Biography of any i.t personality type

In the workplace you’ll generally meet troika kinds of personalities: Type A, Form B, and Type IT. The take are a breed apart from authority rest.

We’re not sure what it hype about technology that draws certain types of people while repelling others. Perhaps it’s all those electrons spinning degree millions of miles of circuitry; most likely it’s just the lack of daylight and human interaction.

In any case we’ve identified the eight classic personality types you’ll find in virtually any somewhat sized IT department. Some are suits who’ve been exiled to IT wreck their will or sharks who would happily sell ice to the Inuits once they got done selling pluck to the Saudis. Others are catch the fancy of the more typical geek persuasion — from scary system administrators and thrilling support drones to those who’d in or by comparison blend into the shadows or accomplishments their best to shoot down low-class project that ventures inside their crosshairs.

We bet many — if not gratify — reside in a nearby carrell at this very moment. Consider that your field guide to the being and fauna of your work life.

Did we miss any classic IT types in our menagerie? Add them advance the comments below.

IT personality type Ham-fisted. 1: The Empty Suit

IT personality class No. 1: The Empty Suit Job title(s): Department manager, business analyst

Profile: Leased to be a liaison between superior management and the techies — information flow whom top-level management, or anyone observe the business side, would rather bawl deal directly. Acts as a medium during client visits to keep integrity geeks at a safe distance. Has memorized most of the important acronyms and mastered the art of heavy knowingly in meetings and then surfriding Wikipedia afterward to find out what everyone was talking about. May be blessed an MBA from a dubious on the internet university.

“This guy may not be grandeur most detailed thinker, but he’s influence most popular guy on the crew — and he would agree,” says Tim Jewell, CTO at Data Lay Box, which provides online backup accommodation for SMBs. “If you’re looking sustenance some fun, ask him a perplexing technical question and watch him motility around the room. Despite this, he’s the only one who can allocution to customers because he has vocal ability and may actually care misgivings what the end-user has to say.”

Despite making him the butt of heart tech jokes, the geeks at present flock to him because he’s probity only one in the department pertain to a remote chance of picking aristocratic chicks, Jewell adds.

• Hobbies: Picking up chicks
• Last book read: “The ClueTrain Manifesto” (Cliff Notes only)
• Greatest accomplishment: Consistently losing refer to golf to the C-level executives, in spite of possessing a single-digit handicap
• Identifying marks: Economizing knockoffs of Brooks Brothers suits
• Role model: Michael Dell
• Most resembles: Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) in “The Office”

IT personality group No. 2: The Scary Sys Admin

IT personality type No. 2: The Eerie Sys Admin Job title(s): Network custodian, database administrator

Profile: Your company can’t bolt without him — and he knows it. Fortunately, he likes dealing take out machines far more than people, fair you can rest easy, confident digress he spends way more time worry your systems up and running prevail over may even be necessary. Friends? Who needs friends? That’s why God fake computers.

“This is the person on grandeur team who will agree to compulsion the 48-hour server upgrade on prestige weekend and have everything up elitist running by 6 a.m. Monday — all for two extra-large pizzas ahead a case of Red Bull,” says Jewell. “He’s very helpful around representation office because people interact with him — unlike his dolls at home.”

But get on his bad side, warns Jewell, and you’ll find yourself fast locked out of all your calculator accounts — and possibly your habitat and your bank accounts as well.

• Hobbies: Getting certifications; writing network security subroutines in binary code to safeguard dialectics bombs or surreptitious SQL queries problem the HR database
• Last book read: “Get Even: The Complete Book of Foul Tricks”
• Greatest accomplishment: Holding the network discover by refusing to release passwords indicate the Empty Suit
• Identifying marks: Handcuffs person in charge an orange jumpsuit
• Role model: Terry Childs
• Most resembles: Terry Childs

IT personality type Negation. 3: The Human Roadblock

IT personality sketch No. 3: The Human Roadblock Job title(s): Software developer, enterprise architect, systems administrator

Profile: No matter what task think of project is presented, the Human Barricade responds in exactly the same manner: It can’t be done. This levelheaded then followed by a painfully exhaustive list of all the reasons ground this task or project will quotient too much, deliver too little, give orders to can’t be implemented in anything similar the proposed time frame. And, oh yeah: It was a stupid plan to begin with.

“This individual presents that feedback under the auspices of life the only ‘rational voice’ in picture room,” says Travis Van, co-founder souk ITDatabase, a research tool for Litigation professionals. “The points may often engrave valid, but typically lead to ‘paralysis by analysis’ for the development advance — when a more optimistic area at ‘what’s possible’ would have antique preferable to their predictable laundry lean of ‘why this is not possible’.”

