How do you manage a team of geeks? • Hacker News Board

Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?

#41

Post by seivan » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 10:38 PM UTC

simonswords82 wrote: post #22

radicalbyte wrote: post #15

Replace "geek" with "highly sought after, intelligent and talented employees" and you'll be closer to the truth. The reason developers are "hard" to manage is that they're in demand, so they don't have to put up with bad or abusive management. That said.. I'd recommend reading Team Geek ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018025.do ) if you have any ambition to move into a management or leadership role.

IMO the reason developers are "hard" to manage has nothing to do with the fact that they're in demand - fortunately most developers aren't that fickle. There are numerous reasons why developers are difficult to manage. One of the main reasons is because by and large they are introverts. They therefore don't communicate well with other people at all times. Also - let's face it - the work developers do isn't always eas…

Have you thought that maybe you pay so bad, that those are the kind of developers you get to be around, and therefore build judgement and assume they are introverts, or don't properly communicate?

Social HR huh? Yeah.

Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?

#42

Post by mrlyc » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 11:38 PM UTC

> the golden rule of “manage how you’d like to [be] managed” still applies

I tried that. It lasted about ten minutes. I then changed to managing people how they would like to be managed. That was much more successful.

Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?

#43

Post by cail » Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

treerock wrote: post #34

"Remove as much bureaucracy from their working day as possible, they hate doing it, are not very good at it and will spend more time trying to figure out ways of either getting around the tasks or automating them than it would take to actually do it in the first place." In most other professions there are secretaries to do this kind of thing.

I agree with this but it shows an even bigger problem in my mind. It seems to me that the author has decided that employees attempting to automate bureaucratic tasks is worse than just doing it himself. This seems like a wildly inefficient way to manage. Maybe I'm missing something though.

For example, regarding the time sheets, if I could write a quick script that automates the process of filling it out (correctly) in three hours and it would have taken me twenty minutes to fill it out by hand, what's the problem? after only nine weeks I have earned back that three hours in productive time. If I were to distribute it to the entire team of fifteen people and they each take a similar amount of time to fill out the sheets then we are already ahead.

Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?

#44

Post by simonswords82 » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 10:42 PM UTC

seivan wrote: post #41

simonswords82 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the reason developers are "hard" to manage has nothing to do with the fact that they're in demand - fortunately most developers aren't that fickle. There are numerous reasons why developers are difficult to manage. One of the main reasons is because by and large they are introverts. They therefore don't communicate well with other people at all times. Also - let's face it - the work developers do isn't always eas…

Have you thought that maybe you pay so bad, that those are the kind of developers you get to be around, and therefore build judgement and assume they are introverts, or don't properly communicate? Social HR huh? Yeah.

Interesting point but unfortunately you're off the mark - we use pay ladders for our team, very similar to those Joel Spolsky applies at FogCreek. We keep one eye on the .Net market to ensure our pay scales are aligned with market rates, so pay isn't the issue.

Re: How do you manage a team of geeks?

#45

Post by seivan » Tue, Jan 22, 2013, 11:25 AM UTC

simonswords82 wrote: post #44

seivan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought that maybe you pay so bad, that those are the kind of developers you get to be around, and therefore build judgement and assume they are introverts, or don't properly communicate? Social HR huh? Yeah.

Interesting point but unfortunately you're off the mark - we use pay ladders for our team, very similar to those Joel Spolsky applies at FogCreek. We keep one eye on the .Net market to ensure our pay scales are aligned with market rates, so pay isn't the issue.

Hah .NET coders. Yeah I got ya.