Bezeichnung für einen - eventuell etwas verschrobenen- Computerexperten.

In short, geeks are the highly intelligent, usually introverted, extremely valuable, independent-minded, hard-to-find, difficult-to-keep technology workers who are essential to the future of your company.

Geeks are the knowledge workers who specialize in the creation, maintenance, or support of high technology. They have Job titles like programmer, product manager, project manager, quality assurance engineer, System designer, System architect, program manager, technical writer, help desk technician, deployment specialist, trainer, network manager, Web designer, database administrator, desktop support technician, or telecommunications specialist. Some of them may carry titles like chief Information officer (CIO), chief knowledge officer (CKO), chief technical officer (CTO), development director, operations managet, and, on rare occasions, chief executive officer (CEO).

As a group, they are most resistant to leadership yet may be more in need of it than any other group of employees.

Geeks deliver most of their value through thought, not behavior, so eliminating thought from the work reduces the value.

Let's face it: programmers want to program, they don't want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both.

For geeks, meetings don't conform to the problem-solution model of work. A meeting can't be clearly identified as solving a particular problem, so it must be a waste.

Bei IBM gehe ich mit diesen Gedanken hausieren. Manager dieser Welt! Bitte, bitte: Lobt die Techies und Geeks und Freaks am Computer nicht! Versteht sie. So sehr viel mehr wird von euch verlangt!

For geeks, the mental tool that organizes almost every situation is the problem-solution model. When confronted with almost any Situation, the initial response is to seek out the problem and then find the solution.

Geeks have become among the most important human resources within almost every organization. As the technology they supply and support has become indispensable to almost every function of a Company, geeks themselves have become indispensable too.

Geeks are notoriously resistant to authority bestowed from outside and generally reject official hierarchies. They tend to build their own based on those values that they hold dear: knowledge and meritocracy. The more technical knowledge one possesses and the more capable one is of applying that knowledge, the higher is that person's social status.

To some managers, walking into the IT department feels almost like walking into a foreign country where they don't speak the language and are baffled by the culture. For geeks. the business environment is similarly mysterious. They often struggle with understanding the culture of other groups, the needs of users, and the interests of man' agers and leaders. They find the values and behaviors of nontech' nical people to be just as confusing as others find theirs.

Zum Glück haben Ingenieure einen Trumpf im Ärmel: Sie gelten allgemein als erlesenes Heiratsmaterial. Sie sind intelligent, zuverlässig und ehrlich, haben eine Stelle und machen sich im Haus nützlich. Zwar wären viele normale Menschen lieber nicht mit einem Ingenieur befreundet, aber die meisten drängt es danach, sich mit ihnen zu paaren, um technisch begabte Kinder zu zeugen, die schon lange vor dem Verlust ihrer Jungfräulichkeit hochbezahlte Jobs haben werden.

Ingenieure hören übrigens, wie Maschinen zu ihnen sprechen. Im Rattern eines Automotors hören sie die spöttische Bemerkung: "Ich wette, du kriegst mich nicht." Der Computer summt anerkennend, wenn der Ingenieur etwas besonders Elegantes programmiert hat. Der Toaster sagt "Noch nicht, noch nicht, noch nicht", bis der Toast herausspringt. Ein von Maschinen umgebener Ingenieur ist nie einsam und wird von ihnen nie nach seiner äußeren Erscheinung beurteilt. Er und die Maschinen sind Freunde.

Why do we need a special book devoted only to geeks when bookstore shelves are groaning under the weight of leadership books already? In part because many of those books make the point implicitly or explicitly that whom you are leading is essentially irrelevant and that effective leaders can lead anyone. But leading geeks is, in fact, different from leading others. There are three distinct reasons to look at geek leadership differently from more traditional approaches:

• Geeks are different from other people.
• Geekwork is different from other work.
• Power is useless with geeks.