6 ms·

It's weird to read an "essay" about "nerds" from a 56 year old. It's like he never got over the high school caste system of cliques.

woeIsPG 5y ago
Pretty sure a lot of people’s brains broke given Trump, environment, and coronavirus. The veil was lifted. A whole lot of the late Boomer, and Gen X are halfway to the end, realizing it wasn’t magic, and seeing sentiment for their efforts turn on them. I’ve seen a number of folks, 40-60, meltdown over the last 2-3 years. Most of my 20-30 something acquaintances have weathered it well. The older class though, has really been hit by reality not being as easily bent to their will given the virus, and sentiment turning against their generation acting as helicopter parents to society.
bob33212 5y ago
I think it relates to how he grew up in an unfragmented society. He talks about it here. http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html It applies to a lot of what is happening in society today.
johnthealy3 5y ago
To be fair, this man's job was to identify the type of person who is likely to succeed at startups, and by most accounts he was very successful at it. Understanding personality traits and how they relate to the people you're looking for has felt critically important as I work on my startup. It has come up over and over again in hiring (including MANY more inbound, exploratory conversations than I would have expected) and in client management (identifying the best point of contact on their side, but also keeping clients on track and responsive during an onboard).
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
I dont understand. He grew up as a teen during the age of D&D and core scifi/nerd culture. How is not qualified to speak of this stuff?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  I've noticed as I myself get older that a lot of things that older people used to say, which seemed particularly out of touch then, are actually starting to make some amount of sense to me. I even find myself repeating some of those things. However, I try to be careful to temper that with my memories of hearing them from older folks when I was young. I think part of the disconnect is/was that older people actually do forget what it was like to be young or how they thought/felt when they were young. I'd suspect that's what's going on in OP's mind - he's mostly forgotten the trials and tribulations of youth (maybe even defensively blocked out some of the traumatic memories) and to him it doesn't even make sense for an older person to remember how important social interactions are to teenagers.
- morelisp 5y ago
  > the age of D&D Is right now. It's orders of magnitude more popular than it has ever been.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> It's weird to read an "essay" about "nerds" from a 56 year old. It's like he never got over the high school caste system of cliques. “Nerds” being a meaningful category isn’t an idea limited to high-school caste/cliques, especially in tech; one of the reasons software flipped from being predominantly female to predominantly male is the popularization of the idea (IIRC, in the late 1960s or early 1970s) that stereotypical nerds (socially maladapted, querulous, technophilic males) were the optimal workers in the field. The idea, which best as I know was only grounded in thin popular management quasi-science, has become increasingly less popular in the last few decades. It is weird, though, that Graham’s affected contrarianism requires him to pretend that fierceness as opposed to diffidence is contrary to the popular stereotype, nerds lacking the skills to manage/moderate conflict manifesting in both conflict avoidance where they are uncomfortable and fierce, intractable, often petty conflict within their comfort zone has always been central to the stereotype.
hindsightbias 5y ago
Perhaps it's a generational thing, but a lot of people never get over high school. Fortunately for my generation, we didn't scrimmage or skate with helmets so we don't remember who wronged us. IDK how later generations manage.
Der_Einzige 5y ago
My 70 year old grand-father, whose getting increasingly worse bouts of dementia, still remembers all the names and deeds of the various school bullies who tormented him in High School like it was yesterday. School seems like it was a very traumatic time for many, many people. Bullys do enormous amounts of damage to people and I am very happy to see the slow death of the "high school caste system" from the new generation. A lot of genuine social justice will come from increasing culture shaming and rejection of people who act like bullys.
droobles 5y ago
I agree with you initially, but I tried to read it from the lens of someone who is reflecting on his past experiences and applying them to a certain archetype of people he meets throughout life working in tech. With computer science being one of the most popular degrees being held by Gen Z, the "nerd" casting will slowly fade as computer work becomes more and more the norm vs. traditional trades and fields that require higher education. Average Joe caught wind you could make Lawyer and Doctor money with a Bachelor's or less, makes sense to me.

