
Be nice to nerds - jaoued
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21702183-forget-cool-kids-geeks-are-now-shaping-new-products-and-services-be-nice-nerds
======
sakopov
After living in the US for nearly 2 decades I am still amazed at the fact that
Americans belittle and make fun of people who are experts in certain fields
and go as far as calling them names. When I was a kid in USSR I participated
in a club called "Юный радиолюбитель" (similar to amateur radio hobbyist)
where kids from 9 to 16 made electronic gadgets, radios, games and etc from
publicly available schematics. I remember how fascinated everyone in my class
was when I talked about the stuff I worked on. When I came to the US, still as
a teenager, I was mocked as a geek or nerd. It is the oddest thing and still
makes no sense to me.

~~~
asimuvPR
Culturally there are two main groups:

1\. Popular or "cool" people. Anyone who is not "book smart".

2\. Nerds, geeks, etc. People considered to be smart.

There are people who somehow manage to belong to both sides. But its very
clear cut. Everything you do is defined by that. I don't know how it came
about, but have noticed that it came to be during the early 20th century. If
you look back at media from around after WW2 ended (late 40s and 50s) it
starts to become used in movies and television. Popular people are into
sports, cars, etc. Nerds are science types.

I experienced both sides in high school. In my experience, the popular side
was more concerned in having a good time than anything. They wanted the
attention. The nerds were generally better people all around. Nicer when you
got to know them. I was a nerd who did sports and somehow ended up in between.
But then decided to go full "nerd". The right choice because those friendships
have lasted.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Culturally there are two main groups:

Except, really, no.

> 1\. Popular or "cool" people. Anyone who is not "book smart".

Except lots of people in this group are book smart, and even recognized as
such by their peers in this group. It just isn't seen as _dominating_ who they
are.

> 2\. Nerds, geeks, etc. People considered to be smart.

I would say that nerds, geeks, etc. as distinct from "popular" are defined
more by perceived (from the "popular" perspective) overattachment to niche
intellectual pursuits.

There is a very loose correlation with perceived smarts here, but its quite
possible to be perceived as geeky/nerdy without being perceived as smart, and
vice versa.

Also, you leave out (3) the very wide group of people who are _neither_
particularly popular _nor_ perceived as geeks/nerds.

~~~
coldtea
> _> Culturally there are two main groups: Except, really, no._

Except you've missed the word "main".

~~~
dragonwriter
By any reasonable definition where either #1 or #2 is a "main" group, #3 is a
main group.

------
johan_larson
Are these the ads by GE that the article is talking about?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGoBlI_fdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGoBlI_fdg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvfU1NpCJQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvfU1NpCJQQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpDIEJrog3s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpDIEJrog3s)

~~~
marsrover
That first commercial made me seriously crack up when I saw it for the first
time. Great commercial.

------
biot

      > Techies in San Francisco don not only hoodies but
      > also T-shirts with “G∑∑K” emblazoned on the front.
    

Really, a geek would actually wear a t-shirt like that? It sounds a bit like
someone who is a computer neophyte wearing (non-ironically) a t-shirt that
says:

    
    
      CTRL+ALT+DEL
      I'm a computer expert

~~~
nine_k
No self-respecting geek would misuse a sigma where an epsilon belongs.

~~~
dragonwriter
Phonetically, I'm think it should be an iota, not an epsilon, though either is
far closer than sigma.

~~~
catoc
Now that we can nitpick: "a iota", not "an iota" :)

------
bradleyjg
I don't care if it is supposed to have been reclaimed. To me 'nerd' is a
nasty, derogatory word that I don't use myself and I take offense when other
people use.

