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Give '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).
This is probably a tangent, but can we use a better word than "manage"? I honestly think the vocabulary continues to inform our expectations of the job that needs doing here, and I'd suggest that in cases like groups of talented engineers the needs isn't one of authority or "management". Something closer to "facilitator" is a more appropriate description of the real need.
If it's O2/Telefonica (which it is), then they manage them fucking terribly and deliver shitty products that fall over and leave people in dire shit regularly. Not only that, they stereotype and patronise them terribly.
"We’re an innovation team, powered by O2. We were set up in January 2011 to test new ideas & concepts fast, in an open environment...We create prototypes, iterate and pivot where necessary, building alpha and beta products to test with user groups with the goal of adding value for our customers."
They've got the PHB working for them.
In most other professions there are secretaries to do this kind of thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I guess its not about the job market. Geeks are more of creators and artists. They dont bother much of the hierarchies and luckily the hierarchies too dont have an issue because they deliver. Its just that whose in more power. In the factory age it was the sales man. In the tech age its the geek
Give '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).
Wait, don't you need some dummies to manage those people? Better offer some hookers and blow as well. If you need warm bodies that like beer and pot, college hiring season is starting.
Two 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.
This 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?
Show me someone who likes filling out time sheets, wants inflexible working hours, loves bureaucracy, and respects authority more than ideas. I don't know anyone like that, so I must only know geeks.
Give '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).
Wait, don't you need some dummies to manage those people? Better offer some hookers and blow as well. If you need warm bodies that like beer and pot, college hiring season is starting.