woeIsPG 5y ago

Pretty sure a lot of people’s brains broke given Trump, environment, and coronavirus. The veil was lifted. A whole lot of the late Boomer, and Gen X are halfway to the end, realizing it wasn’t magic, and seeing sentiment for their efforts turn on them. I’ve seen a number of folks, 40-60, meltdown over the last 2-3 years. Most of my 20-30 something acquaintances have weathered it well. The older class though, has really been hit by reality not being as easily bent to their will given the virus, and sentiment turning against their generation acting as helicopter parents to society.

bob33212 5y ago

I think it relates to how he grew up in an unfragmented society. He talks about it here. http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html It applies to a lot of what is happening in society today.

johnthealy3 5y ago

To be fair, this man's job was to identify the type of person who is likely to succeed at startups, and by most accounts he was very successful at it. Understanding personality traits and how they relate to the people you're looking for has felt critically important as I work on my startup. It has come up over and over again in hiring (including MANY more inbound, exploratory conversations than I would have expected) and in client management (identifying the best point of contact on their side, but also keeping clients on track and responsive during an onboard).

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

I dont understand. He grew up as a teen during the age of D&D and core scifi/nerd culture. How is not qualified to speak of this stuff?

commandlinefan 5y ago
I've noticed as I myself get older that a lot of things that older people used to say, which seemed particularly out of touch then, are actually starting to make some amount of sense to me. I even find myself repeating some of those things. However, I try to be careful to temper that with my memories of hearing them from older folks when I was young. I think part of the disconnect is/was that older people actually do forget what it was like to be young or how they thought/felt when they were young. I'd suspect that's what's going on in OP's mind - he's mostly forgotten the trials and tribulations of youth (maybe even defensively blocked out some of the traumatic memories) and to him it doesn't even make sense for an older person to remember how important social interactions are to teenagers.
morelisp 5y ago
> the age of D&D Is right now. It's orders of magnitude more popular than it has ever been.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> It's weird to read an "essay" about "nerds" from a 56 year old. It's like he never got over the high school caste system of cliques. “Nerds” being a meaningful category isn’t an idea limited to high-school caste/cliques, especially in tech; one of the reasons software flipped from being predominantly female to predominantly male is the popularization of the idea (IIRC, in the late 1960s or early 1970s) that stereotypical nerds (socially maladapted, querulous, technophilic males) were the optimal workers in the field. The idea, which best as I know was only grounded in thin popular management quasi-science, has become increasingly less popular in the last few decades. It is weird, though, that Graham’s affected contrarianism requires him to pretend that fierceness as opposed to diffidence is contrary to the popular stereotype, nerds lacking the skills to manage/moderate conflict manifesting in both conflict avoidance where they are uncomfortable and fierce, intractable, often petty conflict within their comfort zone has always been central to the stereotype.

hindsightbias 5y ago

Perhaps it's a generational thing, but a lot of people never get over high school. Fortunately for my generation, we didn't scrimmage or skate with helmets so we don't remember who wronged us. IDK how later generations manage.

Der_Einzige 5y ago

My 70 year old grand-father, whose getting increasingly worse bouts of dementia, still remembers all the names and deeds of the various school bullies who tormented him in High School like it was yesterday. School seems like it was a very traumatic time for many, many people. Bullys do enormous amounts of damage to people and I am very happy to see the slow death of the "high school caste system" from the new generation. A lot of genuine social justice will come from increasing culture shaming and rejection of people who act like bullys.

droobles 5y ago

I agree with you initially, but I tried to read it from the lens of someone who is reflecting on his past experiences and applying them to a certain archetype of people he meets throughout life working in tech. With computer science being one of the most popular degrees being held by Gen Z, the "nerd" casting will slowly fade as computer work becomes more and more the norm vs. traditional trades and fields that require higher education. Average Joe caught wind you could make Lawyer and Doctor money with a Bachelor's or less, makes sense to me.