managing geeks [modified]
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Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks[^] "The amount of respect an IT pro pays someone is a measure of how tolerable that person is when it comes to getting things done, including the elegance and practicality of his solutions and suggestions." I highly recommend reading this article. It's chock full of insights into the geeks mind. "This is a tricky one. Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity." haha yes! This author speaks my language. "if only to make use of their exquisitely refined BS detectors." :laugh:
Todd Smith
modified on Thursday, September 10, 2009 12:06 PM
Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
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Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
I think Michael Crichton referred to this as "thintelligence". Highly knowledgeable in a specialized area, but otherwise a complete doofus. This explains a lot of the posts you read at sites like Slashdot, or the continued acceptance of things like the FSF, P2P, etc.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
Nah, read the article... It's not an opposition to people who are computer-illiterate... It's an opposition to illogical and inconsistent policies... I actually agree with most of the article, especially the idea of "respect" being the primary currency among geek teams. Money is just money (Until you don't have it), but reputation is everything.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
Anti-stupidity only acknowledges the existence of stupidity. Everyone is capable of stupid from time to time including the smartest of the smart and the author of this message.
Todd Smith
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Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
Typical geek attitude: We know a thing or two about computers because we play WOW, and everybody else is stupid. :-D It's we nerds who know about computers because we write the software they run. And everybody else is a potential user, perhaps with an interesting problem to solve.
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Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
Wow, you completely missed the point.
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Todd Smith wrote:
Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
The trouble is that the worst of them can't do a damned thing with a computer. They can only write code.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
The trouble is that the worst of them can't do a damned thing with a computer. They can only write code.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Have 5 for that observation - I see one of these every morning when I look in the mirror. Let me code, do NOT ask me to set up your network, do NOT ask me to build you a box. There are a fair percentage here who like faffing around with the hardware, me I have absolutely no interest.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Typical geek attitude: we are smart because we know a thing or two about computers, and everybody else is stupid.
The trouble is that the worst of them can't do a damned thing with a computer. They can only write code.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Mark Wallace wrote:
They can only write code
... if given a detailed enough spec.
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Mark Wallace wrote:
They can only write code
... if given a detailed enough spec.
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Have 5 for that observation - I see one of these every morning when I look in the mirror. Let me code, do NOT ask me to set up your network, do NOT ask me to build you a box. There are a fair percentage here who like faffing around with the hardware, me I have absolutely no interest.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
A guy here has a T-shirt: "No, I will NOT fix your computer". He won't sell it to me for any price.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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... to misinterpret whilst at the same time believing that they understand the customer's requirements better than the guy who wrote the spec (despite never having met the customer).
djgroves wrote:
... to misinterpret whilst at the same time believing that they understand the customer's requirements better than the guy who wrote the spec (despite never having met the customer).
"Why on Earth would anyone want to do it that way? It's obvious that encoding the stream to XML and editing it there is much more efficient." That's a quote from an e-mail about managing documents that are produced by business analysts. The guy could not believe that writing in XML text files and outputting directly to PDF was not the best way to do it -- despite the tiny fact that the guys are Business Analysts, who have no clue about XML, and who really don't want to have to build a PDF 300 times just to check that table column widths are OK. Oh, and they all have MS Office installed, and are very familiar with it. It quite literally took me years (2.5 of them) to kill the ridiculous XML-documentation-production project, and dregs of it still come up to haunt me.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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A guy here has a T-shirt: "No, I will NOT fix your computer". He won't sell it to me for any price.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I have mine from ThinkGeek. Bought it, .. uhm maybe 10 years ago. ;P
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djgroves wrote:
... to misinterpret whilst at the same time believing that they understand the customer's requirements better than the guy who wrote the spec (despite never having met the customer).
"Why on Earth would anyone want to do it that way? It's obvious that encoding the stream to XML and editing it there is much more efficient." That's a quote from an e-mail about managing documents that are produced by business analysts. The guy could not believe that writing in XML text files and outputting directly to PDF was not the best way to do it -- despite the tiny fact that the guys are Business Analysts, who have no clue about XML, and who really don't want to have to build a PDF 300 times just to check that table column widths are OK. Oh, and they all have MS Office installed, and are very familiar with it. It quite literally took me years (2.5 of them) to kill the ridiculous XML-documentation-production project, and dregs of it still come up to haunt me.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
lol. Just for that, I would start writing all my documents in notepad. Get fancy and add some ascii art! ;P
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lol. Just for that, I would start writing all my documents in notepad. Get fancy and add some ascii art! ;P
One of my initial comments was that it would take too long to do all the process-flow diagrams, web & GUI screenshots, etc, in ascii art, but it went right over his head.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!