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>> it is hard for us tech oriented people to build a great social life. This stereotype needs to die. For some reason, tech people have a superiority complex

>> it is hard for us tech oriented people to build a great social life. This stereotype needs to die. For some reason, tech people have a superiority complex about their intelligence and inferiority complex about their social intelligence (neither of which is true from what I have observed). Tech people are normal people.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Grustaf 5y ago
Not sure that's true. I would be surprised if computer nerds weren't significantly further along the autism spectrum than average.
- aqme28 5y ago
  I think there's a correlation, but it's not even particularly strong. I know plenty of socially well-adjusted programmers.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    That's the set of programmers you know personally - this sample is biased towards more socially-engaged programmers (the more social contacts they have, the more likely you are to know them).
    - panda-giddiness 5y ago
      Amusingly, most people are biased towards engaging with people more sociable than they [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
      - HPsquared 5y ago
        It's like how most online content is produced by a vocal minority. Most informal "random samples" are not representative of the population as a whole.
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    I think there was probably a much greater correlation between computer science and nerdy people thirty years or so ago, which was progressively diluted by the steeply rising popularity of the field pulling in more and more less-nerdy people.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    I'm aware of very few correlations between personality and profession that are stronger.
- go_elmo 5y ago
  I am asking myself sometimes to what extend CS-based work increases autism-typical behaviour, simply by enforcing similar thinking patterns (maybe). I kind of get into a "tunnel" when having a well focused day of code and feel like Im on the spectrum afterwards. Maybe this enforces this stereotype even if there is no correlation..?
  - jfengel 5y ago
    It's called "flow". Most people do it. It's how artists work and rock climbers climb and everyone else who gets focused on a moderately complex task. Programming is a great form of art, one that is more lucrative than other art forms, but it's not different from other human experience.
  - pizza234 5y ago
    I confirm (for my own case) this phenomenon - the circularity of the behavior. The more I think in a structured way at work, the more I do it outside, the more I do it at work, and so on. I'd say that there is simply a tendency to do that, that gets reinforced by the (work) conditions. In my opinion, it's crucial, in these conditions, to be self-aware and get a certain degree of control, as one can easily slide into, let's say, some negative patterns of the behavior in the spectrum.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    I think it's 90% the other way around. Clearly people that are slightly (or very) autistic will gravitate towards computer work, since computers are like a wet dream for autistics.
  - throwhn1 5y ago
    I have a similar observation. My motivation to start programming as a kid was to build cool stuff but it turned out that just learning to code was so crazy difficult and such a big effort. Eventually I became good at it but I feel like it took a toll from my creativity. Similar with studying, I studied Physics. This was a pragmatic choice since I was naturally good at math, curious about philosophical consequences and job perspectives were supposed to be solid. But the studies were really hard and eventually I started to not care about any philosophical aspect, just accepting everything is state of the (pragmatic) art. Not to mention how often I had to tell people I have to leave early because of studies. Also later on especially in some startups pressure can be insane, one boss once suggested I could work in nowhere land for some months to focus better. (Luckily I didn't do that) But yeah, this certainly does something to you I think. Good to not forget there's also this other life. (I think that's also the point in the pg article) Also I must say social life really became much more difficult over time. When I was younger not meeting anyone in a week felt strange, now I'm happy when I can socialize once a month.
- jfengel 5y ago
  Nerd culture idolizes the hyper focused and dedicated social maladept. That predates the common recognition of autism as a spectrum, but it fit into the stereotype. That hero worship tells people that they're better programmers if they reject everything else. Not only is it not true, it's counterproductive. Autism may be overrepresented among computer people but it's still rare. What's more common, I think, is neurotypical people trying to act autistic and failing. Autistics do indeed need a different approach to a lot of things, but what most nerds need is to think of themselves as people who are fortunate to have a skill set that is well compensated even without being the 100x programmer who sleeps under his desk and eats only Soylent. That gives us the freedom to be interested in life outside of computers and jobs. That's not easy when you have to see outside a culture that emulates a few highly successful individuals. Or worse, emulate the myth of their public persona without actually knowing their real lives. The trick, I would say, is to stop telling each other that we're so different from other people, and that this is necessary to be good at our jobs.
