The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive [Hardcover]

Bill Pfleging (Author), Minda Zetlin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2006

Business managers (suits) and technology professionals (geeks) have become warring camps in too many companies. While both groups have no trouble following the lingo of their own specialities, when they have to communicate with each other, neither side fully understands - or wants to understand - the other. And that's a big problem in an increasingly technology-dependent business environment where success depends on the smooth integration of both business savvy and technological expertise. Bill Pfleging - a respected computer and Web consultant - and Minda Zetlin - a veteran business writer - explore, in this insightful, witty, and very instructive book, the culture clash that pervades nearly every business-technology interaction. "The Geek Gap" provides members of both camps a practical guide to working together effectively. Using many real-world examples, the authors vividly illustrate the consequences in time, money, careers, and even lives when these separate cultures fail to communicate. The authors provide practical solutions for building trust between business and computer professionals. The book is filled with tips aimed at geeks and suits to help each group understand the other, communicate in what amounts to a foreign language, and get what they need to do their jobs effectively. The authors profile companies and individual executives who have successfully bridged the gap by conducting events that bring the two groups together, switching jobs from one area to the other, creating whole new careers as "go-betweens", and much, much more. This is the first book to directly address issues of communication and understanding between business and technology people. "The Geek Gap" - in identifying this problem and providing numerous practical and workable solutions - is an indispensable guide for all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lack of respect and trust, poor communication and a culture clash make for an often-disastrous divide between "geeks" and "suits," according to Pfleging, a computer consultant and "dyed-in-the-wool geek," and Zetlin, a business writer (Telecommuting for Dummies) representing the suits. Though the husband-and-wife authors offer tips for both techies and management on how to bridge the gap and thus avoid business failures, they spend most of this thoughtful if not wholly practical book affectionately parsing geek culture. A geek's primary strength, the authors explain, is problem solving—or creating and maintaining technology—while a suit's talent is influencing people. Technology for suits is a "means to an end"—namely, profitability—while for geeks (who see themselves as outsiders and artists) it's a "living, breathing thing." These differences have exacerbated the geek gap the authors see behind debacles and trends from the Y2K "fizzle" to the dot-com boom and bust and now today's offshore outsourcing of IT work. Pfleging and Zetlin provide sensible advice (e.g., techies should expand their skills to avoid obsolescence in the face of "offshoring"), but the book's real virtue is its anthropological insight into the people writing code. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"If you're a geek, a suit or if you've ever tried to manage either, you'll love this book." -- Dorothy Leonard, Harvard Business School, Co-author of Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom.

"Superbly written, full of illuminating, often hilarious real-world examples,The Geek Gap is required reading for...just about all of us." -- Michael Belfiore, author of The Entreprenauts: Visionaries and Daredevils of the New Space Age

"[A] "how to" survival guide to the forever united worlds of business and technology....Read this book!" -- Larry Weber, Chairman/CEO, W2Group, Inc., Boston, MA

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 251 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (June 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591024153
• ISBN-13: 978-1591024156
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why "Geeks" and "Suits" need to understand each other better, December 10, 2006

By 

Clifford Anderson (Cranbury, NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive (Hardcover)

There's no question that the authors of The Geek Gap have struck upon a widespread phenomenon: businesspeople and technologists frequently experience difficulty communicating. It's challenging to communicate across these domains, not only because "suits" and "geeks" speak different vocabularies, but also because they tend to think differently. The point of the book is basically to teach businesspeople how technologists think and technologists how businesspeople think. In a nutshell, the authors suggest taking genuine interest in how the other side works is the best way to overcome misunderstandings and to foster healthier business climates. They also offer a number of practical management tips to lessen the communicative dissonance, even recommending that "geeks" and "suits" temporarily switch jobs to get a sense of what the other side is actually doing.

I think the authors sometimes overplay the differences between "geeks" and "suits," thereby contributing to stereotypes which exist more in popular culture than contemporary business environments. Do most "suits" really disdain technology? The excellent coverage of technology in the Wall Street Journal suggests otherwise. Do most "geeks" really disregard the business purpose of their corporations? The rise of agile methodologies, which encourage closer and more frequent communication between developers and stakeholders, as well as Service Oriented Architecture, which offers a philosophy for reusable services both at the technological and the business level, also suggests that "geeks" have recognized that it's in their best interests as developers to close this gap.

