Some of Linus's past messages came across as needlessly aggressive and insulting. There really was no practical reason for that and just served to alienate contributors, and it came across as unprofessional.
You can be a strong, opinionated leader and still be kind (or at least neutral) to the people you're working with.
A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. It doesn't do any good if the people working under you feel like trash.
It's the difference between telling a contributor "you're an f**ing idiot" vs "this code isn't up to standards, try again". Same message, but completely different impact on your team.
> A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired.
Do you have examples of this? The only "good" leaders that are strong and opinionated I can think of always comes across as leans towards being an asshole.
> Same message, but completely different impact on your team.
Let's change it from "you're a fucking idiot" to "this code is fucking trash". It's not insulting to the specific person, but it definitely gets the point across that the code is no good and much less ambiguous to "it's not up to standards".
A few public ones off the top of my head: Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Ed Catmull (Pixar) are both folks who I consider to be strongly opinionated and effective leaders but who don't come across as jerks.
I'm not sure how "this code is not up to standards, try again" is ambiguous? That seems pretty direct to me.
Ultimately it's about showing empathy. Especially when you're dealing with employees who are struggling with anxiety, impostor syndrome, or burnout - all of which seem to be overrepresented in tech.
Using business-approved language doesn't actually make your message more friendly.
It's not line Linus was prone to using flowery prose against random novices - the rant he's known for were mostly addressed at senior maintainers who really should have known better.
You can be a strong, opinionated leader and still be kind (or at least neutral) to the people you're working with.
A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. It doesn't do any good if the people working under you feel like trash.
It's the difference between telling a contributor "you're an f**ing idiot" vs "this code isn't up to standards, try again". Same message, but completely different impact on your team.