Quirky Engineers Gone the Way of the Dinosaur? 319
Milican writes "I think its time we ask our fellow Slashdotters, 'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.' Read this article on Embedded.com and decide for yourself." I think this article didn't describe someone really 'quirky' though - it was someone who didn't really want to work.
Not true of course (Score:4, Interesting)
Even in a team based environment. There is an example here at my work in the Unix SA team. The smartest person I have probably ever met in respect to Unix just sits there and plays chess online and reads slashdot, but when there is an actual problem to be fixed, he not only fixes it, but documents it well enough that he shouldn't have to be bothered from his chess playing next time it comes up. I respect him anyway, and from the rumors of his paycheck, The Man does also.
Not extinct, just in hibernation. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a fact of human nature that we limit our perceptions... our eyes can sometimes ignore a certain color, we tone out people we don't want to hear, and we don't see that extra " mark in the code no matter how hard we try. Working on a team might add an extra amount of burden to solo-flying engineer, but it also means someone can catch the big, flaming errors he makes.
Having recently been in the "want-to-be-hired" position, I found many jobs were wary of hiring people that had an abundance of technical skills and no interpersonal skills. Ten years ago a company would have to just suffer with those quirky engineers... these days, there are lots of great workers who might be 90% of what the "quirky" guy is, but who you definitely would rather have around more.
Risk Analysis and good management (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of us, the committed ones, who are reasonable with people, will be quite able and produce good code and do good things.
However, the ones who do spectacular things tend to be quirky and a bit crazy. It's my guess that a lot of times these people aren't that great, but that once in a while they will do things that 'normal' people won't. They are the ones who code almost non-stop for six months to produce a first class engine. Would anyone describe what Linus did to start the kernel as normal ?
Normal people tend not to do this. We have normal interests and try to live balanced lives.
To quote Henry Rollins:
"Want a good body? Work at it. Want to be a success? Work at it. Want to be truly exceptional? Be a touch insane...You need a little bit of insanity to do great things."
So, if you hire a quirky person, be aware that he might save your shop, or kill it and be totally ready to sack the person. And that's what these people did. On the other hand, if you have a few engineers, a few risky bets that might just pay off bigtime are probably a really good idea. And of course, as with anyone else, keep track of them. Very few of us work well in a vacuum.
In a word... yes... (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, I think its better this way, I speak from experience with the above example.
Not even about the quirky engineer (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, it's a huge jump to go from:
-There is a guy who seems to be a good hire, but there were some red flags from his references. We hired him anyway, and were shocked to find out it was a mistake!
to:
-The quirky engineer that we once considered a staple of a company is gone.
It's a big stretch -- especially when the fault lies in the hiring practices...
Huh? (Score:1, Interesting)
I've submitted a dozen hard-hitting, insightful, and clever Ask Slashdot questions that have been immediately rejected, and then I see stuff like "Is there room for quirky gurus?"
WTF??
Oh, well, that's what makes it Slashdot I suppose...
That really does depend... (Score:5, Interesting)
The question posed is *really* overly broad:
'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.'
I'm a developer, and always will be. I've worked on projects ranging from simple contact managers to the actual Bank of America telephone banking system (I'm sorry to say, 99% written in VB 6.0) via a company in Atlanta.
Here's a little secret about the BOA project. The core development team is 6 people. Yep, that's right, *six* people to manage a project that allows millions of people to do their banking by phone. Those people are developers; there are three primary guys above them, one dev manager, and two project managers. (Well, one more guy, the VP over that division...)
Now, that kinda puts things in perspective. The "apparent size" of a project in no way guarantees how many dudes it takes to get the job done. Likewise, some "very small" projects end up requiring a whole lot of coders to whip out new releases. It all depends.
Now, about the guru bit... with the BOA project, there's one guy (good friend of mine still) who's the "guru" of that team if you will. He codes VC++ and VB, and is a freakin' maniac at it. The team would be seriously hurt if he up and left (or got hit by a Marta bus) one day. Even so, nobody minds this, because he does a damn fine job.
I think you also have to consider the fact that even in teams with a guru of sorts leading at the helm, most often he/she isn't the uber-asshole elitist coder the media would like us to believe. Sure, he may not get along very well with folks down at the local bar, but he *does* get along with the developers and project people at his job pretty darn well in most cases that I've seen.
Room? Yes, there'll always be room. It all depends on the personality merits of who you've got.
Re:Not true of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quirky Engineers (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you hit the nail on the head--the demand itself is cyclical. It's merely a side effect of capitalism. With product development cycles being what they are, I think the wise company--financially stable and driven by realistic, sustainable profit growth--will dominate its competitors by keeping a quirky guru or two around. That sort of thing allows "impossible" ideas to flourish and become real products that everybody uses.
