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Decentralization
jamesgregory writes "'Geeks make new stuff primarily because it's fun, because it's useful, and because they can. Suits make new stuff primarily because they hope to earn a profit. Yes, that is an oversimplification, and there's overlap between the two types -- there are plenty of profit-seeking geeks and geeky business folks. Still, the distinction is real.'"
Why just copy and paste the first paragraph when you could copy and paste the whole article?
Is it just me or did the "summary" give no idea whatsoever of what the article is actually about?
Geeks make new stuff primarily because it's fun, because it's useful, and because they can. Suits make new stuff primarily because they hope to earn a profit.
You know what? That's a load of crap, and you know it. I don't even care that you tried to cover your blatant generalization up in the next sentence of the write-up. If someone tells a racist joke, are they not a racist regardless of if they were "just joking"?
I'm sick of these "it's either this way, or that way" people. The computing field is full of a ton of smart people who have more than one ability. I can code with the best of 'em but still am confident that, if necessary and so desired, I could run a group of a dozen or two programmers, system administrators, etc.
The reason I get so upset sometimes is that people pigeonhole themselves into a specific career (major in computer engineering OR major in management OR major in English, etc.) before thinking "Hey, ya know, maybe I'm gifted enough to do both coding and project management and testing, and hey, maybe even a few interviews."
I love to see other fellow men and women reach their highest potential, but that can't happen when you segregate folks into one specific area.
Is this news? Must be a slow weekend at both /. and Salon.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
As if that was somehow a lesser goal. They are isomorphic, in that they both consist of informational efficiency gains. Here's what I mean.
Geeks see a need for a device/program. They function as a evolutionary force to fill an "ecological" niche. The niche is the need, the device is the thing that exploits the niche. "Suits" do the same thing. They see a financial or economic inefficiency and they create a "device" (a financial instrument or business, say) to exploit it. They are money hackers. Profit is just another way of saying efficiency which everyone here knows is related to elegance.
Sure, suits don't care about the elegance of YOUR crap--but you don't care about yours, so why should they. And they are rightly in charge, since their feet are on the ground. Now if only those damn liberals in Congress would understand that people like Ken Lay should be praised for increasing efficiency instead of castigated.
That thought this was an opening for a Jon Katz article?
Something about grass being green and water being wet...
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Geeks make new stuff primarily because it's fun, because it's useful, and because they can.
Because they can is essential for making anything at all. I've personally never made anything that I can't make.
When it comes to putting bread on the table - something that geeks are intrinsicly poor at - I'd rather be a suit. What the geek culture fails to recognise is that there is a time and a place for this sort of thing, and this behavior is useless in the work environment. That's why the entire dot-com bubble burst, remember?
?-|||-----x<*))))><
Hmm, am I going too far afield here if I imagine we're supposed to pick good guys and bad guys here?
;-)
The geeks here sounds like creative types who still live with their parents and maybe have a nice car; the suits genderless soulless drones with 401(k)'s and more likely have a nice car.
If anything this article illustrates the uselessness of stereotypes. As soon as the writer concedes the existence of hybird strains, the binary distinction loses value. Better to talk about these different qualities and identify people who have interesting mixes. Someone else here mentions race; I wouldn't be so melodramatic, but yes it's analogous. Geek and suit are superimposed social abstractions that, as individuals, we should reject.
Now I feel like I'm working a little hard to make something interesting of a humdrum article that reads like something written on a deadline and a hangover. How come they never take my submissions?
"Suits" -- i.e., Microsoft, Sun, Apple -- create operating systems and software which appeal to wide swaths of people. They have to; they have something to sell and money to make.
"Geeks" -- i.e., most of the GPL community -- write software for the purpose of writing software. The end result is pure art in a way.
A good analogy would be the world of photography. Professional photographers take pictures for magazines and newspapers, or at weddings, etc. They need to be product-driven, they have something to sell, and it shows in their work.
Artistic photographers, on the other hand, are driven by purity. They strive for an artistic goal, which is very different from the commerical one.
The same thing could go for music -- say the wide world of "artistic music" and artists (okay, okay, that's a sensitive one here on /.) and studio bands.
