be pretty good at saying that
   by now. 
   
   
                   Chapter 5: Things to avoid
   
   There's one thing people hate even more than being called "d*ckhead",
   and that is being called a "d*ckhead" in a sanctimonious voice.  The
   first you can apologize for, the second one you won't really get the
   chance.  They likely will no longer be listening even if you otherwise
   do a good job. 
   
   We all think we're better than anybody else, which means that when
   somebody else puts on airs, it _really_ rubs us the wrong way.  You may
   be morally and intellectually superior to everybody around you, but
   don't try to make it too obvious unless you really _intend_ to irritate
   somebody (*). 
   
   Similarly, don't be too polite or subtle about things. Politeness easily
   ends up going overboard and hiding the problem, and as they say, "On the
   internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". Use a big blunt object to
   hammer the point in, because you can't really depend on people getting
   your point otherwise.
   
   Some humor can help pad both the bluntness and the moralizing.  Going
   overboard to the point of being ridiculous can drive a point home
   without making it painful to the recipient, who just thinks you're being
   silly.  It can thus help get through the personal mental block we all
   have about criticism. 
   
   (*) Hint: internet newsgroups that are not directly related to your work
   are great ways to take out your frustrations at other people. Write
   insulting posts with a sneer just to get into a good flame every once in
   a while, and you'll feel cleansed. Just don't crap too close to home.
   
   
                   Chapter 6: Why me?
   
   Since your main responsibility seems to be to take the blame for other
   peoples mistakes, and make it painfully obvious to everybody else that
   you're incompetent, the obvious question becomes one of why do it in the
   first place?
   
   First off, while you may or may not get screaming teenage girls (or
   boys, let's not be judgmental or sexist here) knocking on your dressing
   room door, you _will_ get an immense feeling of personal accomplishment
   for being "in charge".  Never mind the fact that you're really leading
   by trying to keep up with everybody else and running after them as fast
   as you can.  Everybody will still think you're the person in charge. 
   
   It's a great job if you can hack it.

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