  - connectsnk 5y ago
    This comment should be stickied on hacker news front page so that everyone has a chance to read it.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    If autism is a spectrum, I would say that at least 80% of the programmers I've come in contact with are noticeably further along it than average. Over 60% would be described as awkward. This is in Scandinavia where people generally just work in a field they enjoy, nobody works in IT for the money, so it is probably different in a place like India or even the US.
    - Nbox9 5y ago
      I’m the US. Your comment seems to imply that non-asd folks entering tech are just in it for the money. Between the general popularity with Video Games, the changing Hollywood image of hackers (Neo, FSociety, Pied Pipper), the hero worship of Steve Jobs/Elon Musk, and the general societal acceptance of all things STEM we have a lot of people, especially young men, entering computer programming out of genuine interest. Determining private medical data or motivations for a population is hard to do in any ethical empirical way.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  I don't know that a truck driver or a nurse has a better social life than a software developer. Sounds plausible but far from certain.
throwaway1777 5y ago
I think it used to be more true before coding became such a mainstream career.
agomez314 5y ago
Agreed. I used to have this stereotype in mind which prevented me from delving deep into maths and science. But then I discovered people who enjoyed maths who were also great speakers, and friendly, and fun to hang around with, which dispelled my fears.
pawelmurias 5y ago
I don't tend to meet a lot of stupid people working at a FAANG company.
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  > people working at a FAANG company. Do you think this is a representative sample?
- quartesixte 5y ago
  Define Stupid. Because I’ve met plenty of otherwise on paper “smart” people who made/make horrendously unintelligent life decisions.
  - pawelmurias 5y ago
    Thinking slowly and only in a simple way. I have met brilliant people who do crazy things due to strange behavior patterns and emotional problem but that's different to being dumb.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Do you automatically assign credibility because they work at a FAANG? That introduces a bias where you assume someone is smart until they prove otherwise where you might assume the average McD worker isn't until the prove otherwise. We do it on here where we assume a higher level of conversation compared to a facebook post so we leave a better message which reenforces the standard.
wittycardio 5y ago
Depends on what type of tech work you're talking about. At small web shops you'll meet average joes, at average faang type jobs you'll meet social climbers and test takers, at certain startups (cough crypto) you meet financey frat boy types, however in highly technical roles you might run into more autistic genius types than otherwise.
ascar 5y ago
I guess we have to differentiate between people working in tech and the actual nerds. As tech pays well we get more and more people working here for the money and not out of passion. I would say the ones that go hiking, mountain biking or climbing after hours and tend not to touch a computer much outside of work are not the stereotype that is addressed here. They are "normal" (although I don't like that definition of normal) people working in tech. Then there is the stereotype that spent most of their free time on their computers out of passion and that's what made them end up in tech. That's the same stereotype that has a harder time forming social bonds for the simple reason that they tend to stay home to follow their passion rather than engage in social activities.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  I got my first computer at the age of 4. I learned to program BASIC on it when I was 6. At 12 I was building computers, fixing other people's machines, even phone lines. I'm now a platform engineer, working with cloud computing, kubernetes, serverless, the works. I run a small home lab with a few self-hosted services. My home network comprises of many VLANs for different purposes, my router runs OpenWRT which I tinker with a lot. I own 2 3D printers, one of which solely so I can tinker with it, both at the hardware and the software levels. I spend a lot of time reading and learning about new tech, networking, computers in general. I'm also a rock climber. Last year I hiked up Mount Snowdon in Wales. I have done the Inca Trail in Peru to Machu Picchu. I have climbed in Brazil, England, Wales, Greece, France. I'm also a cyclist. I love playing football and basketball (despite being fairly short at 1m65cm). I have been trying to get into running lately, mostly because it's very easy and quick to get some exercise in, since I don't particularly like it. I have gone camping for weeks so I could climb in remote places and/or on the cheap, but also for the sheer enjoyment of it. I have met friends on both camps, and I'm still quite socially awkward and relatively anxious. I still find it hard to relate closely to many people. That doesn't stop me from trying - and failing a lot. The idea that those worlds are at odds on a fundamental level absolutely needs to die. It's not good for us nerds, it's not good for us athletes/workout enthusiasts, it's not good for us nature people.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
