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Best Way to Manage Geeks?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Nov 06, 2005 05:33 PM
from the things-you-love-to-hate dept.
from the things-you-love-to-hate dept.
drummerboy195 writes to tell us that he recently read a 1999 interview with Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Novell, and wondered how applicable the information was today. How much have things changed since the dot com bust in terms of management? What other good and bad techniques have Slashdotters seen evolve from both supervisory and supervised positions?
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Best Way? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Best Way? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure which is more frightening... The thought of using fences and cattle prods against pasty geeks, or the fact you got moderated as Informative.
Is the tech sector really that cutthroat?
Same as everyone else (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
No I don't (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure as hell don't. I'm not a needy child who needs constant reassurance. Give me work that mentally stimulating and challenging and compensate me appropriately and I'll be happy.
-everphilski-
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Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not that simple (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I do both roles. Perhaps I'm fortunate, however I can see both sides.
I totally agree that there are some salespeople who believe that they are somehow superior to the technical people, who don't bother to learn or understand what they're selling, and the technical aspects of what they're selling. I have managed such people - but only briefly, normally. They haven't tended to last long with me.
Similarly, I have worked with Technical people whose contempt for sales was manifest, and whose elitist attitude made getting information about what we actually could and should sell was nigh-on impossible. Again, these people didn't last long - they had a technical manager who understood the requirements of working in partnership with Sales.
The fact is, in business we ALL need each other.
A good sales guy will work with technical to learn and fully understand his products and services. He will deliver what technical can support - and act as a buffer between the end-user and technical. If he is over-promising and causing problems for the tech - question it. Put your questions in writing, with valid explanations. Sales people should be ethical enough NOT to be causing you problems - if that is happening, then they're lying to their customers and that's something management should hear about and act on.
But Technical - you don't live in a vacuum, either. You need to be interacting with Sales. Most sales people aren't as moronic as you might think - and would welcome a deeper knowledge of what you can do. The more we know, the more information we can give our prospects - and the more we can sell.
Don't let Sales fool you - in the end, EVERYONE in the company is involved in one thing - bringing in money. Your sales rep has pressures you don't. You have pressures your sales guy doesn't. Communicate with him clearly, in language he can understand - and make sure he's doing the same to you.
If that isn't happening, make it happen.
We can work closely together - and believe me, when it's done right, everyone is happier and more productive. But little snide wars like this thread DO NOT HELP - on either side.
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Re:pfft (Score:4, Funny)
President of the USA?
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Re:Same as everyone else (Score:5, Interesting)
I rather hate literature that says that, because I took an interest in science in life, I'm some how childish, unsophisticated, and handicapped. I absolutely hate when people act as if I am somehow different and need to be thrown in a playpen.
I've been to companies that throw everyone with a "business" job in offices, the programmers get cubicles. Worse yet, we called one place the "playpen," because they had a big round office, with tables and workstations against the walls, and nerf junk to throw at each other. Of course, everyone who wasn't a programmer, no matter how low on the totem pole (including their network people), had offices.
I'd rather not be lorded over like that and have some feel-good garbage thrown in to excuse treating your workers like crap.
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Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I know many geeks who would rather play video games or work rather then go out on a date with someone. I have been guilty of it myself a couple of times. I even took a laptop along on a date once so i could periodicaly monitor a problematic server I was trouble shooting. I bet given a sixpack and a willing woman, they could figure out what to do. It just seems they aren't concerned with doing it like some other in the world are.
As for women? It doesn't really matter. Even if they are "but ugly", they can goto a bar and act drunk and end up leaving with someone willing to give it to them. It is more of a matter of them being able to get the people they want to get, more then being able to get anywere. I know a couple of girls who probably havn't paid for thier own drinks in over ten years. They go home with very few people but have the chance every time they go out. You would be surprised in how unattractive they look and the responce they get in a crowded club. Even lesbians pick up on them (wich one accepted but isn't commited to the idea).
