> “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 publishe

> “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