How do you manage a team of geeks?
thelab.o2.com
How do you manage a team of geeks?
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#2Two words: continuous integration.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/120792448/Continuous-Integration
(I drew these notes up the other day)
PS. Since you appear to be the UK O2, I would add: pay people the same or less but let them work remotely from a more comfortable and healthy environment. Maximum reduction of bureaucracy? Removal of physical environment.
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#3This article, (and many others), has a tone that some people ("geeks" in this case) are like another species of human origin that only the most skilled manager has learned to tame.
According to this article, they hate bureaucracy, filling out time-sheets and want flexible working hours. I guess I'm a geek in need of special management.
Who really believes this crap?
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#4Weekly Skype team calls against the current milestone & scheduled 1:1s.
Mockingbird for web wireframes, fluidui for mobile.
FlowDock for devops and support: tickets (jira), commits (git), builds (jenkins) and releases. FD is way better than HipChat/Campfire due to threads and tags. (Try looking in HipChat for a real 24x7 multiperson support incident with some admin password for some random box 80 hours ago. GFL!) It also rocks for support because of the group inbox. And, it can be used by PR people (in a different flow) since it does RSS and twitter.
JIRA + Greenhopper for features/milestones, Redmine/Chili works too. (Gitlab looks neat.)
IRC for informal chats.
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#5This article, (and many others), has a tone that some people ("geeks" in this case) are like another species of human origin that only the most skilled manager has learned to tame. According to this article, they hate bureaucracy, filling out time-sheets and want flexible working hours. I guess I'm a geek in need of special management. Who really believes this crap?
People who have worked with IT geeks and people in other areas, and know that not all people are the same, and that different kinds of people have different preferences, aptitudes and approaches?
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#6Give 'em beer or pot, and a spec. :)
PS: I'll be hiring this year; if you don't have anything against what's written here send me your resume (email on profile).
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#7This article, (and many others), has a tone that some people ("geeks" in this case) are like another species of human origin that only the most skilled manager has learned to tame. According to this article, they hate bureaucracy, filling out time-sheets and want flexible working hours. I guess I'm a geek in need of special management. Who really believes this crap?
Couldn't agree more. There's this odd implication, after listing a load of usually pointless make-work tasks and tedious process, that geeks are somehow odd for disliking this. In reality, you're just dealing with a group of people who, because of the nature of what they do with a lot of their life, are perhaps better than average at seeing and analysing that state of affairs. The rest of your company probably doesn't like it much either, but they're perhaps not quite as sensitive to pointlessness as people who deal with it much more.
What you should be learning from the things that "your geeks" (blech) dislike, is what the rest of your company also dislikes but isn't telling you. The fact that you can fill in the timesheets for 15 people should show you exactly how pointless they are. You already know what they're doing! What are you trying to track exactly? I'm presuming you're not paying them based on the timesheets, otherwise they probably wouldn't let you fill them in.
That's just a small example. You don't have some weird sub-species. You have people who are attuned to certain things as a side effect of their job/life choices. Now work out what the rest of your company are attuned to, and go and listen to them as well.
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#8I hate this tone. Geeks want what everybody wants, respect, recognition, autonomy, progression, money.
Its just that geeks are more likely to stand up to a manager (They respect ideas, and knowledge, not authority)if they don't like the way something is done, rather than be meek. Thus have a reputation for being difficult to control.
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#9I think giving geeks a quiet space to work in with little distractions is the most important aspect.
Most companies fail at doing this though, usually offices are geared towards the extrovert, so huge sprawling open plan desks with people coming/going all the time.
An ideal solution would be everyone gets their own office, a practical solution would be to provide laptops and allow remote working or the option to work anywhere in the building with carefully designed areas to that are quiet and comfortable.
Most corporates don't understand this though and just put everyone on a desk/cubicle in a huge room with 80 others and blindly hope some productivity will happen
Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?
#10I hate this tone. Geeks want what everybody wants, respect, recognition, autonomy, progression, money. Its just that geeks are more likely to stand up to a manager (They respect ideas, and knowledge, not authority)if they don't like the way something is done, rather than be meek. Thus have a reputation for being difficult to control.
> Its just that geeks are more likely to stand up to a manager (They respect ideas, not authority)
How much of this is inherit in "geeks" and how much is just because we're lucky enough to be in one of the strongest job markets around? Many people would be ecstatic to have the problem of recruiter spam.