- Actual Linuses start up their own projects

- A successful startup does not depend on miracles, geniuses and such.

Linus is brilliant for sure, but bottom line is that you're very unlikely to run into a Linus when you're allowing a brilliant jerk into your organization. It's like yeah, a basketball team can deal with an abrasive, competitive maniac when it's Michael Jordan, but how many Michael Jordans are out there? You're more likely to be dealing with a skilled but replaceable jerk than you are to be dealing with a one-of-a-kind superstar.

Even then, having a jerk superstar in a software dev shop might still be a net negative. If that person causes a lot of turnover, missed deadlines, or drags down everyone else's productivity, their brilliance may not make up for it.

And who's to say that the brilliant but somewhat difficult developer can't be reformed into someone who treats people better? Why should any company have to accept someone behaving like that in return for their skills? Maybe someone like Linus would totally be more diplomatic if he had to fit in at a company with a 'no brilliant jerks' policy.

Hiring a bully is a bad idea unless they have a history to back up their abrasiveness. And even then, it's tricky.

> Would your startup hire Linus if he hadn't yet created linux and git?

No.

"We need you to set up recurring billing for our new feature X"

"Hmmm... that would be easier if we had a custom OS... I'm going to start on that first. Also, custom version control software would really boost our productivity..."