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Comment by supernovae | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily.

It creates a vicious cycle of absurdity - the one where people appease the anger to try and achieve some good not realizing how much the bad influences the culture of the movement/organization/group.

No one is perfect, but the community for far to long treated an imperfect man as if he could do no wrong - to its own detriment. Not in quality of software, no one disputes that - but in quality of life and respect for other human beings and other views/ideas.

I think it's terrible we accept this idea that it takes an asshole to make a community

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> Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily.

I have. The problem was not so much the things he wrote in public but what he said (that couldn't be documented) or probably told the bosses (which also could not be documented.)

He was a (mostly) well mannered and soft spoken guy esp. compared to the image of Linus, but he made me quit my then dream job and I'm pretty sure I'd preferred working with Linus.

Also in school I had another one: well behaving, soft spoken (mostly) but who turned out didn't care about others except as a way to get what he wanted.

I'm really happy to not work a place where I get yelled at either but at least Linus seems fair so I think I'd prefer him.

It's also interesting to see him admitting it might be a problem in his own way: wanting to ralk to someone, joking about tooling, asking for ideas.

I think he's like that in maillists and not in person as are many real life geeks/keyboard warriors?

I don't think he's even generally like this on the mailing lists, just on notable occasions.

Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you - and it really sucks when they get idolized and rewarded heavily.

I've worked with a few people I'd consider brilliant. But none whose accomplishments really compare to those of Linus. He's more or less a sample size of one as far as I can see in terms of building out such successful software on such a large community and without being inside a megacorp.

I've worked with many more people who feel the need to be involved, steer projects towards failures or dead ends, who seem to live by the CIA manual on field sabotage and have to be managed to not cause a net detrimental effect. Some of those were really nice people too.

I'm amazed at how he's built Linux without more clashes, but if he feels he can be a nicer guy about some of it and still do the job effectively, more power and credit to him.

> He's more or less a sample size of one as far as I can see in terms of building out such successful software on such a large community and without being inside a megacorp.

Much of this can be explained because he was at the right place at the right time. Two very important reasons why Linux is so successful are GNU and the GPLv2. Any decent kernel could have taken off at that time. Linux was the first that actually worked.

Now the ability of Linus to retain leadership is remarkable. Just, let's not forget that he got a hell of a head start with the FSF's work. Both technical (GNU) and legal (GPL).

You always build on the shoulders of giants. However, it was Linux that took off, not alternatives (e.g., Minix).

Wasn't Minix a whole operating system?

Linux is not an OS. It's a kernel. The OS was GNU, and Linux was only the missing piece.

I maintain that any kernel that worked with GNU would have taken off.

While true, I think this would not have stopped Minix, because you could compile and run all GNU tools on it. I just read that Linus developed Linux on a machine running Minix.

However, what I got wrong: in the first years, Minix was not free. Users had to either buy the book, or pay a license fee of $69.

I believe the licence is what did it: Linux could spread because it was free, and it could not be stolen because it was copylefted.

If Minix (or at least the Minix kernel), used the GPLv2 from the start, I wouldn't bet on Linux.

The kernel was missing for quite a while, wasn't it? linus is the one who did it; and he enabled other people to contribute effectively.

Also: I was thinking he's remained the leader of this very successful project, for a long time - he deserves credit for that. But perhaps that's a part of software's durable unfair advantage, that e.g. made so much money for Oracle, Microsoft. Similarly, BDFL, as for perl, python, ruby etc tend to stay there. So, perhaps it's more just not stuffing it up, than special credit?

What do ypu think of how esr explained linus's success in the cathedral and the bazaar?

> I think it's terrible we accept this idea that it takes an asshole to make a community

Or, even if you want to think that sometimes it requires someone to be an asshole, that's still different than thinking that this should always be the case in that same community.

I didn't use or even know about Linux when Torvalds first created it, so I won't presume to say he was an asshole back then or that he shouldn't have been one. But I'm assuming the set of contributors back then was much smaller than what it is now. And that Torvalds largely appreciates and maybe even depends on this bigger community -- if he's accepting their pull requests.

Why should we believe that him changing his views on personal and management behavior is some kind of surrender on his part, rather than a rational assessment that this will materially benefit the software and its community?

>Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks the life out of you

There's a vast difference between a "Steve Jobs type asshole" and a "Linus type asshole". The rants I read from Steve Jobs were all petty, domineering and often arbitrary.

The rants I read from Linus were (mostly) about senior developers who tried to defend broken designs and breaking simple, well thought out rules. They were entirely predictable and avoidable.

The former would suck the life out of me but I wouldn't mind the latter.

There isn't just one kind of asshole :)

I'm more generalizing stuff our industry is bad at accepting because we all know a brilliant asshole who can appear to be nice but is locked and loaded ready to burn you at the slightest whim. In fact, i'd wager that the most difficult people to work with are the ones that can be nice at times because their unpredictability just ads to the confusion & chaos. The worst is if/when they do apologize but don't follow that up with action - i'm thrilled to see Linus committing to action!

Unfortunately most of the world loves Jobs kind of jerks and hates Linus kinds.

The world "loves" the persona and all the legend around him not the real person because they never had to deal with him other than WWDC and a few sightings in a random coffee shop.

I feel many jump to judge Linus as a brilliant asshole too quickly. He obviously has charisma and great leadership qualities. In addition he is blunt and speaks his mind, also when he is emotional and maybe irrational.

I feel assholes are people who make decisions and take actions ruthlessly. I've not seen Linus do that, though perhaps I missed it.

edit: hey Chris! Love your work :D I don't think Linux would have been as successful under his leadership if he went around insulting people like that everyday. So I still think he has charisma even if he gets ugly every now and then.

Well, then don't work with brilliant assholes and start your own company where the culture is different. This is not meant to be snide. Be a creator if you believe so strongly in your principles. Lead by example. If enough people start enterprises with your attitude things would change.

Trying to impose your principles in others breeds resentment and conflict. This is human psychology.

    Have you ever worked with brilliant assholes? It sucks
    the life out of you - and it really sucks when they 
    get idolized and rewarded heavily.

Yes and yes. Dear god, yes.

A bit tangential, but I'm not sure that Linus is generally thought of as an asshole in general? Is he?

My outsider's perspective is that he's admired and liked besides these occasional rants that sometimes get kind of weird and insult-y.

I'm not excusing those moments by any means! I've just never gotten the impression that they're the rule, or that he's generally some sort of unbearable tyrant.

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