Questions and comments welcome. Flames ignored. Post resonsibly
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Geeks make new stuff primarily because it's fun, because it's useful, and because others cannot. That's why most geeks become geeks. The best geeks are those who can do what nobody else can.
Sex - Find It
A geek writes some software/builds some hardware that takes off, and starts to become recognised as good/cool via word-of-mouth. Geeks everywhere start to chip in and help him, because that's by nature what geeks do. A bussinessman sees an oppourtunity to provide a service of some sort that will enhance the geeks' new toy. The bussinessman makes money, the geek gets recognition (and job offers), the consumers/users win.
While this is very simplistic, I can't see why this process can't be applied to most good, cool, or useful things. No matter what anyone says, if something is useful or entertaining, it is profitable, directly or otherwise.
So all technologists with or without dayjobs, make time to help/start geek projects. After all if you're a real geek, this sort of work doubles as play.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
I haven't worked in many companies (I'm only 23), but, there is an example here that I can draw from my tiny experience: web related technologies and their associated databases, and how that relates to Linux and open source.
In a large company like mine, database clients, the OSs to run them, and the databases that they serve are, together, big business indeed. To serve about 700 people of all manner of trade using one unified client system is tough. You have people that need to make hundreds of transactions a day, and people that need to use this data to connect to yet other clients to arrange services from yet other clients. You need increased IT staff that must manage it and use it themselves, and automation people that must keep it running and add needed and unforseen features. For such a solution, both my previous company and the one I work for now chooses PeopleSoft.
Companies like PeopleSoft and their associated vendors love Microsoft and other proprietary vendors. They push Win2k for the desktops, .NET for the developers, and SQL for the database. This is because with this combination, they can force you into a static model (predictable and simple for them) that is easy for them to control. The assured future upgrades of more Microsoft technologies will keep them involved, because their solution only works with it, and will "evolve" with it (I.E. they make their new products more efficient with future Microsoft technologies). They can also sell you these MS products and the consultation needed to implement them because they are vendors of them themselves. No need to go to the Microsoft salesman for "the latest and greatest" when PeopleSoft can just "throw it all in together".
My previous company was ready to spend 1.5 million on PeopleSoft, 500k for Microsoft technologies needed to run it, and hire three programmers and admins to keep it all going for the next 3 years. I saved them about 500k by showing them how I could replace the PeopleSoft "solutions" to run on Linux terminals and simple PHP/mySQL clients that could be used from a web browser. Many Win2k licenses were avoided, many PeopleSoft licenses were avoided, many SQL licenses were avoided, and any 1rst year CS student could tailor my code in the future (I.E. out source a programmer for a week at a time).
The reason why I only saved them 500k and not the full 2 million (plus new staff)? Because the PeopleSoft salespeople have very slippery tongues, and talked the suits into using it at about a 60-65% distribution model (compared to the old 100% model). The local PeopleSoft guy still hates me for showing my old bosses that, with just a little know how and open source, you could replace their crap with highly efficient and simple tools at a fraction of the cost. In this case, nothing, since I didn't recieve any extra money for my time - only my usual salary.
Such is life.
I keep reading all these articles on the job market and the direction some businesses are going. Where do they leave me? Clueless. As I get ready to graduate PSU next summer, I leave with one question... wtf am I ever going to do for a job? Decentralization. Great, so does that mean I should try to start some business away from a business? Or is it that when I get into a business, I won't have 50 bosses? Does anyone have a plain english definition?
When I think centralized companies, I think back to my Managing Quality prof from this semester saying how a lot of companies are flattening out their structures from having tall hierarchies to wide bases with a few upper people. Meaning, less people telling you what to do, but more people around you trying to work with you on everything...
Are the two totally related? Probably not. But when you're soon to be entering the job market, its food for thought, and leaves me more confused than ever... What do I want to do, and who do I want to do it for?
Many people these days tend to forget that Gates IS also a geek. Whether you want to admit it or not he was hacking some pretty good assembler code back when a large portion of the Slashdot readship was still wearing diapers.
