In some offices, whether in a mentoring relationship or outside of one, you’ll encounter an “alpha geek.” The alpha geek is driven to be the best engineer on the team, to always have the right answer, and to be the person who solves all the hard problems. The alpha geek values intelligence and technical skill above all other traits, and believes these attributes should determine who gets to make decisions. The alpha geek usually can’t deal with dissent, and is easily threatened by those she perceives as trying to steal her spotlight or who might upstage her. She believes herself to be the best, and responds only to messages that support that view. The alpha geek tries to create a culture of excellence, but ends up creating a culture of fear.
The alpha geek is usually an excellent, effective engineer who goes into management either because she was pushed into it or because she believes that the smartest person on the team should be the manager. She tends to undermine the people who work for her by belittling their mistakes and, at her worst, redoing the work of her teammates without warning. Sometimes the alpha geek will take credit for all of the work that a team does rather than acknowledging the strength of the team members.
At their best, alpha geeks can be inspirational to younger developers, even though they seem very intimidating. He has all the answers. She worked on the original version of that system 10 years ago and still knows the authors, and if you need to figure something out, she can do it without a problem. He knows exactly why that thing you’re trying to do won’t work, and when it doesn’t, believe me, he’ll remind you how he told you so. If only you had listened to him and done things his way! Alpha geeks have a lot to teach you, if they want to, and they can design great systems that can be fun to help build. In general, alpha geeks would not have gotten as far as they have without being very smart, so they do have a lot that they can teach their teams, and many engineers respect that intelligence enough to put up with the downsides.
At their worst, alpha geeks can’t let anyone else get any glory without claiming some of it for themselves. They are the origin of any good ideas but had no part in creating the bad ideas, except that he knew they would fail. The alpha geek believes that every developer should know exactly what she knows, and if you don’t know something, she will gleefully point out your ignorance. The alpha geek can be very rigid about how things should be done and closed off to new ideas that he didn’t come up with. Alpha geeks get very threatened when people complain about systems they built or criticize their past technical decisions. They absolutely hate it when they have to take direction from anyone they don’t respect intellectually, and can be very demeaning toward people in nontechnical roles.
The alpha geek habit often starts to show up when engineers first become mentors. If you have ever wondered why people don’t seem to come to you for help despite your clearly strong technical skills, ask yourself whether you’re showing some signs of being an alpha geek. Do you view yourself as an engineer who does not pull any punches and always says exactly what you think? Are you eagerly seeking out the gotcha, hunting for mistakes, reluctant to admit that someone else has had a good idea or has written good code? Do you believe that correctness is so much more important than anything else that it is always worth fighting hard for what you believe to be correct?
If you suspect that you may be an alpha geek, mentoring can be a great opportunity to break out of that habit. If you view your mentee as someone to teach and guide, where your goal is to help her in the way that best works for her, you can start to see where your aggressive style makes it harder for her to learn. Practicing the art of teaching can help us learn how to nurture and coach, how to phrase things so that others will listen, instead of just shouting them down. On the flip side, if you’re unwilling to change your style to help a mentee succeed, please don’t volunteer to be a mentor!
Alpha geeks make absolutely terrible managers, unless they can learn to let go of their identity as the smartest person in the room and most technical person on the team. Highly technical hands-on managers can be good for small teams of senior engineers, but alpha geeks are often better off kept out of management and given more of a focus on technical strategy and system design. You tend to see alpha geeks in the CTO role at technology-focused startups, where they are given a design and development focus across from an execution-focused Vice President of Engineering.
If you’re ever in the position to promote people to management, be very, very careful in giving your alpha geeks team management positions, and keep a close eye on the impact they have in that role. The alpha geek culture can be very harmful to collaboration and can deeply undermine those who feel unable to fight back. Alpha geeks who believe that their value comes from knowing more than others can also hide information in order to maintain their edge, which makes everyone on the team less effective.