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 .. _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 :ref:`process/coding-style.rst <codingstyle>` 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, not 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 their true character.
 
 .. [#f2] Paul Simon sang "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover", because quite
   frankly, "A Million Ways to Tell a Developer They're 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 someone else. You'll feel good
 for taking the fall, they'll feel good about not getting blamed, and the
 person who lost their 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 them) know
 **in private** that they screwed up.  Not just so they can avoid it in the
 future, but so that they know they owe you one.  And, perhaps even more
 importantly, they're 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.

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