Best Way to Manage Geeks?

drummerboy195 writes to tell us that he recently read a 1999 interview with Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Novell, and wondered how applicable the information was today. How much have things changed since the dot com bust in terms of management? What other good and bad techniques have Slashdotters seen evolve from both supervisory and supervised positions?

Comments

Java

[trollable]

I think this article is still good. I especialy like:
"Two or three people invent a brilliant piece of software, and then, five years later, 1,000 people do a bad job of following up on their idea. History is littered with projects that follow this pattern: Windows, Unix, Java, Netscape Navigator."
However, Java did suck from the beginning (not the whole concept but the API, the JVM, ...). That proves 1,000 people can't fix things.