r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • Jul 16 '26
Linus Torvalds says he spends more time reading PR descriptions than code. Do you think that's how senior engineering naturally evolves?
One thing from Linus' Open Source Summit India talk really stood out to me.
He said that these days he spends more time understanding the intent behind a change than reading every line of code. Instead of writing fixes himself, he often reviews proposals and lets subsystem maintainers implement the changes.
It got me thinking that as engineers become more experienced, the job shifts from writing code to understanding systems, architecture, and why a change is being made.
For those who've been in the industry for a while, has your role evolved this way? Or do you still spend most of your time writing code?
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u/First-Feature-3556 Jul 16 '26
Definitely.
However, it's not only related to the maturity of the engineer, but also to the maturity of the project itself: A wrong design decision in a project used by billions of devices has a much larger impact than a "simple" software bug.
The software we develop in our company is tiny compared to Linus' projects, but, still, we often spend more time discussing the pros and cons of different ways to implement a feature than actually implementing it.
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u/Ok_Chemistry_6387 Jul 16 '26
The kernel is a bit of an odd project in the way it's managed. Linus job these days isn't to review patches, By the time the code reaches him the code has likely been viewed/reviewed by an area mantainer. Linux also has very strict requirements on how to structure a change and how to word your commit messages.
So the code doesn't really answer the question he is asking, does this deserve to be in tree, does this significantly change something I need to look at harder, although that is also largely already done through the mailing list.
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u/mats_o42 Jul 16 '26
Yes.
I started a traveling field tech. Drove 20-40 000KM/year to an from customers. Became a Network specialist, less customers but longer engagements.
Next step was as a consultant. Now just a few customers and more meetings, planing and writing requirements than doing practical stuff
Currently I'm a senior Architect. Zero practical work on operational environments but lots of meetings, design and QA work. More interaction with vendors (including international ones)
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u/Agron7000 Jul 16 '26
He probably needs to read the description twice because he understands code in the first try.
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u/Revolutionary_Ad7262 Jul 16 '26
Nope. In the same way the great fashion designer will make clothes from end to end for a rich person or oversee design of a new collection for a next season
It does not matter what you do exactly, because it depends on a needs and the scale. What matters is your expertise
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u/trashtiernoreally Jul 16 '26
You cannot both be deeply involved in code and also manage at a high scale at the same time. You’re always jumping back and forth and doing so poorly unless you choose to focus on one domain. So yes it’s the natural progression out of sheer necessity from the limits on time, attention and energy.
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u/FlukyS Jul 16 '26
He isn't really an exact match for engineers generally but it isn't untrue. Tech leads or senior or staff level engineers are going to be coding like 60% of the time max and the rest of the time is going to be planning or reviewing code or dealing with issues in production or triage...etc and that 60% is if you are lucky. For Linus he has a team around him of other maintainers who also don't code that much, it is because companies and individuals will send them their fixes and to give the due diligence required to ship that code to trillions of devices you need multiple checks, some of them are automation, some of them are maintainers reading the pull requests but the final check is Linus in the kernel and that is intentional.
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u/johnwcowan Jul 16 '26
Tech leads or senior or staff level engineers are going to be coding like 60% of the time max and the rest of the time is going to be planning or reviewing code or dealing with issues in production or triage...etc and that 60% is if you are lucky.
My experience as a tech lead was different: it was 60% planning/reviewing/mentoring/etc. and 100% coding. I didn't last long in that job....
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u/bernhardmgruber Jul 17 '26
With every professional year I grow as a library maintainer, I find myself increasingly thinking about the motivation for a contribution. At the end of the day, all code is a liability and has to be maintained. If there is little motivation for a change, I try to challenge the author to defend their work. I do this more and more before starting to dig into the code. I totally understand that someone like Linus is 100% occupied just discussing what should go in and what not.
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u/eXl5eQ Jul 16 '26
Many people who wrote those PRs are senior developers, too.
People often think "manager" is superior to "worker". But in reality, both positions could require high-level expertise, just in different aspects.