Tech field favours the shy and reflective

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is shy and introverted. PHOTO | AFP

What you need to know:

  • While extroverts work the crowds in pulpits, football fields and political rallies, introverts ply their trade in fields that demand a knack for numbers, discernment, solitude and analytical acumen.

  • They may be reserved, but they are highly articulate especially speaking to small groups.

  • Their calm demeanour can help steer a company through the pressures and challenges that IT organisations face — and rise to the top.

Loner. Lone wolf. Aloof. Geeks and nerds — are some of the nouns often used to describe IT folks. To those outside their orbit, IT folks portray an image of people so much webbed into their work that they shut out the world around them.

They curl in the computer server-room coding away their lives. They get frustrated when asked to make elaborate presentations. They prefer to solve a problem instead of spending hours explaining the steps to solve it. The rest of the world claim not to understand what they are talking about — their language is jargon-laden. They are men and women of few words.

FORGOTTEN

In a world that promotes expressiveness, speaking out and speaking up, IT folks can easily be forgotten. The fact that their expertise is in high demand, some say, is their saving grace. They play a fundamental role in ensuring that the company’s tech-engines purr, 24/7. Faced with a computer glitch, staff leap to computer room pleading for assistance from the tech team.

In psychology parlance, people who exhibit tendencies to work alone, are introspective and reserved; those who speak slowly and say few words — are said to be introverts.

Their charismatic counterparts — the aplomb, pulpit-pounding, facially-expressive — are extroverts. They often hog the airtime in meetings. They don’t bat an eye approaching and talking to strangers. They are the straw that stir social events and many of them are not hardcore coders and geeks.

RESERVED

While extroverts work the crowds in pulpits, football fields and political rallies, introverts ply their trade in fields that demand a knack for numbers, discernment, solitude and analytical acumen.

They may be reserved, but they are highly articulate especially speaking to small groups. Their calm demeanour can help steer a company through the pressures and challenges that IT organisations face — and rise to the top.

Shy Michael Joseph catapulted Safaricom from scratch to a tech behemoth raking in billions in profits. Joseph has been quoted as saying that he once did a psychometric test which revealed that he is better off working in a laboratory, with little interaction with people.  

A highly-reserved Larry Page co-founded Google alongside Sergey Brin. His intellectual nature allowed him to create an innovative product that has become the default online searching tool. Page opened a new chapter in the way we search information online.

BILLIONAIRE

Bill Gates — the Microsoft’s founder started out as a solitary introvert. To rise to stardom, he used the people around him to complement his own strengths and weaknesses. His business model has sustained him at the top spot on the world’s richest billionaire’s chart for 18 out of the past 23 years.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the most popular social media outlet, Facebook, is shy and introverted. He often does not seem very warm to people who don’t know him.

Warren Buffet is one of the wealthiest people on the planet.  He’s introverted by nature but still manages to lead one of the most prominent businesses in USA.

COMMUNICATION

Perhaps, in their quest to find a place to express themselves away from real life socialisation, these tech titans build internet and its allied technology. Studies show that social media platforms provide introverted people a space to speak digitally — because they favour written to spoken communication.

Tech companies, regardless of where they are in the world, are more likely to be captained by men and women who exhibit humility, modesty, reservation, shyness, grace and mild-mannerism.

If these qualities describe you, step out; you may be the tech-titan the world is waiting for.

The writer is an informatics specialist. [email protected] @samwambugu2