"And, I think that is actually appropriate because I'm really not the world's best programmer, I think it's a good thing that I'm not touching the code"
About this Quote
There is a sly kind of competence in admitting you should keep your hands off the keyboard. Brian Behlendorf, a key figure in the early open-source world, frames technical humility as a feature, not a flaw: the “appropriate” outcome isn’t that he codes badly, but that the project is structured so his coding doesn’t matter. That’s the tell. He’s not confessing inadequacy; he’s pointing to a mature division of labor.
The line works because it flips the usual tech-founder mythology. Silicon Valley loves the heroic engineer-king, the leader who can dive into the codebase at 2 a.m. and save the day. Behlendorf’s subtext is the opposite: real durability comes when a system doesn’t require heroic intervention. If the “world’s best programmer” is a bottleneck, the project is fragile. If the founder is “not touching the code” and things still ship, you’ve built governance, process, and a contributor ecosystem that outlives any one person.
Context matters: open-source communities run on trust, review, and distributed ownership. His remark nods to meritocracy in the non-cringey, practical sense: decisions should be made by the people closest to the work. It also disarms ego. By downgrading his own technical authority, he upgrades the legitimacy of the contributors who do touch the code - and signals to outsiders that the project isn’t a personality cult.
It’s a leadership statement disguised as self-deprecation: the healthiest projects are designed so the founder can step back without everything breaking.
The line works because it flips the usual tech-founder mythology. Silicon Valley loves the heroic engineer-king, the leader who can dive into the codebase at 2 a.m. and save the day. Behlendorf’s subtext is the opposite: real durability comes when a system doesn’t require heroic intervention. If the “world’s best programmer” is a bottleneck, the project is fragile. If the founder is “not touching the code” and things still ship, you’ve built governance, process, and a contributor ecosystem that outlives any one person.
Context matters: open-source communities run on trust, review, and distributed ownership. His remark nods to meritocracy in the non-cringey, practical sense: decisions should be made by the people closest to the work. It also disarms ego. By downgrading his own technical authority, he upgrades the legitimacy of the contributors who do touch the code - and signals to outsiders that the project isn’t a personality cult.
It’s a leadership statement disguised as self-deprecation: the healthiest projects are designed so the founder can step back without everything breaking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Coding & Programming |
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