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'His Geeks' (Score:5, Funny)
In general, Schmidt speaks of his geeks in complimentary terms, while acknowledging their vulnerabilities and shortcomings.
Anyway, I'd have said Doritos, Lightsaber fights and Anime...
beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:5, Insightful)
just a tip..most geeks are smart and see through this.
be honest.
if I fuck up, tell me. don't make it sound like you're passing the buck from upper management, or pretend you're not mad.
I can't take any of my managers even half seriously because everything that comes out of their mouth is "corporate happy HR department" speak.
I want explicit instructions for what you want me to do. If I didn't do something it's because you didn't ask me to.
that's my 2 bits anyway.
Re:beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what you really want is "Give me accurate guidance on the purpose of this project, what the business expects, and the benefits you hope to accrue. Then I can use my tools and skills to develop something thats truly valuable to the organization. If you (or the business) can't articulate what the business requires from my project, its unreasonable to expect me to deliver it"
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What's wrong with an 8 hour day? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you just said is that employees who take over those functions are more valuable than employees who don't.
Well DUH!!! But the REAL problem is that the MANAGER is not effective.
Don't blame the employee for putting in 8 productive hours a day
As can bad managers.
But don't confuse bad management with bad employees.
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Re:beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:5, Interesting)
If only it were that black and white. You must work in a small organization. I work for a fairly big one (IT alone is 400+ people, not including the outsourced hardware/network support), and have been in many situations where showing initiative would lead to a lot of trouble. You can't always just willy nilly start to experiment on your own, or you screw other teams up. To do it right you have to coordinate with everybody and by the time you do it's 3 weeks later.
That kind of environment sucks a lot of life out of you, especially if you're new to it and just learning. I'm not saying that it's a good way to be doing things, just that it is that way in a lot of places. Turnover is not unsurprisingly quite high.
You are right that anybody doing only what they're asked and no more isn't a valuable employee. All I'm saying is that in a large organization you aren't always able to take the initiative even when you spot a chance to.
I work with a damn talented bunch of people who will do whatever it takes to fix a problem, and who are always looking for (and finding) ways to improve our systems. But if we tried to actually do anything without first checking with our manager and making sure all the affected groups are informed, we'd cause chaos.
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Not what the GP was complaining about (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't always just willy nilly start to experiment on your own, or you screw other teams up.
I think what the GP post was talking about in re: people "who don't do anything that they aren't told to do" wasn't people like you who are guarded about overexperimenting. I know a number of IT and engineering folks who do no more than what was precisely described and don't try to proactively make anything better. That's what the problem is - marketing says "we need it to do X," and the engineer comes back at the (not unreasonable) deadline and says "it does X now, but it doesn't scale, doesn't work outside of the scope that was precisely in the spec and it doesn't do anything else that you might reasonably expect it to. If that's not OK, you should resubmit it through our project management process and be more specific."
For example, when I was a product manager at an ISP I gave engineering a spec on how our DSL offering was supposed to link in with our satellite networks. Engineering gave an estimate on infrastructure costs based on what turned out to be wildly underpowered routers, which then went into the business case. When we were implementing the product ad push came to shove they came back and said, "oh, you need something else that costs 3x the original estimate" and hosed our business and pricing model. When I asked them why they didn't think about what would realistically be required to provide the service - which I didn't know how to calculate but they could have - they just said, "well that's not our job to go beyond what was explicity written in your case."
Who knows? Maybe that's the way it has to work ... but marketing and sales people are expected to take initiative and go beyond the explicit instructions they receive. They are expected to anticipate not just what the customer specifically asked for, but what they actually want as well. Of course sometimes this is a recipe for disaster, but the point is that they are expected to be holistic in our approach and rightly or wrongly (maybe wrongly), they expect others to do the same. Yes, yes, of course this principle can be abused. I'm not talking about being a mind reader. I am, though, talking about the difference between doing only what is explicity spelled out versus applying common sense and initiative to your job. And that, I think, is what the GP post was saying was the characteristic of someone they didn't want working in their organization.