donatj 5y ago
I think the reason I became a nerd was almost entirely loneliness. I would spend my nights alone in my room with a monochrome 286 that was given to us.
fxtentacle 5y ago
Fully agree. I'm the kind of person who really enjoys tinkering alone and I can get hooked on a good problem for days... Did the C++ grandmaster challenge in high school and built my own smartwatch. So I belive i qualify as a nerd. But I'm also an extrovert who's good with people. At least my friends and family think so. Plus my wife thinks it's awesome that I can repair so much stuff. The assumption that tech people cannot have great relationships is just wrong. Try not to let it influence you and instead just practice the social skills necessary to meet and get along with people. It'll make you happier. And having friends tends to make work easier, too. But really, do the work. Even for us (lucky?) extroverts, conversation skills are still something that you need to practice if you want to be good at it.
tboyd47 5y ago
Very much this. I thought PG's essay was a West-Coast-centric breakdown of social strata. In my school, our nerds were not overachievers (I should know because I was one and we were all slackers :). The overachievers were all savvy enough to find their place in the social pecking order. I wonder if other East Coasters had that same experience or if it was specific to my town. I did have the opportunity to meet some people from California in high school at a national summer camp I attended who completely matched the Hollywood nerd stereotype, being highly intelligent, D&D-playing, slightly-snooty overachievers. That was the first time I realized it wasn't completely made-up.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  I wonder if it’s also something of a era-specific description of the nerd. The smart over-achievers of my days (the 2000s to 2010s) were all athletic (mostly tennis and basketball), popular and socially well-adjusted. And they trounced everyone else’s test scores consistently. But Southern California isn’t typical or representative of the nation as a whole so I might be stuck in some kind of local maxima/minima.
waterhouse 5y ago
Normal people? So, if someone found 100 software engineers and got their IQs, do you expect they would form an approximately normal distribution, with a mean of 100 and roughly sixteen of them below 85? Or that, for tests that attempt to measure autism such as [0], they would get average scores? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism-spectrum_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism-spectrum_quotient
- leros 5y ago
  Being intellectually intelligent doesn't make you much different from the average person.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  The person you're responding to said "normal people" not "exactly average on any specific metric an HN commenter can choose" so I don't really find this persuasive. "Normal people" is a lot harder to define and quantify than IQ or whatever that other one is and that might be uncomfortable. Nonetheless it is a more useful description for this purpose.
  - waterhouse 5y ago
    The preceding sentence said "tech people have a superiority complex about their intelligence and inferiority complex about their social intelligence (neither of which is true from what I have observed)", so I took "Tech people are normal people" to mean "Tech people have average intelligence and social intelligence"; which I consider extremely unlikely, and therefore proposed some operationalizations of it that could be checked empirically.
    - giraffe_lady 5y ago
      Yes I understood your reasoning. I was pointing out why I didn't find it persuasive.
      - waterhouse 5y ago
psyc 5y ago
Speak for yourself, please.
freewilly1040 5y ago
What you do all day influences your personality, and different professions tend to draw different personalities. It’s absolutely true that software engineers in general are more reserved and even more awkward than eg sales people. One spends long periods in solitary problem solving, the other chats with people all day. I agree though that the mindset that because you are a tech person you are doomed to social awkwardness is destructive and silly. Social skills are simply skills you need to put extra work into polishing as it’s not a skill that will be much developed professionally.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> For some reason, tech people have a superiority complex about their intelligence I also think there's an urge to flaunt that intellect at all times, Especially when among non-peers. I think it's like someone driving their Mercedez up to the middle of the impoverished neighborhood and Counting loads of cash in the public.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Grustaf 5y ago

