> I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool!

I'm pretty sure people aren't up in arms about Linus being a baby, but about your refusal to call out people on "subpar performance". Replace "subpar performance" with whatever you feel is an acceptable name for executing wrongly on very bad ideas.

And I feel like you might get downvoted because if there is one thing I HATE about companies, it's that people responding like this always get rewarded.

1) fuck up beyond belief (or just be assigned to a critical project and do nothing)

2) talk about the problem with everyone, without, of course, without fixing anything

3) inflict massive costs on everyone else because of the sudden urgent necessity of fixing your problem

4) get insane rewards for this

And I for one call statements such as the one from the top post here "optimism at it's finest":

> if you call someone a moron in a thread, it's likely to kill productivity and create a negative testosterone ladden atmosphere of people trying to avoid being wrong, and counter attacking others.

Unfortunately, corporate America is FULL, and I mean overloaded to the brim with people who will never admit the slightest mistake, and explode at anyone implying they made a subpar decision.

This attitude to "avoid blame" then proceeds to turn disaster into outright catastrophe. Many of these people who make some level of mistakes will see that not only can they get away with it, but aggressively attacking others for their mistakes comes with great rewards.

I have personally worked with several well known people in my field, who have climbed up the ladder this way. It isn't just that they didn't contribute, but they made great mistakes, both on the technical front (taking disastrous architectural decisions and forcing them through, despite agreement that there were very wrong), and on the financial front (doing budget allocations based on what THEY KNEW was a lost cause, and refusing to admit any fault or change course).

Once it does become clear that a disastrous mistake was made and propagated, and 90% of the budget was already spent (actually more like 150% in both cases), and none of the outcomes promised will be achieved, they then help organise a "code red", a "emergency sprint", an "extra effort", ... to "fix" things. But things are never fixed. Everyone is worse off, and will be for years.

The first few times this happens, these people are then rewarded. Promoted, in both cases. And of course, we are currently in the process of repeating one of these huge mistakes. Last time I so much as asked why this decision was made the guy very enthousiastically gave an answer, and I thought we both agreed it wasn't a good answer.

An hour later my manager asks to urgently see me.

A day later my director urgently called my manager and me to see him.

A week later we went to discuss "safety" with HR. (because of the 10 people thing, I'm sure, read on)

And yet, everybody, and I do mean everybody, knows this is a bad idea. However, having 50 people work for 1.5 years on a bad idea ... well those 50 people call it "a job", and nobody's going to be risking their career on calling this guy out any further (even if I did get 10 of them to walk into that director's office telling him that I did nothing wrong and that it's a bad idea).

But no worries ... no blame. We're still executing on that idea.