Your creative tech guru is an interesting sub-section of the population. He hops between the east and west coasts; he antagonizes college graduates (even if he is a college grad), and he regularly turns down high-paying jobs in order to work on projects that are either entertaining, social cause related, or positioned to be the next high velocity startup. Here are a few of my observations about how tech people think.



1. Your job is your life. Some businesspeople make money during the day and then focus their life around their interests, travel, hobbies, or side-projects. Tech people want jobs they can immerse themselves in filled with people they can relate to; not just a job that will pay the rent or serve as a stepping stone.



2. Tech people like to be challenged by equally competent tech people. A high velocity startup with 1 smart tech guy and a room filled with unmotivated programmers will cause the code guru to leave. Tech people would rather be challenged than find job security or lock in a raise.



3. Tech people are some of the most ‘you are wrong so I will go and do it myself’ type of people. Lawyers and businessmen often thrive in the political structure of a corporation to complete tasks; tech people will frequently escape a structure if no one pays attention to them, or if they think they can do it better.



4. The tech guy will often accept $40k a year for an exciting and challenging job with like-minded people over a brief gig where he could make $120 per hour on a task he doesn’t care about. Compare that to a lawyer.



5. Tech people are information distributors. Even though only a small sub-set of tech people follow techcrunch.com, the techy fan-boys tell everyone they know about a cool app or solution; tech people are viral hubs of information distribution through a network of people that ask them “how does this work”.



6. Not all tech people are ‘computer people’. If your computer has a hardware or software issue - I cannot solve it. However I can think about business problems in terms of a database model. Computer people are rumored to be able to assemble and disassemble computers. Tech people might just be avid twitter users.



7. Tech people often overlap strongly with academics, artists, even athletes or non-profit leaders - anyone who combines creativity with real-world action. We tend to be more on the thinker end than the doer end; but you would sooner see us at an art gallery opening than a baseball game.



8. Each tech person has their favorite coding languages - and the reasons, advantages, contexts, and business models constantly change. Some investors tell me they don’t invest in Ruby on Rails projects. Some seasoned entrepreneurs tell me they only hire Ruby on Rails developers. It depends on the situation.



9. One inspired developer with no capital in 1 month can often do as much work as a team of 5 high-paid programmers and project managers reporting to another manager, his secretary, and the HR director could possibly do in 3 months. Watch a tech person who truly acts on an idea - and you will see how planning, use cases, resource allocation, sales, marketing, financing, business strategy, communication - they all either evaporate or become condensed into a single person’s mind - executed like a piano composition. For example - 37signals.com had only 1 server-side ruby on rails developer for years into their product success. Beware the power of a motivated tech guy.



10. Tech people - unlike computer people - are typically social. Even more so than many lawyers, finance guys, or marketing teams. They often structure an entire application around the parties, meetings, culture, and community that app will create. Many new web ventures are nothing except giant excuses to build a community and socialize most of the day.