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Re:beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:4, Insightful)
Work is a way for me to pay for the other things in life that I enjoy. I come in, punch the clock, and do the job. Then I go home and don't do work.
The problem is, I'm competing against people who have nothing better to do than work, who will work for 80 hours a week because they have no interest in becoming a well-rounded person, just a cog in a machine.
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Re:beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes they do it because they want to make sure thier work goes smoothly in that it is less effort for them to work double shifts then to mop up after some other sap screwed somethign up. I know i have a few co workers who at one time worked on a server that they thought was messing up. They ended up (with the help or vendor support) causing the entire server to be reloaded to save time on thier mistakes. The problem turned out to be a bad network wire and nothign to do with the server itself wich was dicovered after we reinstalled and restored the backups. It was obvious to me it was a network issue when the problem first showed itself but another qualified tech and the vendor had everythign screwed up to the point that aplications wouldn't run anymore. I have another more recent situation were some user deleted a file. We have a paralell server who only purpose is to mirror files that were backed up the night before so if somethign liek this happened it is a matter of copy paste and it's recovered. My co worker decided to restore the file from tape backup, couldn't access the restore directory so he took ownership of it and then the user couldn't save anyhting he was working on. It broke functionality to two key programs that everyone in the office use causing time tracking for several clients to be lost as well as any work they were currentyl doing become lost. (windows inherit file permisions- he toom ownership of the entire root share because of inherited file permisions.). If I was there is would have been as simple as browsing the network, finding the server named "lost", browsing to the user's directory, seaching for the file name and copy paste.
I work 60 hours a week because i have to either cleen up these other messes or fix them in the first place. In the first scenario i described, it was more or less the vendors support staff that screwed it up, in the second it was the user not knowing he had to use the backup programs restore feature that was password protected to keep people who don't know how to use it away. Sadly these other co workers are related to the owners and probably will not be fired or recieve additional training. It is hard to tell someone thier 6 hours times 78 employies of unproductive worktime was caused by thier decision to give jimbob a task he doesn't understand.
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Re:beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:4, Insightful)
We have names for employees like you - hourly wage earners. Someone who comes in at 7:30, punches the clock, does exactly as they're told, and goes home after they have 8 hours in, and is never expected to give anything more.
Honestly, there's very little use for those employees in an IT environment. I would make sure an employee with such an attitude was at the bottom of the pay scale, and would be constantly turned down for promotion, because it's obvious they have no motivation to better themselves.
Having been employee, manager, and business owner at various times in my career, I use the model that 40/week for a paycheck is the base deal. If one side wants something more, then they have to offer more in exchange.
For example, if I'm in a job that offers me nothing more than a paycheck, I would regard my boss asking me to work extra hours for any other reason than me screwing up as *exactly* equivalent to me saying to him "mind if I go take a few hundred from the petty cash tin?" Or: "You want me to work weekends? Then I get to telecommute when I don't need to be in for meetings."
When I was a manager I had the rule that "slack is a medium of exchange". Quiet times, everyone got off at lunchtime on Friday and went down the pub. Crunch times, we pulled crunch hours - and people were happy with that, because they accepted it as part of the trade.
When one side - employer or employee - acts as if they have a right to more than the base deal without offering anything in exchange, the other side will get very unhappy very fast. Even if circumstances force them to give what they're being asked for, the party getting screwed over will resent it happening, and that makes life worse for everyone concerned.
As far as the general question of how to manage geeks is concerned, my #1 rule was: "Happy people work harder."
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Re:beware of the "understanding friend" method. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have names for managers like you. Assholes. People that expect workers to do unpaid overtime, but cut out early themselves to get in a couple early holes at golf.
I'm young, have no kids, and really don't do much in my spare time a lot of the time. I have time to work some extra hours. I've got the energy to learn more on my own. My co-workers... a lot of them have kids, spouses. They get home from work to a sink with dishes and kids that want dinner. Between the two of us, which do you think needs a promotion more?
