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In a way though, he's still coding, just at a different level of abstraction. Metaphorically, he used to generate bricks himself, then add them to his castle.
by subroutine 6y ago
In a way though, he's still coding, just at a different level of abstraction.
Metaphorically, he used to generate bricks himself, then add them to his castle. Now people bring him bricks and he choses the ones he likes and which to discard. So at the end of the day, perhaps this is still a castle of his design. meh?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 6y agoThis is the typical trade off of management. You surrender low level control for higher level control and the ability to get more done overall (since you’re coordinating the labor of dozens of people).
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoBut honestly, what Linus is doing strikes me as a much lower level than what we normally think of as the "management tradeoff". I mean, he's reviewing a ton of PRs, actually writing code in is email client as suggestions to patches. I see that as more of a "principal engineer" type role than an "engineering management" role.
- pas 6y agoHe's basically the lead dev in a comically huge yet strangely efficient group. But since it's still one project, it's still a very tightly integrated monolith, there is an advantage to doing this kind of quality/engineering management.
- ashtonkem 6y agoHe's also fulfilling the role typically handled by a product owner; he's deciding what features get prioritized. That has to be a pretty exhausting way to work.