Managing Techies

From Linux Documentation:

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).

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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)

You can Read the full thing here