~~~
gkilmain
Agreed, labels suck, though I have been called a bro-grammer and for some
reason it doesn't bother me. Maybe because its the antithesis of nerd.

~~~
danbolt
That's interesting. I feel like brogrammer would bug me a lot more than nerd.
It could just be preferences though.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, back in the day, "nerd" meant "social misfit". Which a lot of us were
(me included), because we were too busy trying to be smart to be worried about
learning how to play the social game. (Paul Graham wrote an essay about this,
"Why Nerds are Unpopular".) But in the real world, it turns out that social
skills also matter, and I should have realized it earlier.

But these days, "nerd" means more "socially awkward _but really smart_ ",
which is neutral to positive from our perspective.

"Brogrammer", on the other hand, to me at least means "male who thinks he's
really smart (even if he isn't) and therefore that he can be an offensive jerk
to others, especially females". It would bug me _a lot_ if someone thought
that was true of me.

~~~
gkilmain
Its unfortunately that is your interpretation of the word because your
definition is inflammatory

~~~
AnimalMuppet
By "word", I presume you mean "brogrammer".

Do you have a less inflammatory definition? (I would claim that my definition
is true to the current _connotation_ of the word, even if not the current
_denotation_.)

~~~
gkilmain
Yes. Remove everything after the word smart and add "(like most people in the
programming profession)"

~~~
khedoros
That doesn't capture what I think of when someone says "brogrammer". At the
very least, I think it also denotes a strong sense of machismo, with a
connotation of disrespect for others and boorishness. It's not a positive
term, generally speaking.

------
btbuildem
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you may end up working for them”

Uhhh, no, chances are you're gonna be working for some MBA or other, alongside
the other nerds.

~~~
nine_k
Depends on the industry. In IT, I most of my bosses had a definitely nerdy
background, except maybe one (who was still pretty nerd-friendy).

~~~
kamaal
Most bosses are basically political nerds. Their area of expertise is
politics.

------
saosebastiao
> “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you may end up working for them,” wrote
> Charles Sykes, author of the book “50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School”,
> first published in 2007.

I'm not sure why this guy is getting credit for a saying that was a common
teacher's refrain when I was still in middle school in the early 90's.

Regardless, nerd (still hate the word, but I'll use it here for the sake of
brevity) triumphalism isn't going to help it happen. It feeds a superiority
complex and an underdog mentality at the same time...the product of which can
be quite cringy at times [0].

Nerds are becoming increasingly important as technology and science become
more prevalent in our daily lives, but at the end of the day nerds still can't
do it all by themselves. Even companies that are led by nerds still have
people who aren't nerds that work for them and keep them alive: PR people, HR
managers, financial analysts and accountants, etc. I would argue that the 99th
percentile of financial and organizational managers are 1000x more valuable
than the 99th percentile 10x engineer. Even the nerdiest of nerd-led
ycombinator unicorns would consider themselves extremely lucky to be bought
out by Bain Capital or Goldman Saks private equity, or to have 20% of their
IPO value swindled from them by an investment bank. These organizations don't
give a shit about how the world works, just about how well it makes them
money.

Middle managers that shit on nerds are never successful, but nerds that shit
on middle managers aren't successful either. If you can't see your position as
symbiotic, you are doomed to failure.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10238132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10238132)

~~~
Aelinsaar
Honestly, the amount of energy that a person can waste on something other than
being mutually supportive is staggering. It's generally much better to
consider people in more human terms, than "Nerd" or "Manager" in any case.

------
oconnor0
So the argument is "be nice to nerds because they make and shape new things"?
What happened to be kind to people because they are people?

------
s_dev
I agreed with everything in the article and thats why I think it's a poor
article.

Hall mark of a good read is being doubtful of the posited headline premise but
afterwards being utterly convinced of a new thought or stance.

You could have written this 20 years ago and it would feel just as accurate. I
mean the premise is that nerds are trendsetters. The article contains lots of
a fun anecdotes but nothing convincing or more importantly new. Exactly what
does this article say thats new?

Since Jobs/Gates/Zuckerberg emerged people have looked to nerds to be good
candidates for captains of industry.