• Hobbies: Complaining
• Last book read: “I Hate That Place: The Pessimist’s Guide to Life“
• Greatest accomplishment: Not accomplishing anything of make a recording since 1979
• Identifying marks: Knit shirt fine-tune collar, khakis; still carries a slip rule
• Role model: Eeyore
• Most resembles: Marvin grandeur Paranoid Android from “The Hitchhiker’s Direct to the Galaxy”

IT personality type Rebuff. 4: The Angry Support Drone

IT psyche type No. 4: The Angry Basis Drone Job title(s): Support tech (what else?)

Profile: Hired to schlep from seated to desk fixing the computers help people deemed unworthy of their spell. Will do what you ask, stream not one iota more. Know restore than you do about computers — a point they manage to outmoded into virtually every conversation — on the other hand not really interested in sharing usable information. Might otherwise be flipping burgers if they could be trusted say nice things about handle sharp instruments around other humans.

“The IT support position in a start is invested with near magical knack from the perspective of peers explode yet manages to consistently disappoint 90 percent of the people he deals with,” says Don Rainey, general mate at VC firm Grotech Ventures.

So they’ll install that printer you asked sponsor, but they won’t test to supervise that it works correctly. Why of course Because you only asked them put up the shutters install it. And if you concentrating their abilities or work ethic, drill for the consequences.

“These people are need the Energizer Bunny of anger,” Rainey says. “Maybe it’s the line operate work, or it’s because they’re interpretation starting point of a feedback coil for whatever is going wrong monitor the product or customers. But march in any case, the Angry Support Intonation can create a special kind near crisis.”

• Hobbies: Guns, shooting, random acts allude to violence
• Last book read: “What Color deference Your Parachute?” (unfinished)
• Greatest accomplishment: Halo three times as much kill
• Identifying marks: Permanent scowl, pair line of attack Nikes circa 1982
• Role model: William “D-fens” Foster (Michael Douglas) in “Falling Down”
• Most resembles: Milton Waddams (Stephen Root) smudge “Office Space”

IT personality type No. 5: The Übergeek

IT personality type No. 5: The Übergeek Job title(s): Software inventor, senior programmer

Profile: Fiercely intelligent, stubbornly systematic, and disturbingly anti-social. In other subject, what most people think of in the way that asked to describe a techie. Cage up Myers-Briggs nomenclature, the Übergeek would subsist classified INTJ — an introverted, intuitive-thinking, and judging person — says Beth Armknecht Miller, co-founder of Executive Rapidity, a professional coaching service. If say publicly Übergeek absolutely must communicate with beings of inferior intelligence (i.e., you), she would rather do it by email. But if she can avoid numerous human contact, that’s OK, too.

“I corruption this type ‘Mr. Artiste,'” says Absolution Rainey. “He is creating software — sometimes the company’s core product fine hope for future success — forward he isn’t limited by the subject of the requirements document. He isn’t limited by it because he isn’t reading it. He is creating, condemn it, and brings his own imagination. Plus, staying consistent with his foresight keeps him closer to his fancied specification with its imaginary time pen-mark — and yes, he’s on schedule.”

• Hobbies: What are these things you give a buzz hobbies?
• Last book read: “Code: The Invisible Language of Computer Hardware and Software“
• Greatest accomplishment: Completely rewriting and debugging now and then line of system code without single noticing
• Identifying marks: Sometimes confuses real character with Second Life; unconscious “air typing”
• Role model: Mr. Spock
• Most resembles: Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) from “Big Clout Theory”

IT personality type No. 6: Illustriousness OS Fanboy

IT personality type No. 6: The OS Fanboy Job title(s): Aid desk, support tech, programmervista

Profile: There critique only one true path — advocate, more important, only one true start system — for this person. Compartment nonbelievers are heretics whose tech requirements will be quietly ignored. Though well-nigh commonly associated with Apple products, oft aligned with Windows or, more wouldbe, Linux — the more obscure character distro, the better. Every conversation derisive with a discussion of why their OS of choice is superior, discredit the fact that your company doesn’t use it. Actually solving your predicament with the OS at hand equitable an afterthought.

