Interesting Links for 18-01-2013

[andrewducker]

• Mobile operator 3 are censoring political satire as if it was porn.
  (tags: censorship uk phones )
• Some impressive tech came out of this year's CES. I'd like to try at least four of these.
  (tags: technology thefuture )
• How do you manage geeks? (It turns out, a lot like, well, everyone else.)
  (tags: geeks management )
• Dysaethesia Aethiopica -

Comments

[hirez]

Ha. Well that's O2 off the list of potential employers. Patronising twat.

s/'geeks'/'women'/ and see how it reads...

[andrewducker]

Having worked in both geek-heavy organisations and more balanced ones, anyone claiming that geeks _aren't_ somewhat different has a massive hill to climb as far as I'm concerned.

[hirez]

Right. But having management-boy there come over all David Attenborough about this mysterious tribe of 'geeks' isn't helping anyone. I get the distinct impression that it's someone from a Widget Factory trying to divine the existence of Film Crews from first principles. (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programme/45814#45814)

[andrewducker]

You are aware that many people don't interact with that many geeks, and thus have to be told about them, right?

I work in a geek context right now, but whenever I stick my head out of it into the rest of the company I encounter people to whom geeks are just baffling, and they have no idea what to do with them.

Having someone say "In the main manage them the same as you do everybody else" is actually really useful in this context.

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I've been paid more than at least two of my last five managers, because we're not so bad that we pay entirely on hierarchy. That's a good article too - I'll be sharing it.

[philmophlegm]

I must admit that was how it came across to me, at least at first.

I think his point was actually to say that these people aren't a special case really, but he sort of spoiled that by making generalisations. I suppose that making different generalisations for different groups of people is better than making one generalisation for everyone, but shouldn't managers be trying to manage each individual to get the most out of that individual? To do that, you have to recognise that individuals have different needs and respond to different management styles in different ways.

Do you think you'd see an article in a football magazine by a famour football manager talking about how "managing black players isn't so different from managing everyone else"? This article isn't that far removed.

[andrewducker]

The massive difference, to me, being that "geek" is a description of behaviour, while "black" is a description of skin colour.

Managing people according to their behaviour seems entirely reasonable to me. And if people aren't used to groups that have a particular style of behaviour then talking about how that differs from the cultural norms is useful.

[philmophlegm]

"The massive difference, to me, being that "geek" is a description of behaviour, while "black" is a description of skin colour."

Yeah, that's a fair point. I still think that generalising about groups (or what you perceive to be groups) isn't especially clever management though. You risk mismanaging someone because you think they are a "geek" or "creative" or a "yummy mummy" or whatever and assume they will respond in the same way as others in that group.

[andrewducker]

I completely agree that managing people as if they were homogenous representatives of group X is bad. Being aware of tendencies while appreciating the individuality is definitely the way to go, in my experience.

(After all, I work in an IT department, if all geeks were treated the same then we'd have massive problems.)

[0olong]

It's always a tough balance to get right, this - acknowledging that there are differences between groups can very easily be read as making generalisations about those groups. Which I guess it kind of is, but it's probably only pernicious when people fail to bear in mind how much diversity is masked by any statement about generalities...