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Comment by jonnathanson | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's time people stopped thinking of "geeks" as a homogenous, broadly categorizable group of people. IMO, that worldview is as much a part of the problem as anything else.

I wouldn't assume a random set of 10 doctors are all going to have the same personalities, the same motivators, and the same quirks. I wouldn't assume 10 randomly grouped MBAs are identical, either. Perhaps non-technical managers would do well to stop thinking of all technical employees as interchangeable. That's the first step toward being a better manager -- be it of engineers, of marketers, of financial analysts, or of sales staff.

A lot of the principles on this list are great, but honestly, the list could just as easily be rebadged as "How to Manage People." And perhaps that's what makes it a good list.

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Labeling and classifying folks with common educational backgrounds and career "orientation" is a common error when managing people. Technically oriented people can be marginal programmers but excellent team/project leaders or managers. Marginalizing staff - thinking they can't manage people - because they have a technology affinity, however, is a common bias. Good managers don't buy into stereotypes.

There's also the fact that tech geeks compulsively analyze systems.

If your insufficient, stagnant incentive/communication/empowerment systems are all out of whack it's going to be extremely demoralizing to the people who see them for what they are.

I think some level of this is ok, just as long as one is clear about the difference between a generalization and a stereotype. IE, "Geeks tend to want X" isn't necessarily bad, but "Geeks always want X" is probably bad.

I mean, it's somewhat naive to assume that there are absolutely no common threads between people of the same profession. The problem begins when you start treating these ideas as rigid rules: "Geeks know nothing about the business side of things. They need us managers to tell them how to build a good product."

"it's somewhat naive to assume that there are absolutely no common threads between people of the same profession"

Absolutely. There are certainly some commonalities among groups of people -- especially among groups of people who self-select into the same profession or skill set. And, as a geek, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of the stereotypes about people like me are at least grounded in some observable shade of reality.

But underneath my geek layer, I've also got a personality layer. And a motivations layer. And a background layer. Etc. I may share the same external, readily observable, surface-level traits as many of my peers. But that doesn't mean my peers and I are the same people.

Are there general principles that apply to managing geeks? Yes. Are there things that geeks, as a set, will pick up on or respond to more readily than other sets of people? Yes. But a good manager shouldn't stop there.

employees as interchangeable

That's baked into alot of management thinking/training, e.g. referring to people as "X resources" where X is some particular language or technology. "We need 5 database resources for this project!" etc etc.

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