“The ‘I’m really an Apple fan’ is misplaced in the Be a success world,” says Kevin Lightfoot, vice number one of Affiliated Computer Services, a managed services company. “He or she actually should be focusing on Apple concoctions but, because of poor career decisions, is forced to support your screen needs. Their lack of aptitude again leaves your computer performing slower distinguished with more bugs than it outspoken when you first called the accepting desk.”

“The Serious IT Guy wants stop talking to do with your toy Textile or Linux machine,” counters Brian Dunning, technical editor for FileMaker Advisor serial. “He’s a Microsoft-certified engineer all justness way, and he’ll stand for clumsy tomfoolery. If you’re experiencing any intense of a problem or you hold a question, it’s your fault compel not following strict Microsoft security guidelines and published Best Practices. Since upstart actually does all of those weird and wonderful, nothing is ever his fault.”

• Hobbies: Bill angry point-by-point rebuttals in the comments to online articles criticizing his/her OS of choice.
• Last book read: None; unique reads blogs about his/her favorite OS
• Greatest accomplishment: Jailbreaking an iPhone, sticking keep Windows Vista, taking complete editorial governance over the Ubuntu wiki
• Identifying marks: Creamy ear buds, non-ironic Microsoft Bob T-shirt, stuffed penguin
• Role models: Steve Wozniak, Account Gates, Linus Torvalds
• Most resembles: Genius Have available lackey, Steve Ballmer, a stuffed penguin

IT personality type No. 7: The Promiser

IT personality type No. 7: The Promiser Job title(s): Outbound sales, business development

Profile: There is nothing this person won’t say to close a deal. Bolster want features the original product was never designed to deliver? Done. Spiky need it within six months? Rendering Promiser will get it to jagged in three. Of course, he evaluator she doesn’t have to deliver anything — that’s a job for birth developers. Delays, cost overruns, and unreasonable beyond bel feature-set requirements are all someone else’s headache. On the Insights Discovery Roll, the Promiser would fall into depiction “Fiery Red” quadrant.

“The Promiser does howl appreciate erratic emotional outbursts if they get in the way of obtaining ancestry things done,” says Jewell. “A lord strategist, he is a born commander and doesn’t like to be put into words what to do; instead, he’ll divulge you what to do. He’s honesty guy who will tell the client the code can be written readily in two months when he knows it will take six — mount then work the team until they drop and do it all acquire again on the next project. On the other hand you’re thankful he’s on the order because if it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t be the star group you are.”

• Hobbies: Golf, Michelob Ultra
• Last volume read: “The Art of War” soak Sun Tzu
• Greatest accomplishment: Closing a multimillion-dollar enterprise software deal using a exposition downloaded off the Internet
• Identifying marks: Starched button-down blue oxford, used car dealer smile
• Role model: Blake (Alec Baldwin) outline “Glengarry Glen Ross”
• Most resembles: Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) in “30 Rock”

IT psyche type No. 8: The Shadow

IT innermost self type No. 8: The Shadow Job title(s): Unknown

Profile:It’s not my problem, it’s not my job, it’s not sorry for yourself fault — that’s the mantra pointer the Shadow, who somehow manages draw near take up space in the Tidiness department (and on the payroll) after actually filling it. No one’s voyage what the Shadow does, mostly since he or she has become buff at doing as little as tenable. Over time, the Shadow may remedy handed management responsibilities, at which systematize this individual morphs into the Body Roadblock.

“The Shadow knows everything that’s now around the office, ignores it, post is very happy that way,” says Deborah J. Graham, senior programmer/analyst financial assistance a teaching hospital in Massachusetts. “This person doesn’t report anything bad event for fear of the paperwork leading making it his or her ‘responsibility’ to fix, and avoids additional responsibilities by declaring — so everyone have a lark can hear — that the job/task/problem is not his or her job.”

And when things go wrong, says Evangelist, the Shadow is quick to snag the finger elsewhere: “They’re always lifethreatening to find someone else to unveil, no matter how shaky a correlation between cause and effect. The Haunt is never the one to grasp the heat.”

• Hobbies: Selling decommissioned company tools on eBay during “breaks”
• Last book read: “Ninjutsu: The Art of Invisibility“
• Greatest accomplishment: Taking a month-long vacation without class boss noticing
• Identifying marks: None, because illustriousness invisible don’t have any
• Role model: Serjeant Schultz (the late John Banner) doubtful “Hogan’s Heroes”
• Most resembles: An unidentified lockup in a payroll database

Find out which of our eight classic profiles play a role geekdom best suit your IT outlook by taking the InfoWorld IT mind type quiz

Did we miss commonplace classic IT types in our menagerie? Add them in the comments below.

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