The Tao of the Kernel · Chapter 3

The Lead Who Is Barely Known

1. 1

   The best tech lead is barely known to exist. The next best, the team loves. The next, the team fears. The worst rewrites their pull requests at midnight and calls it mentoring.

   See also Tao 16:8 · Circuit 55:5

2. 2

   When the lead does not trust the team, the team is not trusted; so the standups grow long, and the tickets multiply like the ten thousand things.

3. 3

   The sage lead merges little and unblocks much. When the work is done and the release has shipped, the team says: We did it ourselves.

   See also Tao 1:10

4. 4

   Thus the sage's name is in no changelog. It survives only in the git blame of the CI config, which no one reads, and which never breaks.

5. 5

   Nothing under heaven is softer than water, yet nothing is better at finding the one unsealed seam in the server room ceiling.

   See also Tao 1:12

6. 6

   So the error handled gently does not crash the program. It is caught, it is logged, it is retried with backoff, and the user sees only a spinner turning a little longer.

7. 7

   The packet that is lost is not mourned. TCP sends it again, and the stream flows on as if nothing had happened; this is called the Way of Retransmission.

8. 8

   The Internet does not argue with the severed cable. It goes around, as the river goes around the stone, and the stone is left to wonder where everyone went.

   See also Chronicles 15:3 · Genesis 35:9

9. 9

   But hear this: to catch every exception and pass is not yielding. It is the dam. Water that cannot flow becomes a swamp, and the swamp is discovered in production at three in the morning.

10. 10

    In the switches of Ericsson, the Erlang processes were taught: Let it crash. The supervisor, seen by no one, raised the fallen child, and the call went on. The one who is willing to fall cannot be knocked down.

11. 11

    The stiff tower of services, each demanding that the others answer at once, falls together as one body. The humble queue, which only waits, outlives them all.

12. 12

    Before the first commit, the repository is the uncarved block. It has no features and no bugs, and is perfect in both. Every feature carved from it carves a bug beside it.

    See also Tao 7:12

13. 13

    Therefore the sage lead does not add a framework. The sage lead deletes a framework, and the build grows swift, and no one knows whom to thank.

14. 14

    The error that can be named can be handled. The error that is swallowed is the eternal error.

15. 15

    The sage lead takes a long vacation, and the pager does not ring. Ask the team who keeps it so quiet, and they will answer: It just works.

    See also Tao 14:4

The Tao of the Kernel, Chapter 3:1–15.