Geeks's model
1. Make cool thing
2. ???
3. Profit
Suit's model
1. ???
2. Market, Advertise, Sell
3. Profit
Yeah, they have a lot of in common. It's step 3.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Wow. I'm impressed that you have time to code at all -- much less post to slashdot -- what with all the farming and milling and weaving and such that you must be doing.
Oh, wait. You mean you buy food from a market and clothes from a store, rather than growing or making your own? Gasp! It sounds like you've specialized a tad
The usual and current rant against "specialization" is just as much a load of crap now as it was when Thoreau screeched "Simplify, simplify, simplify" while using a printing press (a pretty complicated piece of machinery).
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
In the first half of the 20th century, when mass production really got going, this was a clear distinction. Understand, throughout all of history up to then, making stuff took a lot of work on each item. Even simple items were expensive. Suddenly, in one lifetime, that all changed. Machines were developed for stamping, moulding, glassblowing, punching, rolling, and the other operations of manufacturing. Those machines got faster and more powerful. For the first time ever, the world was awash in manufactured goods.
The relationship between manufacturers, who put the machines and plants together to make stuff, and the financiers, who put deals together, was much like the "geek" and "suit" distinction today.
Me, I think specialization is for insects, but that's me. Your milage may vary.
Rubbish. Specialization is for specific cases in a templated function.
:wq
as a geeky business owner, I hate to tell you that the distinction is NOT real, it is an artificial border that you have decided to draw. It is more than an "oversimplification", it is a total fabrication.
There are many hardcore geeks who are also trying to make a profit -- so many that it creates an infinitely blurred line. You are trying to invent a definition of "geeks" and "suits." In real life there are billions of different people, all with infinitely differing shades of motives and values. I hope you get some more experience with real life very soon.
Gate's bought DOS...he didn't write it. That makes him a suit in my book....not a geek.
If he was as good (a geek) as you claim, he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble to buy it.
> Sure, suits don't care about the elegance of YOUR crap--but you don't care about [theirs].
Characterizing it like that is a blatant attempt to make the suit-geek dichotomy go away, and its not working. For one thing, everyone understands money, geeks included. When a suit is concerned with the bottom-line, we can at least understand where he's coming from. The converse is (often) not even remotely true. In the extreme, suits understand money, and money alone. Geeks, on the other hand, hold the position that while money is important, in some circumstances, elegance trumps money. So while geeks understand both the ephemeral "elegance" AND the more obvious bottom line, suits usually only understand money.
Therein lies the problem. If anything, the Geek is more dedicated to the bottom line than the Suit, because a more elegant solution is a part of or even the foundation of a sound business model, especially in the long run. However, a Suit who typically has little or no understanding of the domain, or the humility to take the advice of those who do often cuts technological corners (like hiring MSCEs) with deleterious effects on the bottom line. A geek suggesting the use of free open-source software will get modded down in the board room because "Everyone uses Microsoft." The reason for the stereotype of the Pointy Haired Boss is because it is unfortunately common. Not the pointy hair part, the inept technological aptitude part.
"It's Dot Com!"
Linux was created so that there could be a truly free OS to play around with. Minix cost money, back in the day, and modifications had to be distributed in the form of patches, which got to be extreemly annoying, even for people who already had licenses. That was the reason Linus created Linux.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Found this gem on the NANET Comedy Conference. If you know anything about
DOS vs Windows vs OS/2 vs... then READ IT.
How It Came To Pass...
Long ago, in the days when all disks flopped in the breeze and the
writing of words was on a star, the Blue Giant dug for the people the
Pea Sea. But he needed a creature who could sail the waters, and would
need for support but few rams.
So the Gatekeeper, who was said to be both micro and soft, fashioned a
Dosfish, who was small and spry, and could swim the narrow sixteen-bit
channel. But the Dosfish was not bright, and could be taught few new
tricks. His alphabet had no A's, B's, or Q's, but a mere 640 K's, and
the size of his file cabinet was limited by his own fat.
