Abuse, swearing and provoking people(using stuff like taunts, shouting on them, publicly humiliating them, challenging them etc) to get some thing done never works. The only reason why its working for him, is his fame. And even that won't be put up by any guy who has problems giving away his self esteem.
Around 3 years back I worked under two very technically brilliant people, but their biggest problem was just the kind of stuff you see here. I remember the entire team would change every 6 months. The team was supposed to be some kind of an elite hand picked team from within the whole company, as they were supposed to focus on big revenue based projects. But I saw some awesome people, leave every 3-6 months of joining just because it was impossible to work with those two people. 'Do you know how he behaved yesterday with person X' kind of lunch/coffee table discussions were simply too common.
I recently happened to meet a guy who just left that team. He recalled the impossibility of working with those two people. Something that we both noticed, those two haven't seem to have anything substantial in the past decade. Almost any project that they touch crashes and burns and ever never proceeds anywhere beyond 30-50% mark.
The thing is plain and simple. You have no rights to behave that way with anyone(No matter who you are). Secondly, anybody who is good has no reason to put up with you, Why should they? So the net-net is these are team destroying activities.
If you are good, and then that is that. What can you do without a team in software these days?
Never resort to a impolite public engagement. Your best bet is to be calm(even in case of a big goof up) take the person to a room and explain to him the seriousness of his mistake and help him avoid making such mistakes in the future.
I think it depends. I'm inclined to agree with Linus' approach, but I'll just argue that sometimes "abuse, swearing and provoking people" is the best approach.
Some of the best lessons I learned was being chewed out by a manager. The magnitude of my stupidity or fuck-up would simply not have sunken in even if this manager had been factual and direct, without chewing me out.
The same goes for my youth. I remember some lessons mostly because they involved my father yelling at me. I recall very few lessons where he sat me down and provided a detailed, factual argument of why I was being a dumb-ass.
I don't get the impression that, in growing up, our ability to assess magnitudes of failure by factual analysis of the situation has improved enough to render 'chewing-out' pointless.
Around 3 years back I worked under two very technically brilliant people, but their biggest problem was just the kind of stuff you see here. I remember the entire team would change every 6 months. The team was supposed to be some kind of an elite hand picked team from within the whole company, as they were supposed to focus on big revenue based projects. But I saw some awesome people, leave every 3-6 months of joining just because it was impossible to work with those two people. 'Do you know how he behaved yesterday with person X' kind of lunch/coffee table discussions were simply too common.
I recently happened to meet a guy who just left that team. He recalled the impossibility of working with those two people. Something that we both noticed, those two haven't seem to have anything substantial in the past decade. Almost any project that they touch crashes and burns and ever never proceeds anywhere beyond 30-50% mark.
The thing is plain and simple. You have no rights to behave that way with anyone(No matter who you are). Secondly, anybody who is good has no reason to put up with you, Why should they? So the net-net is these are team destroying activities.
If you are good, and then that is that. What can you do without a team in software these days?
Never resort to a impolite public engagement. Your best bet is to be calm(even in case of a big goof up) take the person to a room and explain to him the seriousness of his mistake and help him avoid making such mistakes in the future.