I won't complain when you hand me a wage. But when Bob with 3 kids and an ex-wife is barely scraping by because you've passed him up for a wage increase due to the fact that he isn't doing extra, I still think you're a jerk. Being a manager isn't about micromanaging. It's about working for an understanding the people who you are supposed to manage. My best managers have been the ones that were in-touch with their employees.
So when you see Bob doing his job with a morose look on his face, clocking out at-the-minute and heading home... you as a crap manager might assume it's because he lacks competance. A good manager might have listened around or talked to Bob and learned that his mother just died, or something similar.
I have no respect for people who whine, dick around, and waste resources when they could be working. I also have no respect for managers who have no skill at understanding their workers, and expect them to work themselves to the bone. There's nothing wrong with doing your job as your told. It's a big difference between requiring directions every 5 seconds, but it's a sad day when somebody gets screwed over just for coming in and doing the work they were hired to do.
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Simple (Score:3, Interesting)
A public, prioritized task list for the project and (if needed) each person... so there are no secrets and no rabbit trails
Have a manager/tech lead who codes at least half time so they understand what's going on with the project and the team
I've been a programmer and a manager (Score:3, Insightful)
I tend to think that meetings are boring and unproductive. Maybe I've been to the wrong meetings.
I like "management by walking around" and "micro meetings". The big meetings still have a function but I try to only do them when management by walking around and micro meetings aren't enough.
Management by walking around is when the manager or project manager walks around and informally talks to people. If there is a problem
how to manage Greeks? (Score:5, Funny)
(wait a minute...)
WWCND? (what would Cowboy Neal do)? (Score:5, Funny)
Bad things I see where I work (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Too many meetings. Most employees don't like meetings, at least most employees that are productive. While some meetings are necessary, it's probably way less than you think. If your entire group works in the same cube farm, a staff meeting each week (or worse, twice a week) is too much. If you sit back and evaluate it, you'll notice that very little worthwhile gets talked about because people will find eachother and talk about what they need regardless of a meeting. Also geeks are usually good with e-mail, and so can keep eachother up to date even if they don't meet face to face. Excess meetings not only drain productivity by taking up time, they also drain the will of employees to work.
2) Trying to be a friend, or head tech, rather than manager. On campus we love to make managers by promoting the most senior tech person. This rarely goes well. A manager needs to manage. That means your job is to deal with other groups, clients, bosses, etc and find out what they need and keep them happy, and deal with your group and make them do their work and keep them happy. Basically, you play politics. You need to be the buffer so that your group gets to do their work, but everyone else is happy about the feedback they get. If you are sitting around working on tech stuff, you aren't doing your job probably. Also you need to be willing to drop the hammer on bad employees. That doesn't mean being a jerk, but it means if someone legitmately isn't doing their part to work with them until they do, or if necessary replace them with someone who will.
Those are the biggest problems I see. Managers who try to get their staff involved in all the politics. So then you have a bunch of pissed off tech people sitting through lots of meetings that they don't need to be at, being involved in silly games they shouldn't be involved in. Also bad employees are just allowed to stay around working ineffectually, because the managers don't want to be mean and come down on them.
Your staff needs to be the ones fixing the servers, you need to be the one meeting the the finance department to explain why the money needs to be spent fixing the servers, and the boss to explain why the servers are down in the first place.
next meaning for the slashdot effect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Truely flexible schedule (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case I did this for 2 jobs. I didn't have to for the first one because my boss was uber-cool. But now I realize that if you want to look like a professional you've got to fit into the corporate mold. So I go to bed around midnight whether my brain is ready to or not. My trick? Jim Beam Black!!
Oh also, if your nerdy employee pulls a few 12 hour days because he's in the groove, don't just say, "Hey try not to work too late tonight, k?" Try something he will really appreciate like, "Hey, you can come in at noon tomorrow if you want to, alright?" You will be loved.
