
Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd - aaronbrethorst
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/upshot/techs-damaging-myth-of-the-loner-genius-nerd.html
======
alexandercrohde
I really agree that social skills are the biggest missing component in
effective engineering collaboration (because there are so many Loner Genius
Nerds who refuse to use each others software but would rather rebuild a
monument to themselves).

But I wish they wouldn't conflate this with the google memo though. That topic
is already too muddled.

The three _entirely distinct_ questions are:

1\. Is lack of interest on average (due to genetics) a potential contributing
factor to the male/female ratio in engineering?

2\. Is asking that question (or expressing an opinion on it) a punishable
offense? If so, when and why, and are both sides equally punishable, or only
the conservative side?

3\. Are social skills an undervalued in technology?

The reason the google memo instigated such a shitstorm is that it (and the
ensuing debate) conflated questions 1 and 2.

One side was largely arguing that presenting gender-based-patterns in a
scientific light (true or not) has negative psychological effects.

The other side was railing against the fact that a debate couldn't even happen
because one side was being socially punished for even bringing up the
question.

------
klagermkii
> Silicon Valley culture encourages it. Google calls engineers who aren’t
> managers “individual contributors.” Technical skills are valued above soft
> skills or business skills. “Anyone who deals with a human being is
> considered less intelligent,” said Ellen Ullman, a software programmer and
> author of a new book, “Life in Code.” “You would think it would be the other
> way around, but the more your work is just talking to the machine, the more
> valuable it is.”

While I clearly don't think one should go to the extreme of undervaluing soft
skills, can we at least keep one industry that primarily values technical
competence? There is absolutely no shortage of other fields (most of them)
where the main/only way to advance is through management, and I don't think
this has to be treated as a flaw that needs to be fixed.

~~~
george_morgan
The essence of the problem is this: 'tech' is now simply too big and too
important to our culture and society to be only about the technology.

Now, decisions made at Google don't just change how we search the internet.

Now, decisions made at Uber don't just change car hire.

Now, decisions made at Amazon don't just change online book selling.

Technical competence is essential for competition and innovation, but social
competence (and conscience) are essential to growth and longevity.

------
lagadu
I feel the writer is either being disingenuous or isn't a professional in the
field.

As a software engineer myself I do agree that collaboration is essential for
the product development cycle, specifically it's important for training hires
and for project planning, including breaking down features into tasks. That
said, once we make it into the task level, where coding gets done, the job is
absolutely a solo task. That's what the whole process is designed to do; to
break down any requirements into tasks that can be worked on solo by one team
member, at that level collaboration or anything other than technical skills
don't offer much.

~~~
adrianratnapala
It varies from day to day and person to person, but "the task level, where
coding gets done" is not really where I spend much of my working time. Much
more of my time is figuring out how things work and then getting agreement on
changes.

So that consideration elevates the value of social skills, but it's not
obvious what that means in practice. Nerds with poor social skills can fail
for all the usual reasons, #1 being big ego. But if we respect our colleagues'
intelligence, then it can be helpful when we nerds are socially "naive" enough
to take comments at face value without the usual human instinct of treating
them as moves in a complex game.

Another social skill is clear communication, and that is rare. But I've found
it uncorrelated with nerdiness -- maths and engineering types are occasionally
good at it, because they are good at pinning down concepts. But artsy types
can also be good at it. I'd say lawyers are the best overall.

------
andrenotgiant
Maybe there's no direct causal link between "Loner Genius Nerd's" and "being a
great developer" but I think there's an indirect correlation.

"Loner's" have lots of alone time. One way to use alone time is to use and
learn technology.

Technology is a new, complex and fast-changing field. There were always
professional benefits to having thousands of hours invested in it.

There is a correlation between "loner nerds" and "good developers" in the same
way that there is a correlation between "drinking orange juice" and "testing
well on the SAT." One doesn't cause the other, there's a underlying thing that
causes both.

Nowadays, technology is so broad and pervasive that there are also ways to
channel thousands of hours invested in socializing, understanding people,
drawing, writing letters, farming, helping old people into being a good
developer.

------
LordHumungous
Yes and no. It's true that collaboration is important when working on a team,
and that social skills are underrated in engineering. On the other hand, the
job is fundamentally not very social. Collaboration in engineering means
breaking a large problem down into smaller pieces, and assigning those pieces
to individual engineers to work on by themselves for hours or days at a time.

------
kyle-rb
>Empathy also affects which products are built in the first place — why, for
example, Silicon Valley has spent more time building apps for expensive food
delivery than for decreasing hunger.

>“There’s no cool technology toy that teaches that there are different
religions around the world and it’s O.K. to be tolerant.”

I think the author is confusing "problems that exist" with "markets that
exist", since both of those are more philanthropic endeavors than they are
profitable businesses.

------
adamnemecek
How about let's get rid of the idea of prescribing how people should program.
Different situations call for different approaches.

> Some people in the industry say computer science students would benefit from
> more liberal arts courses.

The sentiment is nice but I can't see this having an actual impact. How does
taking interpretative dance help me with anything?

~~~
std_throwaway
> Different situations call for different approaches.

This leads to a situation of growing chaos where not everybody can understand
what everybody else does. Your engineers are no longer easily replaceable and
creating interacting systems gets growingly complicated.

Mix this in with limited time and resources of management, it's easier to give
out guidelines than to deal with the mess that'll be created when loosening
the leashes.

(It all totally depends on the situation, though.)

