The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, has always been an outspoken figure who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, even if it makes him seem quite rude. In the past, he has called out Nvidia, AMD, and Intel on multiple occasions, verbally sparred with COVID conspiracy theorists, and vented his frustration at GitHub too. The latest target of his criticism is Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX, Tesla, and more.
Linus Torvalds recently appeared in a YouTube video hosted by the popular Linus Tech Tips (LTT) channel – run by a ‘separate’ Linus Sebastian -, in which the duo build the “PERFECT Linux PC” together. Although the video is quite long, coming in at 53 minutes, one small exchange between the two has been making the rounds on the internet. It goes as follows:
LTT: There was a recent thing from a major tech company where developers were asked to say how many lines of code they wrote, and if it wasn’t enough, they were terminated. And there was someone here who was extremely upset about that approach to measuring productivity because it means nothing.
Linus Torvalds: Oh yeah, no, you shouldn’t even be upset at that point. That’s just incompetence. Anybody who thinks that’s a valid metric is too stupid to work at a tech company.
LTT: You do know who you just said that about, right?
Linus Torvalds: No.
LTT: Oh. Uh… he was a prominent figure in the improved efficiency of the U.S. Government recently.
Linus Torvalds: Oh, apparently I was spot-on.
Some of you may remember the incident that Sebastian is referring to. This happened within a few days of Musk taking over Twitter and then demanding all employees to print out all the recently written code and have it reviewed by senior members, email Musk their best pieces of code personally, and send the executive a summary of their recent code commits. This was a part of the “hardcore” work culture that Musk was pushing for at Twitter at that time.
Of course, the conversation between Linus Sebastian and Linus Torvalds is carried out in a very light manner, but it’s clear that the creator of Linux is not a fan of Elon Musk. To be fair, Musk has been making it extremely hard for people to support him in the past few years.