SOOOO dated (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is a golden era for geeks"
He wasn't kidding. It sure went downhill fast after 1999. His other opening lines, "we have permanently entered a new economy", and "Novell has again come to be seen as a worthy competitor to Microsoft", are not exactly prophetic (quick check on Yahoo stocks shows Novell's price has ended up pretty much where it was five years ago).
Other disagreements: "most of them would probably turn out to be terrible managers". I strongly disagree. Of the 5 managers I interact with weekly, the 3 who have running code in our systems (i.e., they're promoted developers) dress the worst and manage the best: they tell me my deadlines and my priorities, they ask me what support I need to write code, and they leave me the fuck alone. The 2 who don't have code running on our servers, who were first hired as managers, like to reorganize our hierarchy, introduce burdensome reporting requirements so the execs have more Social Science Numbers to look at, and want to transform our nice offices with *real* *doors* into a miserable cubefarm. I say, promote geeks! Even if they don't want it! I totally agree when he says "you can tell them what to do, but you can't tell them how to do it" (this is far from an original thought of his), but unless your managers are geeks, this approach will leave them feeling powerless and threatened. Managers meddle, it's what they're trained for.
If you want an insightful, thorough, and applicable discussion of all these ideas, as well as many more, some of them *original*, read the Scrum Handbook.
First thing's first (Score:3, Funny)
Geek gods (Score:5, Insightful)
Geek gods, on the other hand, can be hard to manage. They tend to treat everyone else with contempt. Keeping them on track is quite difficult because they won't take direction, even when they're totally wrong. They won't believe you because you're dumber than them. They're a lot like star atheletes. For them, you need good coaching skills. Read a few biographies of great coaches. You'll get the idea.
Not Just Clicky (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Just Clicky (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, there will probably always be tasks you can't interest a geek in that needs a geek to do. But management is an inexact science. The story submitter asked for "best way", not "perfect way" to manage geeks. If you're really a geek, you'll appreciate the difference.
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Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Allow them to mod their PC cases with leds and overclocked - spreadsheet busting - cpus.
3. Mandatory slashdot breaks.
4. And, of course, hammocks!
First, ignore all advice... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, ignore all advice from computer science undergrads with no experience who make an inspid and glib list of weakly argued points and pretend to sound like they know what they are talking about. For whatever reason, that is very common on slashdot.
Then realize that the question "How do you manage geeks?" presupposes a lot of bullshit that does not apply in real life. If you are a manager and you have a question like that floating around in your head, you probably should not be managing.
How to manage your CEO (Score:5, Funny)
1. Learn his language. If you can explain your goals in words he is familiar with he will self organise himself to better deliver the support you need. To achieve this, engage him in dialog and take notes on the words he uses. Don't "leverage joint synergies" if he "maximizes differentials" for example. "Maximize those differerntials" right along with him!
2. The best judges of CEO's are secretaries. Talk to his secretary, does he prioritize "eating lunch undisturbed" over say, "saving drowing New Orlean's people"? If he does, drown a few New Orleans people aswell, to break the ice.
3. Look for the natural leader of your CEO. Does he always downsize right after IBM downsizes? Does he diversify when Kodak diversifies? Then IBM is his leader or Kodak is his leader. It's important to determine leadership so you can be forwarned about upcoming wild management swings.
4. Be prepared when the CEO hits the fan. He won't be there forever, keep links with Bob the CFO and Carly the insane Amazon in marketing, you never know when they will become the CEO.
5. Too much management spoils the broth. CEO's don't talk to the customer, they don't talk to the technical people or even read the spec, or have any idea what the product is. So don't let them get too involved with the decisions. Think of them as the team mascot.
Understand the geek mind and you can manage 'em! (Score:5, Insightful)
* nerds are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues
* nerds love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
* nerds crave actionable items and roll their eyes at "mission statements" and lofty management patois
* nerds like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
* nerds like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
* nerds are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they're currently using)
* nerds like fixing things on their own terms
* nerds have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff
Statues! (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and then the oral sex.
