In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Adams) wrote:
> What I'm saying here is that the stereotypes that are fomented by
> articles like the one above are not good for advocacy to some target
> audiences. I don't want people to look at me and say, "Hmm--he's a geek,
> can't communicate, fights with management all the time. Hey! Sounds like
> a perfect tech hire! Let's pay him a million bucks a week to stay the
> hell away from us."
Wow, you apparently didn't understand the article at all. It is not
that "geeks" cannot communicate, it is that they communicate
differently. They don't think in terms of profit and loss. They think
in terms of getting a job done, or maintaining a system. If you try to
tell them about your big business plan, chances are they will just zone
out until you get to the part where they need to care: the part about
how it will affect their work.
They think differently. They do not care about getting a promotion or
power or awards or whatever else (OK, maybe a little bit of power,
especially if they are sysadmin geeks :). They care about occasional
recognition, good pay, interesting work, and a relaxed working
environment. They are generally uninterested in the company's business
matters.
Of course, these are stereotypes, and don't apply to everyone, but
there's nothing negative about them. In fact, I see it as positive and
conducive to effectiveness. Geeks are the way they are because they
find that is how they can best get their work done. If I sit there
worrying about how my company can make more money, I will have less time
to fix bugs and add new features.
Also, note that odds are even that if someone is fighting with
management all the time, it is because management is at fault. Fighting
often comes because management is ineffective at leading or
communicating, or both. Of course, sometimes it is because the geek in
question is a jerk. Geeks are generally more outspoken or less tolerant
of bad management; that doesn't mean management is not to blame when the
geek speaks up.
> >The perception is that it is not used very much, or isn't very
> >imporant. I don't care about perception. I care about getting my job
> >done, and as long as I can demonstrate to my (?:potential)? employer
> >that I will get my job done, then I am set.
> >
> I just find this so interesting, since I sit near the guys who maintain
> our little part of the intranet, and overhear items in their
> conversation like, "What's wrong with it? Was it written in Perl?" The
> perception there is that Perl is a bad tool, and that IIS+VB is the only
> sensible solution. They, too, have demonstrated they can get the job done.
I don't see a point there. Are you trying to tell me that some people
are ignorantly bigoted against Perl? Find me a language that isn't true
of; and the more popular the language, the more bigots against it you
will find. Or are you trying to say that people get the job done with
other languages? Well, that's self-evident. I am unclear as to why any
of that matters.
--
Chris Nandor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/
