1

I thought for the first page or two this guy was just too generalizing and clueless. But as he went on I began to realize he was really hitting the nail on the head - at least from my not-so-vast experience in IT.

Ironically (or not), as it turns out I saw this article posted by a guy in a major automotive tech forum that I still subscribe too, after spending well over 20 years in the automotive repair industry.

Kind of a longish read, 5 pages, but I thought it was worth it by the end.

FWIW, my current boss “gets it.” I asked him shortly after coming to work here what ‘benchmarks’ or the like did he want, so he could judge and quantify my work and performance. He asked “Is the network functioning?” I said yes, and he said “Well, there you go!”

17 Spice ups
2

That was an intresting read and rings true on many levels. Thanks for sharing.

3

I have to agree with one thing in the article right away … it says that geeks are stereotyped as anti-social. I can’t disagree more (or agree depending on perspective). This is a non-technical generated stereotype that is completely untrue. Geeks are, in my experience, the most absolutely social of all areas in society. Everything we do centers around communications, networking, interfacing, etc. Geeks have, in the last two decades, brought the world together in ways never seen before - a world with without geeks would sit at home watching television tuning out the rest of the world every moment that they can get away with it.

Geeks attend conferences, have support groups, hang out on SpiceWorks, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, go out for coffee, respond promptly to email, have mobile and VoIP phones with follow-me, instant message, etc. To the average geek the “modern” concept of kids texting each other was outmoded a decade before it started. Those kids aren’t “extra” social… they aren’t even up to a geek baseline yet.

Geeks have redefined what social means today. We stay permanently connected to each other above and beyond any other segment in society.

Anti-social is one of those terms thrown about without any justification by people who don’t understand a culture. It has always been used for societal subsets that are highly social. I don’t believe that normal people even understand the term. I think that most people believe that it means “doesn’t behave as expected” rather than “doesn’t interact with other people.”

Name any field that spends more time interacting with others than IT and geeks. We are so dedicated to doing so that we are the only field with a significant interaction with our peers at other companies. We are so highly social that non-social “normal people” often shun us as they fear the level of social interaction that we engender.

4

I can’t agree with the insulting comparison to medical doctors, though. Doctors learn by rote and are generally completely non-technical and unable to do any type of analysis. The skills necessary to be good in IT are drastically beyond the grasp of someone taking the easy path to practice medicine. They need only memorize and pay their dues and the certifications keep them from ever needing to know anything beyond a minimal baseline of memorized facts. Doctors routinely have less knowledge about the diagnoses for their patients than any patient taking an interest and doing their own research does. What we have learn from IT in the last several years is that the IT profession has made medical information easily available and has exposed the medical practice for being seldom as useful as simply looking information up yourself. If doctors had to compete with IT professionals openly they would lose even with the field of medicine because their skills are antiquated, their ability to research isn’t at an IT high school level and their ability to analyze is non-existent. There are exceptions of course but these are rare and far from the norm. It is a field built on rote learning and mindnumbing script following comparable to entry level IT work with no foot on the ladder of advancement (like outsourced level one help desk work.)

Also, the author mentions that he knows no geek who does not idolize Dr. House. I find this strange as I know very, very few geeks who have ever watched this show or much television at all. Just using the example leads me to believe that he is dealing more with the fringe of IT than with its geeky core.

Sorry to rant but I really cannot overstate how offensive it is to most IT professionals to be compared to a field like medicine. We cannot learn from rote. Our field requires absolute dedication and a constant drive to learn and adapt. We cannot simply pay for time at university and come out with the knowledge necessary to do our jobs. If we do go to university we then have to make up for that wasted time learning on our own. Unlike medicine where university training is considered to be enough to prepare you for a life of work in IT it is not even enough to keep up with the concepts and practices being developed DURING THE TIME YOU ARE AT UNIVERSITY. Medical doctors and IT Professionals are at extremes of the professional world. Doctors are not creative, they do not engineer, they do not build or envision, they do not adapt.

And in comparison, doctors are extremely anti-social.

5

logic and respect… too true. Also House is a cowboy.

6

Hmmmm,

Scott you are (in my opinion) correct. I’ve enver thought enough about doctors to analyze it this well or at this length. Does seem like you have a clear understanding of the profession.