IT Managment as Beekeeping (Score:5, Informative)
Geek management tips from the trenches (Score:5, Informative)
I manage a small but important team. The guys who report to me are, by the definition of their jobs, highly technical. Whenever something complicated needs to be researched and/or implemented, my guys get to do it, especially if it has to do with the adoption of new technologies.
We had our quarterly review a few weeks ago (it goes both ways; they evaluate me, I evaluate them) and the results were excellent. Here are the overall management techniques I employed with them:
1. Hold everyone in the team, including myself, to the highest
standard.
2. Define what 'highest standard' means as a part of the requirements
specification.
3. Once a decision has been made, by the team, business owners, etc.
there is no arguing. Part of my job is to keep the business guys
from becoming a distraction. The other part is to ensure that
the engineers deliver (1) and (2).
4. Go through a quarterly review with them; divide a sheet of paper
in three columns labeled as follows:
a) Desired outcomes (projects, training, coaching of others, etc.)
b) Achievements
c) Areas that need improvement
At the beginning of the quarter first quarter ever that you
implement this, fill-in only items in the first column. At the
end of the quarter, fill in the other two columns. A person is
doing great if they had, say, four desired outcomes and wind up
with four or more achievements. Last, review things that need
improvement (mine is "needs to attend relevant meetings" for this
quarter). Discuss those AND FOCUS ON BEHAVIOUR, not on
personality. Explain why the improvement is needed. After you
negotiate what this means, add it both as a thing to improve and
as a desired outcome for the next quarter. Repeat every quarter.
5. Respect your engineers' decisions. Combined, they know more than
you do, regardless of how technically capable you are. If that's
not the case, you shouldn't be a manager and you're probably not
meeting 1-3.
6. Leave your engineers alone to do what they do best. Don't invite
them to too many meetings or have them do tasks unrelated to their
charter. Engineers hate distractions, and distractions prevent
the team from achieving 1.
7. If the business folks start coming up with eleventh hour changes,
ensure that the engineers are part of the discussion and reason
WITH BOTH SIDES to figure out which changes make sense and why, which
don't, and how to come up with a solution that will meet everyone's
goals. NEVER just inform the engineers that a decision that affects
what they've been working on for three months has been made.
8. As a part of 4, create an environment where you are constantly training
your team, exposing them to new technologies, etc. Reward the intro-
duction of new techniques, procedures, etc. In 4, suggest that they
read at least a new book ON SOMETHING NEW NOT USED AT WORK every quarter.
If you work in a Java shop, they should be reading about Ruby or
You never know when a better mousetrap is available if you aren't informed.
9. Reward excellence whenever you see it, from solving the thorniest algorith-
mic q
Re:Geek management tips from the trenches (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Best way to manage geeks is pretty much as follows (Score:5, Insightful)
Be honest. Most geeks would perfer if you told them what was going on. Don't lie to them unless you 100% have to.
Listen to them. If they say "we need a week" then go "including delays and testing?". If they say yes then give them 8 days. If they say no then add an extra couple of days (for a short project) or weeks/months for a long project. If the shits going to hit the fan because of a too short deadline you get it in the neck as well as them.
Remember they're people. If you're getting a dirnk offer to get them one, same goes for if you're making a run some where. Act like you're one of them because that way you're a friend and not "the boss". Make sure they know when you say something it really must be done (when to put your foot down, don't do it always).
And last but not least. Get a decent tasting coffee and some biscuits. A good drink gets you going in the morning, biscuits go nice with it and if you're hungry a couple will hold you till lunch. A hungry worker is one thinking of lunch, so his mind is else where.
What a change in 6 years (Score:5, Interesting)
> we have permanently entered a new economy
> The geeks control the limits of your business
> rich salaries and hefty stock options that they now command.
> give them promotions without turning them into managers
2005:
Geeks are the lowest paid again. Managers are the highest paid again. There are things managers can do today, experiences they can have, which geeks will never have. The dual track approach doesn't motivate anymore and Indian startups like Google Bangalore actually let their geeks become managers.
