Blessed are the geek
The rise of the GEO (Geek Executive Officer)
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t. We live in a society where more and more people will get this joke. At the same time the computer programmer’s introspective nerdism is being replaced by a broader understanding of the important role software plays in everyone’s lives.
Geeks are becoming revered for their ability to create whole new categories of popular culture. No longer is computer programming the boring and impenetrable subject it used to be. And the successful geeks are often not the stereotypical socially incapable loners, but people who intuitively understand how society interacts with devices. They know what customers want and they’re able to quickly build features that meet those needs.
Marc Andreessen, the entrepreneur, investor and software engineer famously wrote a piece about the software eating the world. The premise of the article is that everything in the developed world is becoming more and more dependent on software and that the companies who can best use this resource are the ones who are rising to the top.
Most of the CEOs of the big new tech companies would happily describe themselves as geeks. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos all started with a background in computer science and used their geeky knowledge to found world beating tech companies. They got the tech first and then learned how to run the rest of the business. Sure, these were the same geeks that started those companies so it seems pretty natural that they’re CEOs now, but their knowledge of technology outweighed their lack of marketing knowledge.
Traditionally, the CEOs of large companies have graduated from the Finance or Marketing Director position. The skills in these roles have historically been seen as more appropriate for the step up to CEO. It is a common lament in CIO circles that skills in IT are often overlooked at the highest level.
Now though, the finances of the company and the ability to connect with the customer are all built on an ability to execute the technology properly. Without good software, big companies will struggle to keep up, and will be disrupted by newcomers or beaten by big competitors who get their systems singing. Today’s business world needs leaders who understand the software on which their businesses are built. Now, even the normally pessimistic CIO magazine is happy to state that CIOs are more able to make transformative changes than their CEOs.
The geek who rises to the top of the tree to become CEO is unlikely to continue doing much programming (although Mark Zukerberg still famously does). However, the background in programming means that even as CEO they’ll understand the fundamentals of the system that the company is running on. They’ll be able to adapt their decision making better than a CEO who doesn’t understand software. The GEO will not demand fast change at the risk of building on unsustainable technical debt, but nor will the GEO stand for unnecessarily slow delivery of software changes.
The importance of software in the world is going to continue to increase, so look out for GEOs rising through the ranks over the next few years. Blessed are the geek: for they shall inherit the Earth.