Not sure that's true. I would be surprised if computer nerds weren't significantly further along the autism spectrum than average.

aqme28 5y ago
I think there's a correlation, but it's not even particularly strong. I know plenty of socially well-adjusted programmers.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  That's the set of programmers you know personally - this sample is biased towards more socially-engaged programmers (the more social contacts they have, the more likely you are to know them).
  - panda-giddiness 5y ago
    Amusingly, most people are biased towards engaging with people more sociable than they [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      It's like how most online content is produced by a vocal minority. Most informal "random samples" are not representative of the population as a whole.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  I think there was probably a much greater correlation between computer science and nerdy people thirty years or so ago, which was progressively diluted by the steeply rising popularity of the field pulling in more and more less-nerdy people.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  I'm aware of very few correlations between personality and profession that are stronger.
go_elmo 5y ago
I am asking myself sometimes to what extend CS-based work increases autism-typical behaviour, simply by enforcing similar thinking patterns (maybe). I kind of get into a "tunnel" when having a well focused day of code and feel like Im on the spectrum afterwards. Maybe this enforces this stereotype even if there is no correlation..?
- jfengel 5y ago
  It's called "flow". Most people do it. It's how artists work and rock climbers climb and everyone else who gets focused on a moderately complex task. Programming is a great form of art, one that is more lucrative than other art forms, but it's not different from other human experience.
- pizza234 5y ago
  I confirm (for my own case) this phenomenon - the circularity of the behavior. The more I think in a structured way at work, the more I do it outside, the more I do it at work, and so on. I'd say that there is simply a tendency to do that, that gets reinforced by the (work) conditions. In my opinion, it's crucial, in these conditions, to be self-aware and get a certain degree of control, as one can easily slide into, let's say, some negative patterns of the behavior in the spectrum.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  I think it's 90% the other way around. Clearly people that are slightly (or very) autistic will gravitate towards computer work, since computers are like a wet dream for autistics.
- throwhn1 5y ago
  I have a similar observation. My motivation to start programming as a kid was to build cool stuff but it turned out that just learning to code was so crazy difficult and such a big effort. Eventually I became good at it but I feel like it took a toll from my creativity. Similar with studying, I studied Physics. This was a pragmatic choice since I was naturally good at math, curious about philosophical consequences and job perspectives were supposed to be solid. But the studies were really hard and eventually I started to not care about any philosophical aspect, just accepting everything is state of the (pragmatic) art. Not to mention how often I had to tell people I have to leave early because of studies. Also later on especially in some startups pressure can be insane, one boss once suggested I could work in nowhere land for some months to focus better. (Luckily I didn't do that) But yeah, this certainly does something to you I think. Good to not forget there's also this other life. (I think that's also the point in the pg article) Also I must say social life really became much more difficult over time. When I was younger not meeting anyone in a week felt strange, now I'm happy when I can socialize once a month.
jfengel 5y ago
Nerd culture idolizes the hyper focused and dedicated social maladept. That predates the common recognition of autism as a spectrum, but it fit into the stereotype. That hero worship tells people that they're better programmers if they reject everything else. Not only is it not true, it's counterproductive. Autism may be overrepresented among computer people but it's still rare. What's more common, I think, is neurotypical people trying to act autistic and failing. Autistics do indeed need a different approach to a lot of things, but what most nerds need is to think of themselves as people who are fortunate to have a skill set that is well compensated even without being the 100x programmer who sleeps under his desk and eats only Soylent. That gives us the freedom to be interested in life outside of computers and jobs. That's not easy when you have to see outside a culture that emulates a few highly successful individuals. Or worse, emulate the myth of their public persona without actually knowing their real lives. The trick, I would say, is to stop telling each other that we're so different from other people, and that this is necessary to be good at our jobs.
- connectsnk 5y ago
  This comment should be stickied on hacker news front page so that everyone has a chance to read it.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  If autism is a spectrum, I would say that at least 80% of the programmers I've come in contact with are noticeably further along it than average. Over 60% would be described as awkward. This is in Scandinavia where people generally just work in a field they enjoy, nobody works in IT for the money, so it is probably different in a place like India or even the US.
  - Nbox9 5y ago
    I’m the US. Your comment seems to imply that non-asd folks entering tech are just in it for the money. Between the general popularity with Video Games, the changing Hollywood image of hackers (Neo, FSociety, Pied Pipper), the hero worship of Steve Jobs/Elon Musk, and the general societal acceptance of all things STEM we have a lot of people, especially young men, entering computer programming out of genuine interest. Determining private medical data or motivations for a population is hard to do in any ethical empirical way.
joelbluminator 5y ago
I don't know that a truck driver or a nurse has a better social life than a software developer. Sounds plausible but far from certain.

