An Interview With Linus Torvalds: Linux and Git (Tag1)

Linus has excellent skills at understanding how people work, how to optimize their workflow, how to encourage them to engage more, how to show them some trust that will make them want to be more involved. And that makes him an excellent project manager.

Many times I found some parallels in the way I'm managing another project and some parts of the Linux' management (with many differences as well of course), and often I found myself replicating certain mistakes or bad directions that Linux suffered from and changing later for good. I never conscienciously copied him but I'm pretty sure I got naturally inspired by some process I was seeing working so well that the solution appeared totally obvious to me. So I tend to think that his management method is quite replicable and is not specific to the person at all (well you need a good temper, to forgive mistakes and to accept criticism but I think it's mandatory for any project manager anyway).

I sincerely hope that he will inspire youngsters who will eventually become managers in big companies, because his approach is highly scalable and quite rewarding for all parties involved.

I suspect that 10-20 years from now we'll say that he invented 3 things: Linux, Git, and the Linus-way-of-successfully-driving-a-project!