I do watch TV (min-numbing and allows me to doze/relax) and I really like House. I probably like House because I have never met a doctor who gives me the feeling he spends that much time on logic and analysis. Ever. TV is for the creation of artifical worlds.

7

Article seems to be down; I get a grey bar and some copyright text. That’s it.

8

Just read SAM’s “rant”; Your bit about doctors is very, very true. Without going into specifics, I’ve saved both myself and my g/f trips to the quack with my good friend Google! Data mining has replaced “medical science” in my mind, for all but the most serious of circumstances (I might visit the butcher if I need sewing up, for instance).

9

The article hit on two points that are very true from my experience - having worked for someone who “claimed” to have an IT background, I finally quit to get away from her because she did not “understand” IT from the perspective of the article. It was right on stating how IT personell think and act to perform it’s duties.

Also, the part about IT being part of the interviewing process for other IT members including thier boss is spot on! Many interviews I’ve been too, I’ve asked why I cannot at least meet the IT personell? That was a red flag to me that management did not understand IT and did not understand that it is a necessary component relevant to respect.

imho

10

While I tend to agree with most of what SAM stated above (fare more eloquently that I could have, BTW), I still find that there is more than enough excellent points brought up in this article to warrant passing it along to management in hopes that they might actually read it and take something away from it.

There’s something almost surreal about reading the article and finding that it is describing your own evolution within your current organization. “Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.” GET OUT OF MY HEAD JEFF ELLO!!!

11

Im going to have to take the other side of the argument from Scott here. Having a wife go through Therepudics (pharmacy, which actually is mostly memorization) right now; I find it is a bit more complicated than memorization. However, memorization is encouraged to reduce lawsuits and help make diagnosis quicker. But there is a lot of rational in diagnosis, sure any individual can look up and research Parkinsons Disease, but how did you find out you had it? What treatment will work best with you? The human body is very complicated and doesnt behave to a set of patterns like computing does :slight_smile:

Just like there are doctors that make a happy living acting as a machine, so to are there many many many IT ‘pros’ out there who just follow orders. Wrote memorization. We all know the cliche term ‘Paper MCSE’ or ‘Paycheck Hunter’. Many of you are all too familliar with the ‘This is the way it always has been done’ mentality. Consider the How-Tos out there in spiceworks alone, while handy I know that people will blindly follow them without researching the whys and wheretofores of what is going on in the guide. Diagnostic skills in IT folk is actually uncommon in my section of the world. EDIT: It is getting better now that we are getting more and more graduates who are actually passionate about the field and we can be pickier with who we hire.

However, I like to make a better coorelation; that we are more like mechanics than Doctors.

As for the antisocial, the article didnt say that IT people are antisocial, rather it defended the position that we are just like anyone else. I like to look at it like when I am at a party, I love talking to people, but unless I am in the company of geeks or cooks, it is hard to engage in a lengthy conversation as I dont know much about sports other than I like to watch. I cant tell you who won last week or how so and so is doing this year. I get awkward glances when I break the social norm and go to the kitchen to talk about cooking with the ladies. Then, there is the problem of logic, it is hard to discuss the soft sciences with people who dont have a good logic foundation, as the article says, we are logical people, it is what we do and it is frustrating to have illogical discussion.

I found the article very enlightening and completely agree with it.

12

wow SAM. check you out sticking up for the geeks lol. you’re a geek god.

i think we should all try to be more like SAM

13

Justin.Davison wrote:

That was an intresting read and rings true on many levels. Thanks for sharing.

That was interesting.

14

I have to agree that this was a very interesting read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found some things that I really relate to except the House comment I dont know what that was about.

The twist I found interesting was how management should teach their staff to work with IT. Telling them to keep an open mind and that they are just trying to help. Anyway thanks for the article!!!

15

Very nice article. It explains so much

16

I do have to agree with most of this as well article. While I also do not agree with the correlation to medical doctors, it may help some non IT types get a better understanding for us as well.

Great find, this one was printed up and is hanging on my wall.

17

I found a few points to be very accurate:

“It’s not about being right for the sake of being right, but being right for the sake of saving a lot of time, effort, money and credibility.”