At first the people loved the Dosfish, for he was the only one who
could swim the Pea Sea. But the people soon grew tired of commanding
his line, and complained that he could be neither dragged nor dropped.
"Forsooth," they cried. "the Dosfish can only do one job at a time, and
of names, he knows only eight and three." And many of them left the
Pea Sea for good, and went off in search of the Magic Apple.
Although many went, far more stayed, because admittance to the Pea Sea
was cheap. So the Gateskeeper studied the Magic Apple, and rested
awhile in the Parc of Xer-Ox, and he made a Window that could ride on
the Dosfish and do its thinking for it. But the Window was slow, and
it would break when the Dosfish got confused. So most people contented
themselves with the Dosfish.
Now it came to pass that the Blue Giant came upon the Gateskeeper, and
spoke thus: "Come, let us make of ourselves something greater than the
Dosfish." The Blue Giant seemed like a humbug, so they called the new
creature OZ II.
Now Oz II was smarter than the Dosfish, as most things are. It could
drag and drop, and could keep files without becoming fat. But the
people cared for it not. So the Blue Giant and the Gateskeeper
promised another OZ II, to be called Oz II Too, that could swim the
fast new 32-bit wide Pea Sea.
Then lo, a strange miracle occurred. Although the Window that rode on
the Dosfish was slow, it was pretty, and the third Window was the
prettiest of all. And the people began to like the third Window, and
to use it. So the Gateskeeper turned to the Blue Giant and said, "Fie
on thee, for I need thee not. Keep thy OZ II Too, and I shall make of
my Window an Entity that will not need the Dosfish, and will swim in
the 32-bit Pea Sea."
Years passed, and the workshops of the Gateskeeper and the Blue Giant
were overrun by insects. And the people went on using their Dosfish
with a Window; even though the Dosfish would from time to time become
confused and die, it could always be revived with three fingers.
Then there came a day when the Blue Giant let forth his OZ II Too onto
the world. The Oz II Too was indeed mighty, and awesome, and required
a great ram, and the world was changed not a whit. For the people said,
"It is indeed great, but we see little application for it." And they
were doubtful, because the Blue Giant had met with the Magic Apple, and
together they were fashioning a Taligent, and the Taligent was made of
objects, and was most pink.
Now the Gateskeeper had grown ambitious, and as he had been ambitious
before he grew, he was now more ambitious still. So he protected his
Window Entity with great security, and made its net work both in
serving and with peers. And the Entity would swim, not only in the Pea
Sea, but in the Oceans of Great Risk. "Yea," the Gateskeeper declared,
"though my entity will require a greater ram than Oz II Too, it will be
more powerful than a world of Eunuchs.
And so the Gateskeeper prepared to unleash his Entity to the world, in
all but two cities. For he promised that a greater Window, a greater
Entity, and even a greater Dosfish would appear one day in Chicago and
Cairo, and it too would be built of objects.
Now the Eunuchs who lived in the Oceans of Great Risk, and who scorned
the Pea Sea, began to look upon their world with fear. For the Pea Sea
had grown, and great ships were sailing in it, the Entity was about to
invade their oceans, and it was rumored that files would be named in
letters greater than eight. And the Eunuchs looked upon the Pea Sea,
and many of them thought to immigrate.
Within the Oceans of Great Risk were many Sun Worshippers, and they
wanted to excel, and make their words perfect, and do their jobs as
easy as one-two-three. And what's more, many of them no longer wanted
to pay for the Risk. So the Sun Lord went to the Pea Sea, and got
himself eighty-sixed.
And taking the next step was He of the NextStep, who had given up
building his boxes of black. And he proclaimed loudly that he could
help anyone make wondrous soft wares, then admitted meekly that only
those who know him could use those wares, and he was made of objects,
and required the biggest ram of all.
And the people looked out upon the Pea Sea, and they were sore amazed.
And sore confused. And sore sore. And that is why, to this day, Ozes,
Entities, and Eunuchs battle on the shores of the Pea Sea, but the
people still travel on the simple Dosfish.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
In general, a good chindogu solves a real problem but creates a new one at the same time.
Like one of my favorites: The solar powered flashlight.