Geek In Disguise

Great suggestions! As a vendor working for MSFT I sincerely hope that all who employ geeks read this.

Nice additions Steve, though the pizza and Coke only slowed down for me once I got married.  ;)

PingBack from http://www.robherbst.com/blog/2006/08/22/my-addition-to-the-top-10-ways-to-motivate-geeks-list/

Having run a computer games company and worked with geeks - in the best possible sense of that word - for many years, I think this list is wide of the mark.  As you say, it plays to many myths and cliches rather than the reality of technically-minded people.

My list would include:

1.  Show them respect for their expertise.  T-shirts and stuff are nice but geeks aren't circus monkeys who perform tricks for baubles.  Done right, t-shirts and the like are signs of respect and recognitions of talent.  Actually, t-shirts are the wrong gimmes.  Buy the most expensive fleeces, jackets, bags you can afford.

2.  Let them work the way they want to work.  Some like working all night.  Some like a strict 9-5 routine.  Some want to work on their own, some in teams.  Find out what works for them.  Also read Peopleware.  Three times.  Do what it says.

3.  Give them time to pursue their own projects.  The best programmers work on problems because they are interesting problems, not because they are on your project plan or because they are critical to your products success.  You can encourage this kind of curiosity and ambition by giving them time, sabbaticals, days off etc., to pursue their own interests.  Time and again, my programmers came up with stuff on their own that helped future projects.  It was like a mini-R&D department.  They still worked incredibly hard on company projects.

4.  Try to understand their world.  If you go on holiday to France, you learn to say please, thank you and another beer, please.  You also try to figure out what the locals like to eat and drink.  It's only friendly.  Same thing with geeks.  Don't treat them as units of production.  Treat them as people and understand what makes them tick.  Try a bit of programming yourself, for example.

There's more but I have to do some work now!

There's a bit of stuff about this in a post I wrote a while back called <a href="http://www.badlanguage.net/?p=81">'How to write like a hacker'</a>