throwaway1777 5y ago

I think it used to be more true before coding became such a mainstream career.

agomez314 5y ago

Agreed. I used to have this stereotype in mind which prevented me from delving deep into maths and science. But then I discovered people who enjoyed maths who were also great speakers, and friendly, and fun to hang around with, which dispelled my fears.

pawelmurias 5y ago

I don't tend to meet a lot of stupid people working at a FAANG company.

fknorangesite 5y ago
> people working at a FAANG company. Do you think this is a representative sample?
quartesixte 5y ago
Define Stupid. Because I’ve met plenty of otherwise on paper “smart” people who made/make horrendously unintelligent life decisions.
- pawelmurias 5y ago
  Thinking slowly and only in a simple way. I have met brilliant people who do crazy things due to strange behavior patterns and emotional problem but that's different to being dumb.
ipaddr 5y ago
Do you automatically assign credibility because they work at a FAANG? That introduces a bias where you assume someone is smart until they prove otherwise where you might assume the average McD worker isn't until the prove otherwise. We do it on here where we assume a higher level of conversation compared to a facebook post so we leave a better message which reenforces the standard.

wittycardio 5y ago

Depends on what type of tech work you're talking about. At small web shops you'll meet average joes, at average faang type jobs you'll meet social climbers and test takers, at certain startups (cough crypto) you meet financey frat boy types, however in highly technical roles you might run into more autistic genius types than otherwise.

ascar 5y ago

I guess we have to differentiate between people working in tech and the actual nerds. As tech pays well we get more and more people working here for the money and not out of passion. I would say the ones that go hiking, mountain biking or climbing after hours and tend not to touch a computer much outside of work are not the stereotype that is addressed here. They are "normal" (although I don't like that definition of normal) people working in tech. Then there is the stereotype that spent most of their free time on their computers out of passion and that's what made them end up in tech. That's the same stereotype that has a harder time forming social bonds for the simple reason that they tend to stay home to follow their passion rather than engage in social activities.

cassianoleal 5y ago
I got my first computer at the age of 4. I learned to program BASIC on it when I was 6. At 12 I was building computers, fixing other people's machines, even phone lines. I'm now a platform engineer, working with cloud computing, kubernetes, serverless, the works. I run a small home lab with a few self-hosted services. My home network comprises of many VLANs for different purposes, my router runs OpenWRT which I tinker with a lot. I own 2 3D printers, one of which solely so I can tinker with it, both at the hardware and the software levels. I spend a lot of time reading and learning about new tech, networking, computers in general. I'm also a rock climber. Last year I hiked up Mount Snowdon in Wales. I have done the Inca Trail in Peru to Machu Picchu. I have climbed in Brazil, England, Wales, Greece, France. I'm also a cyclist. I love playing football and basketball (despite being fairly short at 1m65cm). I have been trying to get into running lately, mostly because it's very easy and quick to get some exercise in, since I don't particularly like it. I have gone camping for weeks so I could climb in remote places and/or on the cheap, but also for the sheer enjoyment of it. I have met friends on both camps, and I'm still quite socially awkward and relatively anxious. I still find it hard to relate closely to many people. That doesn't stop me from trying - and failing a lot. The idea that those worlds are at odds on a fundamental level absolutely needs to die. It's not good for us nerds, it's not good for us athletes/workout enthusiasts, it's not good for us nature people.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

donatj 5y ago

I think the reason I became a nerd was almost entirely loneliness. I would spend my nights alone in my room with a monochrome 286 that was given to us.

