Ultranormal

What is a geek’s polar opposite? Who makes it impossible to be perfectly geeky? Managers. They’re not all bad. They don’t all make geek lives miserable. But, there are some who seem to thrive on impossible and arbitrary deadlines, insisting that they know how to do something the “right” way even though they’re not the least bit technical, are enamored with constantly changing requirements, and will nitpick until what little hair you have left is laying in a pile on the floor after being yank from your head in frustration.

Managers are a neccessary evil. They provide feedback, and the best of them provide a good shield between bureaucracy and the geek. The worst managers are fickle, uncommunicative and only out to improve their own chances for promotion while never offering praise in public (or private) for the members of their teams. To be a good manager, you’ve got to be able to switch gears between talking to your superiors and talking to the people who work for you. Being a good geek manager takes this to the extreme. You have to know businessSpeak to talk to your boss, but be able to remove all the bullshit when you talk to the geeks. Geeks despise bullshit. If you want to watch a geek explode, start talking about monetization, marketing or paradigms. It just doesn’t work. Geeks like facts and figures, hard requirements and pizza.

Geeks also like food. If you feed a geek, he’ll be your’s for life. Ply your geeks with pizza, donuts and yes, alchohol (not me, though… Dr. Pepper). They’ll work their bony little butts off for you if you feed them.

Geeks like toys. Make sure your geek can order new computers every year or so. Give them the tools they want/need to do their jobs. If they produce quality work, then reward them with new toys (like my shiny new G4). It keeps them happy, and gives them one less thing to whine about as you work them to death.

Geeks do not like Ken dolls. Don’t be a glad-hander. Don’t say something if you know it won’t happen. Geeks have long memories and low self-esteem. They remember being slighted and hold grudges. If you’re not going to throw a happy hour, don’t say you will. If you don’t think you can get Herman Miller chairs for everyone, don’t say you can. Say you don’t think you can, but you’ll try. That’s all geeks want: honesty. For the most part, geeks will be honest with you. It’s part of the Geek Code of Honor… which I think is based on something from Star Trek.

Speaking of geekgasm…. If you’re using Mozilla or Netscape 6.x, you can now change how lawver.net looks. Go to View -> Use Stylesheet, and you should see the option “Deco” there. Choose and watch the purpleness!

Why do we geeks get so excited by technology? Why do we go into convulsions of joy when we build something that works? It’s art, baby. I’ve figured it out. Writing code is an artform. Writing good code (where good is defined by each individual geek, unfortunately) is the equivalent of Waterlilies by Van Gogh. It moves me. When something works, it’s like a gallery show of my work. I can tell my family and friends, “Look, see what I have built and the cool stuff it can do.” Even though most of them aren’t geeks, they can look and see that it works and doesn’t break when they click stuff. To them, it is good. To my geek friends, I can say, “Look at my tiny codebase that’s portable to other projects. Look at the thoughtful inside jokes I put in my useful comments. Gaze upon my stellar documentation. Marvel at my valid DOCTYPE and how well-tabbed everything is.”

The best is when I build something that not only works and looks good, but performs. I can look at it and know that it’s handling several hundred requests a second and standing strong. Nothing’s more difficult or rewarding than building product for large-scale consumption. Almost anyone could eventually write something that will work on a small scale or in testing. It takes a special something to build it to withstand a pounding and stay up. The opposite is building something that I think is top-shelf and then have it come crashing to earth under load. It’s demoralizing. It’s tedious to go through hundreds of lines of code to find variables that might not be unset or data structures that aren’t freed. It takes time, which is usually in short supply. But, once it works again, all is well and triumph is sweet!!

Thus ends another lesson. Be sure to hug your geek.

Here are some tips on being a geek and actually getting paid for it:

• Learn to be a ‘tweener. You should be able to do actual geeky things. The trick is to also learn how to communicate the uber-geeky concept to the non-geeky boss or co-worker. This will make you the indispensible translator and you will get promoted.

• Work insane hours for your first year. It will give you the reputation of being a hard worker. After your reputation has been earned, you can start slacking again.

• Learn to play UT. This shouldn’t be hard for the geeky, but it’s nice to have the skill. This will earn the respect of your co-workers if you can kick their asses. It’s also how we network here. “Oh, you’re MeatKevin? Yeah, you’re a mean killin’ machine. Wanna raise?”

• Be the expert. Pick some part of your job and become the expert. Know more about it than anyone else in your group. This makes you valuable and you probably won’t get laid off.

• Be Clean. For Gomer’s sake, bathe. Even if you follow all the other rules, if you’re not clean, no one will talk to you. You’ll be known as that weird dirty guy and being known for something unflattering is the expressway to Layoffville, my brother (or sister).