The book is nicely written and an easy read. While the problems of communication described by the authors have already existed for a long time (although I'd dispute that it stretches back as far as Galileo, as the authors assert), the pervasiveness of information technology in the contemporary business world has made it more necessary than ever to acknowledge and start bridging this gap. Reading this book will not be the end of that process, but it could provide a helpful beginning.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, timely, important in other contexts too, June 22, 2007

By 

captcrisis (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive (Hardcover)

This book is crisply written, as specific as possible in its observations, and has the necessary anecdotal evidence, this being the only kind of evidence one could collect on this topic.

I hope this book finds the people who could use it. The geek gap is more pronounced when the product or service being sold isn't technological itself. Across such a cultural divide the hazards of prejudices are more acute.

What kept coming to me as I read this book is the general prevalence of "attitude", the product of ignorance or, at worst, arrogance. I'm a lawyer and I've seen that a lot of lawyers are arrogant -- they think they know a lot when in fact they don't, they think they are good at things when in fact they aren't, and they think they have "seen the world" when in fact they have lived in a bubble. Such a lack of awareness seems worse in older lawyers. In my profession you can do some things badly for years and never suffer for it or even be aware of it.

Entering law school was like entering any new environment: the important thing is not to go in with an attitude. Keep your eyes and ears and, especially, your mind, open. That is how one gets older and smarter, instead of older and stupider.

Back to the point -- this book is about the attitudes geeks and business people have toward each other. A lot of the attitude is based on externals, and here I was mostly in sympathy with the geeks, based on my own experience in a non-technology field. In my profession I often have to use a more pompous, formal writing style than I prefer, because pompous writing impresses

1. stupid people,

2. insecure bureaucrats, and

3. people who don't know what they want,

and most of the time I am writing to one of these three, if not directly, then eventually.

The same applies, more or less, to the emphasis on appearance that business people stress. They want customers and don't want to cut themselves off from the #1, #2 or #3 market. It should be easy for any reasonably mature geek to understand this, and the need to keep up appearances with clients or corporate bigwigs. When these considerations don't apply, I don't sympathize with the business people's criticism of the geek lifestyle. As far as the geek lifestyle described in this book goes, bare feet in the office is O.K. with me. Games in the office are O.K. Casual clothing and behavior is O.K. Myself, I work better casual. Suits just suck the life out of me. In my profession, the better the tailoring, the slicker and more dishonest the lawyering. (This goes extra for those guys with the weirdly deep tans and the hair helmets.) Probably this is true in other professions too.

The book describes some business decisions that were made that defeated the purpose of a geek creation. A business person without an "attitude" should find it easy to be honest with the geeks as to why he had to do what he did. Sometimes business decisions are illogical and counterproductive but you have to make them to please #1, #2 or #3. I don't see why this can't be admitted to the geeks in question, along with the simple observation that otherwise both business person and geek would be out of a job.

As far as the substantive interactions between business person and geek, from the book I found myself mostly in sympathy with the business people. The idea that some geeks apparently have, that considerations of profit should not inhibit their work, strikes me as immature. These are not professors in an endowed chair, or composers on retainer to write whatever they want. Such situations are exceptions in the range of adult experience. On your free time you can do what you want, but you decided to get employed and get paid. Once you make that decision you must produce what people will buy. Grow up already!

What, is this "review" too long? In part I'm just remaking the points made in the book, which covers every angle I could think of and then some. I keep coming back to attitude, though. A similar book could probably be written about lawyers vs. clients -- or about officers vs. enlisted men, directors vs. producers, or professors vs. administrators. Those divisions are timeless. But this seems like about the right year for a book on the geek gap.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An engaging read, July 26, 2006

By 

Jennie Litt (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive (Hardcover)

The Geek Gap is an interesting window onto the various subcultures that make American corporate culture run. I came to this book not as a geek or a suit, nor as someone with any pressing personal need to bridge the geek gap, but found it so engaging that I read it in a single (longish) sitting. The authors' thesis can be applied to many settings and situations beyond the corporate workplace--the Geek Gap is, in microcosm, the same gap that divides and undermines so many groups that need each other to survive, yet come into repeated, and seemingly insoluble conflict, based on a deep clash of largely unarticulated values. Breezily and clearly written, with a wealth of specific examples, and refreshingly commonsense suggestions for addressing the problem, The Geek Gap is a timely and topical book that sheds light on the way we live now.