A Tale of Two Geeks and a Poseur

april 20, 2007

If you work in an engineering group, these are three types of geeks that may seem familiar to you.

Genius Geek: Dude who knows more than you, your teammates and your boss put together.
Smart Geek: Dude who works hard and knows enough to get his job done. And if he doesn't know, he will go find out himself.
Poseur Geek: Dude who fakes being smart and relies on others for all information.

Lets explore some Geek scenarios. Given this bit of code:

$i = 0; printf "$i"; $i++;

Genius Geek: "That is part of a debug statement. Most likely trying to track down why a loop is not terminating."
Smart Geek: "Looks like a snippet a loop code. Not sure what the overall code is doing."
Poseur Geek: "Oh God! That code will erase a harddrive! I will patch it immediately." Two hours later, Poseur Geek has added 200 lines of code and 300 bugs to the loop code.

When asked about using Unix tools:

Genius Geek: "xyz will do that, but to better myself, I'll write my own tool." Writes, tests and finishes tool within the hour. Source covered under GPLv2.
Smart Geek: "Doesn't xyz do that?" Checks man page.
Poseur Geek: Speaking in authoritative voice (because if you speak in an authoritative voice, everything you say has to be true), "That cannot be done."

When asked to write a script to perform some sysadmin task:

Genius Geek: Sits down, thinks, then writes the whole script in one line.
Smart Geek: Breaks out book, reads, thinks, then writes script in about 20 lines.
Poseur Geek: Sits down and writes whole script. Script has thirty-one functions and 3,000 lines of code.

When presented with a computer based situation:

Genius Geek: Knows what the problem is right away and fixes it immediately.
Smart Geek: Investigates and finds problem. Researches a fix. Fixes problem.
Poseur Geek: Asks Genius and Smart Geek what problem is and how to fix it. Fixes it based on what the other two geeks say, then sends email documenting that he himself did all the work.

When others are asked about the respective geeks:

Genius Geek: Shy, but likable. Smiles and laughs (genuinely) at others jokes.
Smart Geek: Normal guy. Funny and smart ass. Smiles, laughs, and makes others laugh.
Poseur Geek: Common phrases, usually from women: "That guy." "Oh him." "That creepy guy." Smiles only because he figures that it'll help him later when he becomes their manager (a false presumption).

Magazines:

Genius Geek: Stacks of tech magazines, all read thoroughly with dog ears.
Smart Geek: A few tech magazines, only interesting articles read. Some car magazines and entertainment magazines.
Poseur Geek: Stacks of unread tech magazines (for making himself look smart when others swing by his cubicle). Stacks of Playboy magazines that are well "read".

What kind of machines they use at home:

Genius Geek: All Unix-based, running command-line only.
Smart Geek: Main boxes are Unix-based with GUI. A Windows machine "just because" and a Mac because it is cool.
Poseur Geek: Windows, Windows and Windows.

When asked about why they chose a specific OS as their main OS:

Genius Geek: Functionality.
Smart Geek: Aesthetics and functionality.
Poseur Geek: Everyone is using it, therefore there are more people I can leech information from.

Activities outside of work:

Life goals:

Their friendships:

Genius Geek: You are my friend because you are cool and you know how to use vi.
Smart Geek: You are my friend because you are my friend.
Poseur Geek: You are my friend because I will need your help later.

Socially: