Geeks Can Bring Value To Your Company, But You Drive Success

Geeks can be invaluable resources for any team and company, bringing unique skills and knowledge. However, some geeks take an ideological approach, prioritizing ideology over business goals and UX.

Working with geeks

I have worked with geeks most of my life and consider myself a geek. Because of that, I learned that geeks sometimes prioritize technology over business goals. Some ideological choices loved and promoted by geeks can be incompatible with the company’s business goals and become expensive.

Geeks vs Executives

The reason for this evident duality is rooted in the different perspectives of those two groups.

Geeks mainly focus on the technical side of the problem and get excited about technical features and factors like license type (open-source vs. proprietary) and standardization. They often miss the whole picture and forget to include critical factors like employee retraining, long-term strategy, supplier reliability, consistency, and the impact of technical decisions on company processes in their evaluation.

Conversely, executives are bound to investors and stockholders to maximize profits and minimize risks. Their priorities are very pragmatic, and little space is usually left for ideological choices.

Handle conflicting visions

Executives and managers should leverage geeks’ skills and technical acumen but not let them run the company. Just because a technical solution is technically or ideologically superior doesn’t mean it will provide a competitive advantage for the company or improve the UX of its services and products.