fxtentacle 5y ago

Fully agree. I'm the kind of person who really enjoys tinkering alone and I can get hooked on a good problem for days... Did the C++ grandmaster challenge in high school and built my own smartwatch. So I belive i qualify as a nerd. But I'm also an extrovert who's good with people. At least my friends and family think so. Plus my wife thinks it's awesome that I can repair so much stuff. The assumption that tech people cannot have great relationships is just wrong. Try not to let it influence you and instead just practice the social skills necessary to meet and get along with people. It'll make you happier. And having friends tends to make work easier, too. But really, do the work. Even for us (lucky?) extroverts, conversation skills are still something that you need to practice if you want to be good at it.

tboyd47 5y ago

Very much this. I thought PG's essay was a West-Coast-centric breakdown of social strata. In my school, our nerds were not overachievers (I should know because I was one and we were all slackers :). The overachievers were all savvy enough to find their place in the social pecking order. I wonder if other East Coasters had that same experience or if it was specific to my town. I did have the opportunity to meet some people from California in high school at a national summer camp I attended who completely matched the Hollywood nerd stereotype, being highly intelligent, D&D-playing, slightly-snooty overachievers. That was the first time I realized it wasn't completely made-up.

quartesixte 5y ago
I wonder if it’s also something of a era-specific description of the nerd. The smart over-achievers of my days (the 2000s to 2010s) were all athletic (mostly tennis and basketball), popular and socially well-adjusted. And they trounced everyone else’s test scores consistently. But Southern California isn’t typical or representative of the nation as a whole so I might be stuck in some kind of local maxima/minima.

waterhouse 5y ago

Normal people? So, if someone found 100 software engineers and got their IQs, do you expect they would form an approximately normal distribution, with a mean of 100 and roughly sixteen of them below 85? Or that, for tests that attempt to measure autism such as [0], they would get average scores? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism-spectrum_quotient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism-spectrum_quotient

leros 5y ago
Being intellectually intelligent doesn't make you much different from the average person.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
The person you're responding to said "normal people" not "exactly average on any specific metric an HN commenter can choose" so I don't really find this persuasive. "Normal people" is a lot harder to define and quantify than IQ or whatever that other one is and that might be uncomfortable. Nonetheless it is a more useful description for this purpose.
- waterhouse 5y ago
  The preceding sentence said "tech people have a superiority complex about their intelligence and inferiority complex about their social intelligence (neither of which is true from what I have observed)", so I took "Tech people are normal people" to mean "Tech people have average intelligence and social intelligence"; which I consider extremely unlikely, and therefore proposed some operationalizations of it that could be checked empirically.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    Yes I understood your reasoning. I was pointing out why I didn't find it persuasive.
    - waterhouse 5y ago

psyc 5y ago

Speak for yourself, please.

freewilly1040 5y ago

What you do all day influences your personality, and different professions tend to draw different personalities. It’s absolutely true that software engineers in general are more reserved and even more awkward than eg sales people. One spends long periods in solitary problem solving, the other chats with people all day. I agree though that the mindset that because you are a tech person you are doomed to social awkwardness is destructive and silly. Social skills are simply skills you need to put extra work into polishing as it’s not a skill that will be much developed professionally.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> For some reason, tech people have a superiority complex about their intelligence I also think there's an urge to flaunt that intellect at all times, Especially when among non-peers. I think it's like someone driving their Mercedez up to the middle of the impoverished neighborhood and Counting loads of cash in the public.