I feel like this is a much more subtle way of reframing what OP said.
> Arguably, geeks are better at business (i.e. information handling and problem solving) than non-geeks.
Do you believe there's something that geeks aren't better at than non-geeks (when it comes to being an employee)? Because OP's point, as I read it, was that geeks are superior and should be running everything and was incredibly dismissive of non-geeks being useful.
I agree that respect is earned, not given. But if you just immediately dismiss what someone has to say because they aren't part of your geek tribe, you are beginning the relationship from a hostile standpoint. Why would non-geeks look at this as anything other than geeks being antagonistic?
> Anyhow, the article starts out saying management often views geeks as being business challenged, which such a viewpoint is questionable given what IT is.
I read the article differently. It was much less about geeks being business challenged and much more about geeks being elitist, such as OP's bellicose comment.
If neither side is willing to work with the other side, the fault almost certainly lies with everyone.
>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.
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..
"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.
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.
>Do you believe there's something that geeks aren't better at than non-geeks (when it comes to being an employee)?
I'll actually make a claim here: Over time, no.
We've got to get away from this myth that learning a programming language makes you forever forget how to shower, makes you unpleasant, ignorant of the customer, etc.
Now, that may actually happen to devs, but this is a) a not-unforeseeable consequence, and b) avoidable/fixable over time.
What is not avoidable is that people who don't know how to program, and how software works, still don't know how to program, and end up making decisions while blind.
This is an invisible problem, that customers, sales managers, and shareholders never see directly, but it manifests in unrealistic expectations being set, crunch time, and missed deadlines. Or sometimes they do see it---my brother is sole data scientist at a small company, and is regularly astonished at how little reps of the latest ML-in-a-box seem to know about what they're trying to sell him.
There are unreasonable programmers, I don't mean to say there aren't. However, that can be fixed without making them forget how to program. Meanwhile, the process for helping a non-technical employee understand the rest of the business...probably involves having them be a line engineer for a few weeks, i. e. the most straightforward way to solve the problems associated with non-technical stakeholders is to make them technical.
> We've got to get away from this myth that learning a programming language makes you forever forget how to shower, makes you unpleasant, ignorant of the customer, etc.
This wasn't even implied, and seems like a projection of your internal biases.
My point was geeks are good at some things, and bad at others. Nobody is better at everything, and that is a profoundly arrogant stance to take.
> What is not avoidable is that people who don't know how to program, and how software works, still don't know how to program, and end up making decisions while blind.
Sure, and most geeks have never made a sale in their life. Most geeks have never raised VC capital before. Most geeks have never had to make a presentation to shareholders before.
Geeks have their strengths and weaknesses just like everybody else. However this "us vs them" mentality is just a setup for disaster. Sure, it would be better if more people had the knowledge to code like geeks as that lends them more perspective. Likewise, it would be better if more geeks had the knowledge to do sales, create partnerships, and everything else useful for running a business as it would lend them more perspective. But people can only do so many things with the hours in a day, which is why people specialize and collaborate.
The obvious superficial example to bolster my argument is to look at the clusterfuck of product launches at Google, a fundamentally engineering-first company. They're the laughing stock even amongst geeks here on HN.
I think the "geek vs non-geek" thing is the root here.
What makes a geek? Is it knowing how to program? If you take your average sales guy and teach them js, do they suddenly become a "geek"?
If by "geek" we mean "bad at sales," then yeah, no shit they have weaknesses, it's tautological. If we mean "is technically competent," would making a non-competent person competent suddenly make them a "geek" and now subject to a bunch of new weaknesses?
Actually, as measured, I think it would, just like someone could no longer eat mystery meat with the same gusto if they knew what went into it.
> Arguably, geeks are better at business (i.e. information handling and problem solving) than non-geeks.
Do you believe there's something that geeks aren't better at than non-geeks (when it comes to being an employee)? Because OP's point, as I read it, was that geeks are superior and should be running everything and was incredibly dismissive of non-geeks being useful.
I agree that respect is earned, not given. But if you just immediately dismiss what someone has to say because they aren't part of your geek tribe, you are beginning the relationship from a hostile standpoint. Why would non-geeks look at this as anything other than geeks being antagonistic?
> Anyhow, the article starts out saying management often views geeks as being business challenged, which such a viewpoint is questionable given what IT is.
I read the article differently. It was much less about geeks being business challenged and much more about geeks being elitist, such as OP's bellicose comment.
If neither side is willing to work with the other side, the fault almost certainly lies with everyone.