“Too stupid to work in a tech company”: Elon Musk dressed for winter by the creator of Linux
Known for being both the creator of Linux and a big mouth of tech (everyone at least remembers his “Fuck you, Nvidia” graphic), Linus Torvalds was a guest a few days ago on the Linus Tech Tips (LTT) YouTube channel. In the middle of assembling the “perfect Linux PC”, the man was questioned on many topics around tech. Amid many interesting responses, a particularly tasty exchange confirmed that Torvalds thinks the same thing as many people about Elon Musk.
Elon Musk and his management of X criticized by Linus Torvalds
Between his Catastrophic AI Grok and his disastrous DOGE to cite only the most recent examples, Elon Musk is criticized here for his management of Twitter/X during the first days of its takeover.
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Around the 37 minute mark in the 53 minute video, the following exchange takes place:
LTT: “There was a recent case from a major tech company where developers were asked to say how many lines of code they had written, and if it wasn’t enough, they were fired. And there was someone here who was extremely upset about this approach to measuring productivity because it doesn’t mean anything.
Linus Torvalds: Oh yes, no, you shouldn’t even be angry at this point anymore. It’s just incompetence. Anyone who thinks this is a valid metric is too stupid to work at a tech company.
LTT: You know who you just said that about, right?
Linus Torvalds: No.
LTT: Oh. Um… he played an important role in improving the efficiency of the United States government recently.
Linus Torvalds: Oh, apparently I was absolutely right.“
In addition to these comments, which are therefore indirectly (or not) aimed at Elon Musk and which do not reveal much that everyone did not already know, Linus Torvalds said many more interesting things in this interview. In the video above, he notably discusses his position regarding AI (he believes in it but doesn’t like what is currently being done with it and predicts a crash), explains why he prefers a particular distribution (Fedora) and certain brands of components to build a Linux PC, and many other elements around Linux and tech.
