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Because there's a large swath of people in the technology industry who consider not understanding social graces well to be a virtue. Most of the time that just
by joshAg 9y ago
Because there's a large swath of people in the technology industry who consider not understanding social graces well to be a virtue. Most of the time that just comes out as being awkward in a stereotypically nerdy way, but it also manifests as being unable to see what is so wrong with hitting on someone in a business setting or being unable to see why someone might be so upset about it.
- pm90 9y agoAh, you know what, I had been thinking about this for a while and I think your comment nails it. Most of my programmer friends seem to have some degree of social awkwardness (including myself, although I did recognize it as a liability and chose to change it) and just like you said, its usually just harmless nerdy behavior. But when these same people come across power in any form, that same social awkwardness can cause serious problems.
- joshAg 9y agoYou don't even need to be in power for this issue to cause problems. If someone in power does something bad, if the lack of social skills prevents you from realizing what they did was bad, then you're essentially going to let it continue by not speaking out about it and you're going to reinforce that whatever that thing was was actually ok. And this is all done without you even realizing what you are doing, because you don't have the social skills realize that you are doing it at all.