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>I read the article differently. It was much less about geeks being business challenged and much more about geeks being elitist I think the article could have

by Rury 7y ago

>I read the article differently. It was much less about geeks being business challenged and much more about geeks being elitist I think the article could have been about anyone being elitist, it just so happens to be about IT teams. Just remove geeks and non-geeks out for a moment. Think the nature of hierarchy in general. A stable hierarchy has the best people as its leaders, which is when society benefits the most and teams work together best. If however, the leaders are charlatans, then more competent underlings will stop respecting or listening to the leaders, and/or may challenge the leaders. Typically life is worse off (for society as a whole) under bad leaders than good leaders. This is why bottom up respect speaks volume to the success of a team. The article speaks a bit on this in the section about respect, and suggests favoring competency as a solution. Anyhow, I don't think OP's point necessarily is at odds with this as the 2nd poster pointed out. OP argues that IT folk act elitist, because perhaps they actually are but find themselves following “random authority figure of the week”, (rather than the best authority). Whether or not that’s true is subject to debate. I’m sure it is in some cases and others not, but I largely agree with the part of his argument about business being largely synonymous with IT. >Do you believe there's something that geeks aren't better at than non-geeks Sure, everyone is flawed. No one is fully aware of everything. As so, some may need help with understanding the scope of things, other people’s viewpoints, and problems. Some may have trouble communicating novel ideas, or solutions, and need help in deploying them. Think people skills. I think this is why technical people say it’s helpful to have a manager who acts as a sounding board.

perl4ever 7y ago
"I think this is why technical people say it’s helpful to have a manager who acts as a sounding board." You are saying the usefulness of a manager is the same as, say, a stuffed octopus. I think this is illustrative of a cultural gap. Someone else might claim that all of the interesting and challenging problems in business are management problems that technical people as such don't even acknowledge.
- loopz 7y ago
  Instead of using straw-men, assumptions about where/who argument is from or downmodding, other strategies would be more constructive.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    What? I didn't say anything about any of the above. "Someone might claim" is a euphemism for me, not a straw man. A stuffed octopus is indeed something people (techies) use as a sounding board - and it works. You can explain your problems to anyone or anything and get surprisingly good results. I have used my manager this way. However, that's not the limit of what a manager can do.
loopz 7y ago
I think somehow against all odds you were the only one to get the arguments, which is not for or against, any sides that shouldn't be. I'm more interested in the argument itself, than not stepping on toes. As you see yourself, the slightest negative can be slightly turned into boogeymen or elite anyway. So for free-thinking, bottom-up authority should be very interesting for modern forms of software development. People removed from dev and testing seem to forget or not know of the subtle intricacies involved, thus the best leaders are themselves involved in some of the gritty work, even just for temporary relief. What we see today is adding more and more layers of people who just are ignorant, playing political games and not contributing to end results. Then they wonder why the peons can't "scale" to their "Agile processes"! So for those interested in the arguments themselves, I'll leave it open (you can of course find contradictory examples as well). It's a bit funny though frustrating at times, because when you've been on "all" sides, you cease to see the little fences people put around themselves and their pet pens..

by Rury 7y ago

perl4ever 7y ago

"I think this is why technical people say it’s helpful to have a manager who acts as a sounding board." You are saying the usefulness of a manager is the same as, say, a stuffed octopus. I think this is illustrative of a cultural gap. Someone else might claim that all of the interesting and challenging problems in business are management problems that technical people as such don't even acknowledge.

loopz 7y ago
Instead of using straw-men, assumptions about where/who argument is from or downmodding, other strategies would be more constructive.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  What? I didn't say anything about any of the above. "Someone might claim" is a euphemism for me, not a straw man. A stuffed octopus is indeed something people (techies) use as a sounding board - and it works. You can explain your problems to anyone or anything and get surprisingly good results. I have used my manager this way. However, that's not the limit of what a manager can do.

loopz 7y ago

I think somehow against all odds you were the only one to get the arguments, which is not for or against, any sides that shouldn't be. I'm more interested in the argument itself, than not stepping on toes. As you see yourself, the slightest negative can be slightly turned into boogeymen or elite anyway. So for free-thinking, bottom-up authority should be very interesting for modern forms of software development. People removed from dev and testing seem to forget or not know of the subtle intricacies involved, thus the best leaders are themselves involved in some of the gritty work, even just for temporary relief. What we see today is adding more and more layers of people who just are ignorant, playing political games and not contributing to end results. Then they wonder why the peons can't "scale" to their "Agile processes"! So for those interested in the arguments themselves, I'll leave it open (you can of course find contradictory examples as well). It's a bit funny though frustrating at times, because when you've been on "all" sides, you cease to see the little fences people put around themselves and their pet pens..