Only in extremely rare upturns have geeks ever commanded the lifestyle that managers have. For most of history, if you want to live in a house, if you want to go to concerts, if you want to get married, you have to be a manager.
My list (Score:5, Interesting)
2) Meeting issues. There are 3 kinds of meetings, in my mind: Meetings that are productive and important for me, meetings that are productive and important to other people, and meetings where upper management wants to whack off in public. The first kind of meeting I'll go to gladly. The second kind of meeting I'd like to always be optional. The third kind - you know, where upper management gets up and talks about shit like the direction the company is heading - well, they can email me a ppt presentation... I promise, I'll read it... Yeah... If I want to know about some big initiative the company is having, I'll print out a letter from the CEO and read it while I'm on the crapper, ok? I don't need to have some special ed like encounter group where we all blow smoke up each other's asses.
3) Respect. I don't mean people praising what I do or telling me I'm great. I mean respect like not treating me like some kind of half-functional asocial asshole because I happen to have technology skills. I really hate being treated like some kind of pet nerdling, to be brought out and questioned by the marketing people when they need the opinion of someone who, like, knows how to do math.
4) Respect. Really! Again, this is important. Just because *some* geeks are proud of their Autistic-like behavior doesn't mean we all are. Don't speak to me like I'm a child, and I'll be happy.
5) Privacy. Or, rather, a lack of frequent interruptions. There's a well known study that shows that most people can remember +/- 7 things simultaneously. Programmers frequently come in WAY on the right hand side of that particular bell curve because, one of the things we have to do is keep stuff in ready memory - highly specific, exact stuff. It isn't like we're writing a letter and we just need to remember the gist of something for later - we need to remember every damn bit of the thing we're working on (at least, I do) in order to accomplish stuff.
6) Little things. The best motivator I ever got came at the end of a 3 week crunch. I was taken aside by my manager, given an attagirl, told not to bother coming in on Friday because I would be expected to be enjoying the free spa day the company had signed me up for. Cost to them? 1 day's pay for me + $300 or so, but they had a ferociously motivated person coming back to work on Monday.
7) Managers who can manage. A boss's job is broken into two parts: supervising me and protecting me. Supervising means getting work to me and letting me know what's expected on it. I take a lot of initiative, but when I am handed a task, I would like to know what I'm supposed to do, when I'm supposed to have it done by, and (if applicable) what methods I'm required to use to do it (if I don't have a choice). Protecting me means keeping assholes like Phil in business development from swinging by and talking my ear off for a half hour in the afternoon. It means not scheduling me for meetings that are a complete and absolute waste of my time. Basically, doing all those helpful things that allow me to do what I can do.
8) Be realistic. Let's face it - at *least* 20% of my time is spent on shit like reading
Hard boundaries and no second guessing (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Hard boundaries. Some of us geeks every now and then think we can get away with murder. Which is true but no need to rub it on non-geeks' faces.
2. Shit umbrella. Your job as a boss is to isolate your employees from the bullshit so they can work. If you protect your employees from the bullshit, they will work their asses off for you.
3. No second guessing. If you hire a guy because he is an expert on ABC, and he gives you his best educated guess on an issue about ABC, give him the benefit of the doubt. Don't go asking a wannabe geek that read ABC for Dummies for his opinion. And please, don't go back to the expert to tell him "so and so says you are wrong." It is stupid.
4. Be flexible. Let your geek pick his workstation OS, most of the cases he'll ask for Linux so it won't cost you a penny and he will feel happier about it. Let each employee expense out no less than one O'Reilly title per quarter, even better if you can get away with doing it once per month.
5. Pick their brains. Geeks don't mind if you ask them what-ifs. If it is obvious that the geek has more in his mind, ask him to write a white paper and give him credit for it on his next review.
