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Play with the cat, buy a bathrobe: Linus Torvalds thoughts on working from home

How Linus Torvalds made Linux and Git without leaving home


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So, your boss is not sure that you can work productively from home. Perhaps he should remember Linus Torvalds. He created that very small operating system, Linux, which now runs everything except for desktop computers, and Git, a project used by all the largest software developers around the world - and all this, without leaving home.

Torvalds admits that when he started working, “he was worried that I would miss interaction with people - not just talking with people in offices and corridors, but sharing lunches, etc. It turned out that I never missed that. ”

Of course, simply stating “give up sociality” would not be very good advice, would it? Yes, and work from home, as many extroverts are beginning to discover, is not necessarily such a pleasant thing.

Therefore, Torvalds offers “take advantage of the real benefits of working from home: flexibility. Do not try to recreate the office environment at home. ”

Instead, “if you're sitting at home and spending many hours online meeting instead of spending hours working at meetings in the office, you just brought with you the worst of office life and made it even worse ".

The Linux kernel is being developed via email instead of meetings, which keeps everyone informed. James Bottomley, chief research engineer at IBM and chief Linux kernel developer who works closely with Torvalds, explains:
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Torvalds says: “If you turn your life into work from 9 to 17, just from home, you will soon begin to hate your house, yourself and your life. These will be continuous flaws without any advantage. ”

Torvalds' attitude toward meetings can be summarized as follows: "Life is too short to spend more than an hour a week on meetings." He believes that instead of “trying to use videoconferencing, trying to recreate past experiences,” you need to try to completely change your work style. Use asynchronous communication models: messages, email, shared calendars, etc.

Torvalds continues:
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One such program that runs on all desktop computers, including the Linux OS, is RescueTime. It not only prevents you from wasting time on Facebook and the like, it collects data about everything that you really do on the computer. Using this information, she gives detailed reports on how much time you spend at work, in social networks, in games, in online stores, etc.

In any case, Torvalds calls for "asynchronous work, and not for everyone to participate as one in this stupid web meeting to bring to everyone what they do or what they should do."

However, Bottomley believes that sometimes videoconferencing is necessary. He thinks so:
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Torvalds adds that you should take advantage of the fact that “you are not attached to a certain place and other people, and as a result you can work more flexibly, since working from home gives you real advantages in scheduling. You do not need to leave the house, but you still have to go grocery shopping, etc. Engage in such things when you are bored, and at the same time you don’t have any obligatory things to do - you don’t hang around in the office! Play with the cat! ”

In conclusion, Torvalds writes: “Yes, it can take years for you to feel free to receive the parcel from the courier, leaving your house in a bathrobe at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, because you were too lazy to dress - but this should be your final goal. Yes, God bless him, I am at home, and here I am no judge. ”

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