------
estefan
> This year tuition fees at these boot-camps will reach around $200m in
> America alone.

Jeez, I'm in the wrong business...

> as awkward to watch as an engineer trying to do stand-up comedy for the
> first time

See above. I thank you :-D

------
knowaveragejoe
Uh, hasn't this been the case for quite some time now? What is this article
saying that wasn't being said about computer whiz-kids in the 90s?

~~~
panzagl
Nerds have been poised to rule the world for about as long as Linux has been
ready to break out onto the desktop.

------
eistrati
It's strongly advised to be nice to people in general, but I agree that
"Chances are you may end up working for them" :-)

------
serge2k
> presents the “brogrammer” startup culture in all its grit and glory

Not one of the main characters could be described as a Brogrammer.

> Each month at least 70m people play “League of Legends”, a complex
> multiplayer online game; that is more than play baseball, softball or tennis
> worldwide.

... soccer?

> The “sharing economy”, exemplified by Lyft and Airbnb, also was originally a
> nerd thing: they prefer renting to buying stuff.

or we prefer cheap/better. Uber and Lyft are cheaper than a taxi and better.
AirBnB means I can rent an apartment instead of a sketchy motel. If anything
Zipcar would be a better example, pay to rent a car short term so you don't
need to buy one. The whole point seems odd though.

> Brands like Mountain Dew and Doritos have sponsored video-game competitions

and are mocked for it... Drink verification can.

as a nerd I don't really like being lumped in with Dew chugging CoD players or
anything to do with LoL. kinda /s

> that feels as awkward to watch as an engineer trying to do stand-up comedy
> for the first time

because engineers aren't funny right.

------
gourou
> As the success of Pokémon Go, an augmented-reality game, shows (see
> article), there can be big profits in the avant-garde areas where nerds like
> to experiment

The article doesn't point to the correct page but to a story about Theranos,
strange.

[http://www.economist.com/news/business/21702208-theranoss-
fo...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21702208-theranoss-fortunes-
worsen-again-red-alert)

~~~
return0
Chances are it was written by a bad bot

------
imh
>At the time [2011], the naysayers thought coding was a weird, fringe activity
for computer-science geeks.

Is this at all true?

~~~
clifanatic
I was already pretty old five years ago and I can confirm that this was not at
all true at that time.

------
Kluny
I checked the date on this article assuming it was written in 1998. Nope, July
16, 2016. O-kay. Thought we had moved on, but I guess the Economist hasn't.

------
Eire_Banshee
> Andreessen Horowitz has invested in various gadgets and products that early
> adopters have embraced, including a nutrient-rich drinkable meal for
> engineers too busy to take a break from coding, called Soylent.

What? Does nobody else think that is... messed up?

~~~
mordocai
Soylent? I mean, it isn't really for "engineers too busy to take a break from
coding". That's just the way the journalist chose to phrase it (and I found it
hilarious as a soylent consumer).

Its basically the same idea as the other "liquid meal replacements" out there.
Cheaper than a real meal and nutrient rich with little to no preparation.

I have it for lunch often just because I don't want to bother with
making/buying lunch.

~~~
mfoy_
I assume he means the name... it's basically a reference to Soylent Green and
cannibalism. "Soylent" is a portmanteau of "soy" and "lentil", but "Soylent"
specifically is most commonly associated with the movie about a similar meal
replacement where the secret ingredient was other humans.

Because of that, I literally thought the "Soylent" thing was a joke, I didn't
think someone would ACTUALLY try to sell a meal replacement called
"Soylent"... it's just... a bit macabre.

~~~
dragonwriter
To be fair, the name seems to be based on the book _Make Room! Make Room!_ ,
not the movie (extremely loosely based on the book) _Soylent Green_. Soylent
in the book (also, the forms of soylent other than soylent _green_ in the
movie) was not made from people.

On the other hand, the _movie_ probably has more cultural currency than the
novel, so its still probably fairly poor branding.