6. Feed them. If your geeks are stuck at the office past 6 PM, and you know for sure it is not their fault, call in for some pizzas or chinese. A well-fed geek is a happy geek. If possible, every two months or so send your geeks out for a long "work" lunch and let them argue technical issues without being bothered by people outside of their team. If marketing and sales can meet outside on the company's tab, so can your geeks.
7. Paid time off is sacred. If you give the guy the day off, make sure everyone knows he is not to be disturbed even if the company servers catch on fire. Geeks usually take less PTO than regular employees, so you need to make sure that whatever little time they take will be peaceful for them.
8. Free caffeine. Our 15-employee company has about 9 coffee drinkers. We ran our own coffee club for about a year ($5/month per person) and we never ran out of supplies. After the first year the boss took over paying for our supplies. It is nice to have good coffee in the office and it saves you the hassle of having to run downstairs and wait in line for overpriced coffee.
9. Allow some flex time, especially if your geeks monitor servers from home. When people start bitching about Dilbert working 7AM->3:15PM, tell them that Dilbert goes home, takes a nap and works until close to midnight. Oh, and he is salaried too.
10. Allow some latitude with the work attire. If your geek has zero external customer contact in person, then you should let them wear jeans if they like to. My only rule for jeans was that they had to be clean and without tears or patches. As for t-shirts, some people like them, I don't. I think jeans and golf shirts are confortable enough for a relaxed environment.
From someone who manages two geeks... (Score:4, Interesting)
When they need "Elevated Authority" they come to me, but I've found that telling them the problem, and letting -their own- judgement dictate the methods of solving the problem, often A: makes them -HAPPY- to work for me. and B: Solves the problem. Is INFINTELY better than micromanaging them.
"Here is $Problem, take care of it." and let them do -whatever they need- to, has worked far better for us than any other management(of interns) methods yet.
This way we are letting them decide what is the best way to reach the goal. and -TRUSTING- them to reach that goal. (which is often more valuable than the goal itself) and in the end, if they fail, I can show them why.
I have two "geeks" in my charge, that would kill themselves if I asked them to. They'd take my hardest tasks -any- day, over the HRs mindless shuffling of paperwork, because I let -their own- judgement choose how to solve the problem.
You want to manage geeks? Tell them what needs to be accomplished, and give them free reign to do whatever their training and personal skills tells them is necessary to solve the problem. I've never -ever- had one come to me with a failure.
But! There is a Caveat. You have to be willing to let your "geek" run free. Not only that. You will have to let your "geek" know (consiously or unconsiously) that you will take the hit, for his failures. Because at the end of the day... his glory is yours.. his failure is yours. If you let him -Run- with whatever he wants.. Let him -know- that you will absorb his fuck ups. You -will- get magic. BUT! You have to let your "Geek" run.
Only then, will your "Geek" truely shine.
-rdewalt
First task in managing geeks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, though. You'll get a million and one answers to the question of how to best manage geeks and most of them won't really matter, because they work well for some people and organizations, and don't work well for others. The trick to managing geeks or anyone else well is to become not just a manager of time and resources, but a leader. There are plenty of ways to go about learning leadership, but the important thing is that leaders recognize that humans are the most valuable asset in any organization. All the MS Project charts and spiffy time-management tools and HR policies in the world don't matter if you don't lead your people.
That doesn't mean you have to become Patton. Some of the best leaders I've encountered were quiet, calm, and almost always in the background. I've also come across great leaders who were always talking, always on the go, and always visible. Leaders can't all be cut from the same mold, and they can be hard to find. Taking raw leadership capability and nurturing it is difficult, which is why most companies shy away from it and focus on management (a concept that was spawned in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when everyone worked on factory floors) instead. The result: Most companies have managers who are ill-prepared to lead.
Re:Disconnect them (Score:3, Insightful)
The solution to the problem you describe is simple: you need to be fired. If you are playing games all the time and not getting your work done, the then you need to cure the problem (you have no self control), not he symptom (you play games).
If a good employee wants to play CS during his lunch hour, I say why not. If he