~~~
adamnemecek
The alternative is a situation where you have many meetings for every decision
and nothing gets done due to analysis paralysis.

In Finland, there's a concept of management by perkele which I like
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N2S_Gm78SLs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N2S_Gm78SLs)

~~~
std_throwaway
Analysis paralysis goes well with bikeshedding when people who are not into
the technical details are involved in the decision making process and start
arguing about not-so-relevant details.

I'd like a situation where the affected people give input and management
decides who shall be involved in the decision making and delegates the
decision and parts of the execution to those people.

------
the_jeremy
> The Google engineer who was fired last week over his memo wrote that most
> women were biologically unsuited to working in tech because they were more
> focused on “feelings and aesthetics than ideas” and had “a stronger interest
> in people rather than things.” Many scientists have said he got the biology
> wrong. But the job requirements of today’s programmers show he was also
> wrong about working in tech.

But... he didn't get it wrong. Collaboration and social skills are extremely
valuable in tech, sure. But they aren't the primary focus of the job. If I
were someone more interested in people than things (not saying that women
are), I wouldn't want to work in an industry where the primary objective is to
make a thing, regardless of how cooperatively the thing was made.

------
std_throwaway
Good engineers solve problems well.

Excellent engineers solve better problems.

Usually it's a long path from something a customer wants (or actually needs)
to finding an appropriate implementation (if there even exists one). Many
things can go wrong along the way and miscommunication happens in both
directions.

------
fooker
As a successful 'loner genius', I am a little bit conflicted about being in
the same category as an unicorn.

------
lostmsu
The first sentence already states, that fired guy said women "unfit". Stopped
reading right there.

~~~
CalChris
If you put the word "unfit" in quotes then you are quoting the article. The
first paragraph of the article says:

> The Google engineer who was fired last week over his memo wrote that most
> women were biologically unsuited to working in tech because they were more
> focused on “feelings and aesthetics than ideas” and had “a stronger interest
> in people rather than things.”

The article does not use the word _unfit_ in the first or in any of the
remaining paragraphs. Since you got that simple fact wrong I stopped reading
your in-depth analysis right there.

~~~
thinkfurther
I vouched for the story (which I didn't flag) just so I could reply: "unfit"
and "unsuited" mean exactly the same thing. Are you being this intellectually
dishonest on purpose?

> Since you got that wrong I stopped reading your analysis right there.

That's great, because the analysis is concluded: hack fraud journalism. Next.

~~~
CalChris
Unfit and unsuited do _not_ mean exactly the same thing. In particular, I
can't say that the manifesto said that women are unfit to work in tech. Damore
didn't say and he didn't mean that. I can and will say that the manifesto said
(not quoting here) that women are unsuited for tech. There's sufficient
difference between the two words to drive that truck between them.

    
    
      Unfit: not of the necessary quality or standard to meet a particular purpose
      Unsuited: not right or appropriate.
    

When you quote, quote accurately, especially if you put your quotes in
quotation marks.

~~~
thinkfurther
> In particular, I can't say that the manifesto said that women are unfit to
> work in tech.

You can't say it said they're unsuitable to work in tech either.

> I can and will say that the manifesto said (not quoting here)

You can't make this shit up.. well, as long as you're not quoting I don't care
so much what you "can and will say". It's just hot air and saying nothing. But
with the way I hobble around in the uncanny valley of the English language,
I'm always happy to teach bits of it to a native speaker:
[http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/unfit](http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/unfit)

unsuited is one of the synonyms. Though not vice versa, but then again, that's
just some random site:
[http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/unsuited](http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/unsuited)

Here's another random site: [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/unfit](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/unfit)

    
    
        a :  not adapted to a purpose :  unsuitable
    

But what really gets me that rather than correcting that, you just add
something even more silly:

    
    
      Unfit: not of the necessary quality or standard to meet a particular purpose
      Unsuited: not right or appropriate.
    

Do you notice something? "Unsuited" without a qualifier such as "to meet a
particular purpose" makes no sense, and cannot be used that way. If anything,
unfit can be used that way, though the purpose (being a mother, or standing up
without wheezing) is usually implied. You might as well spell the definition
of one word with capital letters and the other with lower ones and say "that's
not _exactly_ the same".

I agree that unfit _can_ be used to mean a value statement, a "not good
enough", where unsuitable is more neutral. But even the Oxford Dictionary
which defines the individual words in such a way then has this:

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/thesaurus/unfit](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/thesaurus/unfit)

Drive a truck between them? Heh.

Language is too nice an invention to play games with it like this.

> When you quote, quote accurately, especially if you put your quotes in
> quotation marks.

If you get hung up on this, and actually defend it, you would otherwise have
ignored it or found something else. I'll just claim that -- I can, and I will!
-- to save us both time.

~~~
CalChris
When you quote, quote accurately, especially if you put your quotes in
quotation marks. Full stop.

~~~
thinkfurther
Do you mistake yourself for someone who can give me orders? "Full stop" is
code for you not having the honesty nor courtesy to just say "thanks for the
correction". Your comment stands corrected, you're welcome.