It drives accountants crazy to see a guy on the books with a large salary and apparently low productivity. Same goes for the assembly line MBAs coming out of state universities. Anybody with a long-term view will certainly ignore the noise from the numbers people and nurture a company whose name will still be around five years from now.
You have to define 'quirky'. (Score:3, Interesting)
There are quite a few of us, whom, unfortunately, work into the night and on weekends. Sometimes it's just because that's the only time that we can get downtime for a machine. Normally, it's because of production problems [which have been most commonly caused by upper level management setting drop-dead deadlines, and not giving us sufficient time to load test the system before it goes live, which was in turned partially caused by production problems -- wash, rinse, repeat]
Of our rag-tag group, we have two-ex military [one retired, who's seen a lot, been lots of places, and you really don't want to piss off, because he gets really, really, quiet, until you're just sure that he's planning revenge somehow], the other's we never see as he only works part time, and always seems to be fixing problems in other offices.
We've got our stereotypical grizzled 'unix engineer', an ex-military contractor who used to build pools for a living, but now just bitches when people keep changing stuff at the last second. We've got your typical BOFH, who can rebuild a solaris box damned quick, but you really don't want to catch her on a bad day.
We've got a handful of 'boring' people, who just sit there, do their work, and you never really see causing trouble. [I think they're actually allowed to go to meetings].
And of course, there's me, who finds every opportunity to send subversive e-mails, complain about the dress code, etc. [I've since been asked not to wear armour to work, even though a gorget, is, technically, a collar]
You do, however, had to know your environment, and how far you can push your 'quirkiness'. I make sure that I just shoot people's screens with nerf guns and make 'em jump back, I don't shoot them in the back of the head [anymore]. I know that my work is so paranoid about lawsuits that I would have to actively assault someone, or steal something to be fired, so I can give it a good push. [That's not to say, however, that I won't be passed over for promotion, etc, but well, I don't want to be management, so that's fine for me] I've also proven myself as a hard worker, and can make my deadlines, and I've been here long enough that I've made friends in enough departments that I got requests to transfer when I had to leave one department when my manager pissed me off.
So well, 'quirky' is here to stay. 'Incompetant' and 'lazy piece of crap' are not. 'Scares co-workers' is out, also.
Capability people and capacity people (Score:2, Interesting)
Capability people are the people with the skills to build new things and handle complex, unknown situations in an effective manner. They are the "heavy lifters" that are capable of solving complex problems that don't have text book solutions and don't show up in the policies and procedures manuals. They enable you to do things that weren't possible before. In other words, the add capabilities to your systems (whether technological or organizational).
Capacity people are your solid performers. They are reliable and have the skills to get the job done. They make sure that the "i"s are dotted and the "t"s are crossed and do the grinding sort of work which isn't always glamorous, but keeps things running every day and distinguishes the pros from the amateurs. As an organization grows, these are the people who provide the horsepower to keep it moving.
It's crucial to recognize which group a person fits into and how their values to an organization differ. The capacity people aren't really geared toward creating new things or adding features to a system. They are valuable because they keep your organization going and free up your capability people. Capability people are usually not well suited to grind-it-out sorts of tasks, but when the going gets tough, these are the folks who pull your fat out of the fire. They also enable you to do things that simply wouldn't be possible for your organization otherwise.
So back to the question at hand: is there room for the "quirky" engineer? The answer is that there certainly is, but you need to know where to put that person and how to use them. I suspect that most of the "quirky" types will fit in the capability group. Your expectation of that person is to solve the really nasty problems that no one else can tackle. That person must also be able to communicate somewhat effectively with the rest of the team as well to enable them to fill in the blanks. Don't put them in a place where you expect them to attend lots of meetings and crank out line after line of mundane (but necessary) code. They will not do well in that environment.
As a manager, you need to ensure that the capability people communicate effectively with capacity people (who will do the leg work of getting the results out the door). You also need to ensure that the capability person is living up to his/her billing and getting the job done. In the case sited in the article this was clearly not happening. To me that has little to do with the quirks and more to do with actual performance (the two are not mutually exclusive).
Of course, it's also possible that this is the product of a completely insane train of thought on my part. But what the heck, it's Friday.
Best!
Hi, I'm a "quirky engineer" (Score:2, Interesting)
I provide expertise that no one else in my area seems to have and I stay very, very billable. I've pulled one all-nighter in the last decade but will do whatever is necessary to get a project done on time. I will work by myself or as part of a team, and I don't think anyone I've worked with would equate my "quirkiness" with an inability to help my team reach its goals.
While bad economic times can force people like me to at least pretend to conform a little bit, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of fixing systems created by guys from companies run as though they were temp agencies. I think the author needs to examine his company's interview style as others have suggested. But he should also take a look at his own motivations: people who make part of their living lecturing are effectively salespeople, and salespeople require an entirely different set of traits to be effective.
Appearance and political prowess aren't valid measures of engineering competence; productivity is.
