Nerd Zoo

I was talking to a team member yesterday who was telling me that he had a fifth-degree black belt in Taekwondo. I worked with a guy years ago who was a nuclear particle physicist. One guy was a rocket scientist from the former Soviet Union.

I remember saying one day "Geesh! This isn't rocket science!" and everybody in the room laughed. (I loved that East-German Rocket-Scientist guy, because he always sounded like a mad scientist from cheesey sci-fi movies when describing programming problems)

Part of my job over the past few years has been to work in a tightly-integrated fashion with a few teams at a time for a month or two, and then move on. It's not just been one industry, either -- I've had the privilege to travel all over the country and see teams tackling all sorts of technology problems.

It hasn't always been fun, but it's been very varied.

I worked at one place and was talking about requirements. "You have to have a list of things that people understand in case one of you gets run over by a bus the team can carry on."

There was dead silence.

Later that day I saw a plaque next to the cafeteria. Somebody on the team had gotten ran over by a bus.

Mostly, though, it's been very fascinating. When I first started working in software teams in my 20s, I expected programmers and technology people to be sort of supermen -- they were working on the hardest problems in the world, they were using logic and reason as their tools -- you'd expect these guys to be highly-functional, rational, erudite paragons of rationality.

I remember my first contract job. I had been doing a lot of programming and hardware set up in the local area, but I was self-taught, and I was sure that I was out of my league. Here I had flown across the country to Sacramento, dressed in suit, and was waiting outside the door of the VP of an insurance company.

He came to greet me in a "Go Buckeyes!" T-shirt and sandals.

Technology people did not turn out as I had expected.

Instead of a laboratory, it's been much more like a zoo: I get to go to various exhibits, er companies, and watch how people play and work there. What are the customs? What are the unwritten rules? Are they happy? How does change occur?

Some technology folks become teachers. I find that the really good ones are eventually leaned on to start sharing some of their knowledge. (This can have a very bad effect on the teacher if they lose their technical chops over time, but that's a story for another day). A lot of technology people are attracted to aviation, as I was. Somebody told me once that there is a certain kind of brain that likes to master intricate technical skills as a way of relaxing. We get a lot of those folks in technology.

I've found that people are a lot less rational than they think they are. No, this isn't meant as some sort of "Most people are stupid" kind of remark. Rather it's a trait of all humans: we have an amazing ability to self-deceive. People can understand this if you show them some kind of optical illusion or some cognitive parlor trick, but most folks have a very difficult time understanding what a deep role it plays in everybody's psyche.

One of the reasons that small teams are so much more powerful than individual or pair programmers is the ability of a team to cover all the cognitive blind spots. This has led me to believe that true diversity -- diversity of personality styles and life experiences -- is critical for any team to succeed. It's also been interesting to observe that any decision made by a team of more than 7-9 players is based almost completely on group dynamics, no matter how much the participants believe it may be based on logic or reason. in fact, the larger the group the more a clan or political group mentality sets in, at least among some members. If you had told me that 20 years ago I wouldn't have believed you. At some team size greater than 9 members, we begin to start forming small versions of political parties. Fascinating.

I've noticed that people who think they know things are very useful -- except for the times they're not, in which case it's crazy hard to get them to understand they are mistaken. As part of that, I've gone back to Socrates -- humble ignorant questioning is probably the most rational way for humans to interact. It also can be uncomfortable, especially if you have the pride of being an expert or feel like you have spent your time earning your rank and shouldn't be questioned.

Some folks hack their bodies off-work. A few people ran marathons. A lot had gym memberships -- which they used to varying degrees. Be careful starting a conversation about nutrition! If there are any takers it could go for a long time, and you'd better have boned up on organic chemistry.

There are the mensa members and the Trekkers, of course. All the stereotypical "nerd" traits are still around. The old joke that goes "How do you tell an extroverted engineer? He stares at your shoes while he's talking to you" still holds true with some. There are still guys with the nerdy glasses and dorky look, but this is really not as common as before. Any more there are a huge number of immigrants. I have met people in IT from just about every country in the world.

I think one of the huge untold stories of the past decade is the burgeoning friendship between Americans and Indians, and to some extent the Chinese. No matter where our governments are at, hundreds of thousands of folks at the "grunt" level are meeting each other and making lasting friendships.

Computers and technology in general have grown so quickly that they have "sucked up" vast numbers of people from all over the planet who trained or planned their life to turn out very differently. And work in industry is vastly different than academia, the other place where you'll see so many cultures mixing. Directors don't get teunre, and I seriously doubt you'll run into a coworker just passing through living on a trust fund or attend a demonstration in the cafeteria for a some political cause.

This makes technology workers probably the best place to see the largest number of integrated diverse people actually living their lives while mingling with each other. Which is pretty cool, actually.