Running is a very low bar, you could theoretically fire everyone except operations and keep it running. But software and networks rot. Twitter has been rotting, it's no secret. It pretty much sucks major balls.
Like many people on both political extremes, Linus Torvalds confuses people who disagree with him with people who are stupid.
Elon Musk is the best engineering manager this century.
And a dickhead.
Edit:
Just re-read the story. Going by the quote there, the interviewer lied about what Musk did and the story lies about what Torvalds actually said about him.
"How many lines of code did you write in the past <timespan>" is not a good metric but replaced with a more generic "what did you actually _produce_ recently" I can understand the spirit.
I'm impressed Torvalds managed to not know what he was referring to (the Twitter firings).
The missing context whenever this comes up is the fact that it was a surprise one off.
If developers have no idea they're going to be graded by lines of code at some random future date that's a much different situation than saying you're going to give bonuses away every month based on how many lines of code were written.
Everyone knows the second is bad, it'll be gamed massively. The first one could be useful though.
And yes doing it as a one off is still problematic and you can think of all kinds of exceptions, but if you think the organization is full of dead weight in general and overhired massively, a crude stack ranking by lines of code is a pretty good metric for figuring out which (e.g.) 50% is the bottom.
> a crude stack ranking by lines of code is a pretty good metric for figuring out which (e.g.) 50% is the bottom.
I can write you an efficient algorithm in 2 lines or an inefficient one in 50. The metric is about as useful as a doctor checking how often someone picked up a bottle to figure out how much they drink.
If you are writing HelloWorld-webscale daemon from scratch, then counting +lines is probably "ok", but considering some existing large project like Linux (for instance), you would be well off keeping people who has managed to retain functionality while removing lines. Old projects have a tendency to get a lot of old cruft in which tends to stick (chestertons fence and all that) but someone clever enough to rewrite and remove old useless code is a net win for you, so I agree that if you fire some percentage on most-committed-lines you either had a very recent project from scratch or the measurement is stupid.
Much respect to Torvalds, but all available evidence points to the fact that people that stupid (and some even dumber) do in fact work at tech companies.
Stupid and smart are stupid terms. There are many, many dimensions to intelligence and a lot of tech elite are too "stupid" to not recognize that being a really "smart" at coding doesn't mean they're really "smart" at everything.
I'd guess Elon and Linus's character sheets are more closely aligned on the same dimensions of intelligence than Linus would like to admit.
Lines of code written, in isolation, is a strange metric to determine if someone keeps their job or not. I simply don't think this was the only metric. People love jumping to conclusions about divisive characters.
The idea of firing people based on the number of lines of code they wrote makes sense if you think like a psychopath.
On average, more productive developers write more lines of code. Of course, writing more lines of code doesn't mean you are actually more productive, but the trend is there.
Elon Musk wanted to lay off 3/4 of a workforce of thousands because he thought 1/4 was enough, it is going to be disruptive no matter what and no matter how you chose, it is hard to predict the outcome. So, the general idea is to pick people randomly. But you want to bias that randomness towards keeping the best and laying off the rest, and so he picked up the number of lines of code as a criteria. It is semi-random and likely to be biased towards better productivity. It is thinking in terms of statistics, not individual people.
He is likely to be the kind of person who would have no problem banning black people from communities if it wasn't illegal. Indeed, there is more crime where there are more black people, so to lower crime, eliminate black people. And it will probably work if you ignore the fact that they are people and not just points on a chart.
Tomorrow: Grokipedia entry about how Linus Torvalds is a rapist and baby child eater and also used the word pizza a lot of times in his email.
You're doubting this now, but deep down you know I'll be right. Elon Musk wants to win the race not because he believes in AI, but because he wants to be in control of the perpetual present.
He didn’t directly call Elon stupid. He said that a certain behavior is so stupid it indicates someone shouldn’t be at a tech company. The next step is causal inference. I’m sure Elon is familiar with the nuances of slander laws after he baselessly accused a hero rescue worker of a terrible crime and then hid behind his lawyers.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 45.0 ms ] threadElon Musk is the best engineering manager this century. And a dickhead.
Edit: Just re-read the story. Going by the quote there, the interviewer lied about what Musk did and the story lies about what Torvalds actually said about him.
The missing context whenever this comes up is the fact that it was a surprise one off.
If developers have no idea they're going to be graded by lines of code at some random future date that's a much different situation than saying you're going to give bonuses away every month based on how many lines of code were written.
Everyone knows the second is bad, it'll be gamed massively. The first one could be useful though.
And yes doing it as a one off is still problematic and you can think of all kinds of exceptions, but if you think the organization is full of dead weight in general and overhired massively, a crude stack ranking by lines of code is a pretty good metric for figuring out which (e.g.) 50% is the bottom.
I can write you an efficient algorithm in 2 lines or an inefficient one in 50. The metric is about as useful as a doctor checking how often someone picked up a bottle to figure out how much they drink.
... Wait, does the author think that they are _actually_ the same person? If not, why the scare quotes?
I'd guess Elon and Linus's character sheets are more closely aligned on the same dimensions of intelligence than Linus would like to admit.
On average, more productive developers write more lines of code. Of course, writing more lines of code doesn't mean you are actually more productive, but the trend is there.
Elon Musk wanted to lay off 3/4 of a workforce of thousands because he thought 1/4 was enough, it is going to be disruptive no matter what and no matter how you chose, it is hard to predict the outcome. So, the general idea is to pick people randomly. But you want to bias that randomness towards keeping the best and laying off the rest, and so he picked up the number of lines of code as a criteria. It is semi-random and likely to be biased towards better productivity. It is thinking in terms of statistics, not individual people.
He is likely to be the kind of person who would have no problem banning black people from communities if it wasn't illegal. Indeed, there is more crime where there are more black people, so to lower crime, eliminate black people. And it will probably work if you ignore the fact that they are people and not just points on a chart.
You're doubting this now, but deep down you know I'll be right. Elon Musk wants to win the race not because he believes in AI, but because he wants to be in control of the perpetual present.