mirror of
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
synced 2024-08-22 17:01:14 +00:00
![Mauro Carvalho Chehab](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
The previous patch renamed several files that are cross-referenced along the Kernel documentation. Adjust the links to point to the right places. Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>
288 lines
13 KiB
ReStructuredText
288 lines
13 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _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 process/coding-style.rst document to some degree, and mainly written to
|
|
avoid answering [#f1]_ 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.
|
|
|
|
.. [#f1] 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:
|
|
|
|
.. _decisions:
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 :ref:`decisions`.
|
|
|
|
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 [#f2]_, 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.
|
|
|
|
.. [#f2] 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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 [#f3]_.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
.. [#f3] 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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|