Give Geeks Better Tools Than Necessary

From the Top 10 Ways to Motivate Geeks. JPL’s biggest mistake has been giving me this 4-year-old Compaq with just 504 MB RAM. So all I can really do is post on blog ;-)

Yes, hardware gets obsolete fast. But it’s worth it. And it’s a good thing new stuff comes out so often, because it still can’t keep up with me. Yet I’m not buying myself a new computer. Are employers of geeks doing it right?

4. Geeks need tools, good ones. Give them more than they need.

I’ve seen way too many people get frustrated over their hardware’s inability to keep up with them. There’s nothing worse than having a machine that you have to wait on. Bill Gates based his entire company idea on the fact that hardware was going to be unlimited and it allowed him to grow an empire. Had the PC not been able to gain ground as fast as it did in the marketplace Microsoft may have had a different story.

With geeks it’s not much different. Give them unlimited hardware (hell, just give them just a little more than they think they need) and their productivity and creativity will definitely increase. Best of all, it’ll motivate them. Geeks can’t wait to see what they can do with the ultimate environment. Give a geek the latest-released workstation with maxed hardware and you’ll most likely get a little more than you bargained for from them just because they’re motivated enough to push the system to its limits.