For everyone. None of us want to work harder than we need to. That’s why we like to work “smarter”. Getting the job done with the highest quality result, in the shortest amount of time, utilizing the least amount of resources necessary, is paramount. We get off on efficiency. (Just think about how many processes you automate so you don’t have to DO them every day) - We also understand that the IT group is looked at as a whole, so someone else’s screwup will look bad on everyone. We will go to great lengths to have a successful project, (or prevent a disaster) even if it means giving the goofball a low-impact task just to keep them away from the sensitive work.

“You might mistake this as a behavioral improvement, when it’s actually a show of disrespect. It means you are no longer worth talking to, which leads to insubordination.”

I have a hard time continuing to express my disapproval to someone who doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care. As soon as I lose respect for someone, I will still be nice and get all the work done, but I will find a way to work around them. And as the author has pointed out, respect is earned by continually showing the ability to be correct, and get things done.

"Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity. "

I don’t have time for stupid people. I have learned how to properly handle end users that aren’t real good at computers, in the name of customer service. But if you’re part of the IT team (including my manager) you should have at least the same caliber of technical knowledge and ability as I do, if not more.

" So, if your IT group isn’t at the table for the hiring process of their bosses and peers, this already does a disservice to the process."

100% agree. I can’t understand why so many managers do not include the team when making choices. If for nothing more than allow your geeks to “get a feel for the potential new guy”. And yes, those that manage technical folks, need to have a comprehension of what it is that they do all day long.

“Periodically, bring a few key IT brains to the boardroom to observe the problems of the organization at large, even about things outside of the IT world, if only to make use of their exquisitely refined BS detectors.”

This is a good idea, but it happens far less than it should. We are analytical and logical in nature, and there is great value in having a non-executive view of the business workings. We are able to strip away the politics and HR language and see problems in a different light. I have more than once been accused (praised) of “thinking outside the box” , when all I was doing was calling it like I saw it. Even though I was saying things that people didn’t want to hear, they couldn’t argue that I wasn’t right.

18

I am going to get a T-shirt that reads I don’t want to talk to you because “I am an AntiSocial Geek!” what a joke…

19

I’m a House fan and can explain it a bit in the context of the article.

Dr House is presented on the show as the world’s best diagnostician, but a terrible “doctor” in terms of beside manner or respect for patient’s feelings; and the two are related. When no one else can figure out what’s wrong with you, they send you to House, who usually gets results - because he doesn’t care about you in the least, just what’s killing you.

He does this by making the following assumptions:

  1. Patients Lie. Basing your actions on what they tell you will often make things worse and waste your time. Ignore the person and examine the illness.

(Replace Users with Patients, and it’ll sound familiar, No?)

  1. Disease causes illness, so treat disease, not “the whole patient”. No one ever got an infection from having their feelings hurt. And being cruel often provokes more honest reponses than being kind. (see #1)

So he’s a model to compare with the author’s idea that “IT pros would prefer a jerk who is always right to a nice person who’s wrong”. House is a totally obnoxious character, who treats people like dirt, but he gets away with it because acting that way leads to the solution to the problem where everyone else has failed.

The author isn’t right about his analysis in all cases, but it is often the case that those with specialized technical knowledge are far more interested (and effective at) working the technical problem and ignoring the person having it. Doctors get training in bedside manner, but you can see vast differences in how it’s employed by what kind of doctor. GPs are nice because they need to cultivate long term relationships and are generalists; cardiac surgeons can get away with being douchenozzles because they’re only interested in doing their own delicate specialized operations and moving on to the next high-stakes problem.

There’s some truth to comparing this to IT; there are some of us who treat their jobs as being in the Service sector, so we try to make other people happy and comfortable. Others, usually the experts furthest from the desktop and closest to the datacenter, can sometimes consider people as just obstacles to the effecient functioning of a system. “I’m not paid to be nice, I’m paid to make sure your entire business doesn’t grind to a halt or explode.”

So the author is right, at least about me most of the time; I would rather be on a team with a jerk whose kung-fu is strong than a lovely fellow who didn’t know what he was doing. And there are times when working a user problem that I’d love to be able to abuse the user until they broke down and cried, to teach them a lesson. But I wouldn’t be employed very long if I did, so I watch House do it on TV.

20

Being only new to the IT industry it is a real eye opener about the type of thinking that goes into this industry and all the nuances that come into play within it. a very good read and one that i will keep looking over just out of interest.

PS i love House great show