Quirkiness is relative (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Quirky Engineers (Score:1, Interesting)
>in favor of keeping the truly productive."
Well, maybe true...
It's already been stated that quirky types *need* to know there stuff as well as being 'quirky', but how do you measure productiveness? If a 'quirky guru' web browses 7 hours a day, but the one hour (s)he spends working saves the team more than 7 hours effort; is that more, less or as productive as the drone that 'works' for 8 hours?
Quirky-ness not always appreciated (Score:5, Interesting)
When we had a management shakeup a few years ago, where it was decided to shuffle all the managers around to different departments, his new manager took an immediate dislike to him. He called ZZ a "goddamn filthy hippie freak" in a staff meeting and ordered him to either show up clean shaven the next day or be fired. Of course, ZZ declined. Actually, ZZ was quite fastidious in his appearance. His beard and hair probably took an hour to comb out and braid everyday.
The manager didn't fire him, but did do his best to make his life a living hell. Finally after about a year, ZZ got fed up with it and left.
We didn't see or hear anything from ZZ for a couple of years after that. One day we had a big project that wasn't going well and our manager hired a consulting company to come in and help straighten things out. He asked for their best man. As you've probably guessed, the engineer who showed up was none other than ZZ himself. He had taken a year off to motorcycle across Asia before joining the consulting company. He was making 3 times what he was before. Our manager had to grit his teeth and refer to ZZ as "Mister ZZ" (ZZ insisted) until the project was completed.
Two paragraphs in... (Score:3, Interesting)
[comment mode="sarcasm"]Yes, of course. The lone genius *is* an anachronism, just like shareware, and inventors, and entrepreneurs, and garage developers, and (wait for it) UNIX? [/comment]
When engineers are subject to the "upgrade-discard-upgrade" cycle of the programs they produce, companies will not benefit from their knowledge, because they *choose* not to.
Most of these companies are seeking to assemble the "perfect" development team, where there is no disagreement, and never a missed milestone, and birds chirp and there is a light breeze over the meadow.
They want "team players" which is company-speak for "people who will agree with us even when we are wrong."
They want extremely intelligent, competent, professional people who ALSO have no ideas about the right or wrong way to do anything, who will gladly throw away all their experience to do things the "company" way, and who will not mind having no substantial contribution to the project EXCEPT to work 15-hour days writing code to half of a broken specification, with a big smile.. BIG SMILE!!!!
As a matter of policy, they drive away highly qualifed, extremely intelligent engineers who can do the work of five people when they are at maximum output, and are worth ten times what they are offered as compensation... until they are laid off two months after being hired, of course.
Interesting how one word sets off "alarm bells." Is it really any wonder that so many software engineers are out of work? Only this guy had the "elusive combination," huh?
Hmmm... here's a short list of the losers in this story:
1. The company didn't complete their project
2. The guy that got hired lost his job
3. All the other candidates that applied are still unemployed
4. The customers got a [broken|late] product
..and of course, it's all the employee's fault. I didn't see any of the managers having to explain themselves either. I'll also guess they still have a fully-staffed HR department as well, complete with rows and rows of desks covered with accumulated coffee mugs, houseplants, stuffed animals and framed pictures belonging to people who have been gainfully employed on an uninterrupted basis for years.
I guess the "word search" hiring technique isn't really the best approach. Of course, wanton incompetence never seems to disqualify anyone anymore, only having 99% of the job requirements does.
The frequent use of the "Always Right Manager" buzzwords like "prima donna" were also entertaining.
Prima donnas are sometimes a good thing. Like when it's third and 15 on your own 35 with 40 seconds left in the game, down by six? You're the GM. Who would you rather have, Joe Montana or some guy that plays QB?
"Software engineering has been the last refuge of the non-conformist... but times are changing."
That's right. YOU WILL CONFORM. YOU WILL HAVE NO INDEPENDENT IDEAS. YOU WILL DO AS YOU ARE TOLD.
Sounds like a real winner. I'll pass.
Someone ought to start a company of old "prima donnas" and see if they can out-produce the team players and their management teams. I'll invest.
Not exactly a modern problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
cf. "a little luny" in Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street [bartleby.com] written by Herman Melville in 1853:
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not all that funny for those folks to be kicked into freak-mode by sudden noises, especially if you know what the problem is. But I guess people are destined to find causing pain for others funny. Witness the Road Runner and the Coyote.
Asperger's Syndrome (Score:2, Interesting)
Personal Guru + ADD/mental problems (Score:2, Interesting)
Their productivity decreased 95% if they were *forced* to do anything, mainly because they are not normal people, they've got special needs, and provide special talents.
Unix and tie-dye (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, he was good- one of those guys that writes 100 lines of code with no syntax errors. And he WAS the team, so as long as he got everything done on time, there were no interaction problems. And it was ALWAYS done on time. He definitely had skills.