7 ms·

Funny how the nerd stereotype is used in different contexts. In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This cultur

by swatow 12y ago

Funny how the nerd stereotype is used in different contexts. In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side, and it is important to show that you don't have to conform to this subculture to succeed in tech. However, in the context of the corporatization of tech, suddenly the nerds are the good guys. And funnily enough, nerd culture was actually part of the counterculture movement. The old guard of cyber-hippies need to stop the slide into corporate monotony.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person directly ("creep", "racist", "nerd"). It's a fairly general purpose attack that can be targeted at almost anything. One of the more dangerous places is in hiring and evaluation; witness how objective and meritocratic nerd hiring practices (e.g. hire-by-github, death by brainteaser) are now attacked. Similarly, the idea of an individual contributor is also under attack ("you can't have a 10x programmer, you can only have a 10x team"). Once objective measures are eliminated, we'll just descend into petty politics of the sort that "pretty people" are very good at.
- majormajor 12y ago
  Eh, I feel like a lot of that is an overreaction. The sort that makes it hard to have an honest discussion about stuff like diversity from either side. For instance, I've done a lot of interviewing with the Google-type whiteboard coding questions, and all it's really told me is that they don't show crap for how good they're going to be at their everyday job (e.g. will this person consistently submit un-tested code to code review, will they pay as much attention to detail in their job as they do in interview-mode...). It make sure people all meet a minimum bar for a certain sort of smartness, but that smartness doesn't have a lot to do with most development tasks. It works pretty well for identifying the superstars—there's always that tier that blows through whatever you give them way faster—but if you need to hire more people than you have superstars applying, it's kinda crappy. (Except for all the others that have been tried...) In the meantime, when not stuck doing interviews, I'll continue to pay attention to details, deploy code that's been tested and handles its edge cases, get stuff done, and get my hair cut regularly, play basketball, and buy nice clothes even if others in the office are in flip flops. And sometimes I'll wear flip flops too, depending on how I feel that day, whatever.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    The sort that makes it hard to have an honest discussion about stuff like diversity from either side. I have no desire to prevent an intellectual discussion. Quite the opposite - as one of the nerds, I strongly favor a fact based argument over the status competition that this topic usually drives.
  - mahyarm 12y ago
    If you've done those white board interviews, you'll realize there are also a lot of general software opinion questions, and those are supposed to measure what I call, the 'gives a shit' factor. 'Gives a shit' is stuff like testing your code, caring about writing stuff in a readable manor, caring about solving the general solution vs. mindless copy paste and so on. Depending on the interviewer, it can be %50-%80 of the interview.
- swatow 12y ago
  But the people making these attacks are mostly actual feminists, liberals and diversity advocates. They are not business people or MBAs. Maybe the MBAs jump on the bandwagon, but I think they mostly do it to pick the winning side, not because they fear the latent power of nerds. That said, I think you've very accurately described the various attacks on traditional nerd/Silicon Valley culture that are occurring.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- hackuser 12y ago
  Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to be sexist. So of course many think it's meritocratic; they don't see the obstacles because they never experienced them. And of course some think they are victims of persecution; they don't see what they are perpetrating. Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, if a system is truly meritocratic then why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? [1] U.S. population is 77% white, so I estimate 38% white male. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html [2] Wild guess at the % of SV tech workers that are white male. EDIT: Minor rewording for emphasis
  - swatow 12y ago
    >Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? That is actually the least intellectual way you could approach the issue. You are relying on people self-censoring (and we may see some downvotes to provide some real censorship). But I will give you the uncensored answer. There are, in fact, a number of possible reasons apart from the one you have in mind. Here are some. 1) Tech is meritocratic so it attracts men who are less physically attractive or socially capable, because they mainly need technical skill. This in turn makes the field less attractive to women. 2) Tech is a monotonous job with low social status, and so it attracts people driven by ambition and desire for money, who tend to be male. 3) Women are fundamentally less interested in technology because they prefer fields with human interest (though this doesn't explain the gap between programming and, for example, math or physics). I have only really addressed the gender issue above, but I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem.
- hackuser 12y ago
  On meritocracy, including in tech: "'Meritocracy' is not what you think: don’t forget about the 'ocracy'" http://themonkeycage.org/2013/07/13/meritocracy-is-not-what-you-think-dont-forget-about-the-ocracy/ http://themonkeycage.org/2013/07/13/meritocracy-is-not-what-... (The Monkey Cage is a/the leading blog on political science.)
- pyre 12y ago
  > This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. I think that you're just falling into the same stereotyping game. Talking about all of this in such generalities is useless. Nothing is specific enough to be actionable or really be "proven" or "disproven." It just devolves into people shouting at each other.
- O____________O 12y ago
  objective and meritocratic nerd hiring practices (e.g. hire-by-github, death by brainteaser) That selects for adequately privileged (generally) white males with the spare time to create projects on github and a particular interest in brain-teasers. To my knowledge, hiring in all fields is an utter joke, with essentially zero research ever having been performed. It's entirely based on bias and guided by HR-fueled fears of lawsuits.
  - meric 12y ago
    There are plenty of non-white people in github. If there are still too many white people on github, you're free to analyse other programmers from websites other than github, such as this Chinese one: https://code.csdn.net/dwzteam/dwz_jui https://code.csdn.net/dwzteam/dwz_jui All "colours" of people have free time to create projects.
    - O____________O 12y ago
      There are plenty of non-white people in github. I'd like to see how you analyzed the race of github contributors. I'd also like to know what "plenty" means. Personally, I strongly suspect that you'll see fairly small set of race/location/income combinations. All "colours" of people have free time to create projects. Given that we're not really talking about color, per se, I seriously hope that you don't honestly believe that statement.
      - meric 12y ago
        I'd like to see how you analyzed the race of github contributors. I'd also like to know what "plenty" means. Personally, I strongly suspect that you'll see fairly small set of race/location/income combinations. Why, me and my friends and colleagues, Chinese and South African and Ghanian and Kenyan are on github. I'm very offended you suggested only white people can afford to be on github. Given that we're not really talking about color, per se, I seriously hope that you don't honestly believe that statement. You specifically mentioned "white males". It takes half a day to write something you can put on github. If anyone can't do that it's because they're not as experienced as those who can. It's not much more effort than writing a resume. The point of github is so people who aren't interested in brain teasers can demonstrate their ability to write good code. You can argue people who aren't good at programming enough to be able to write something in half a day should be hired anyway, and I'll tell you the communism experiment is over. You, sir, are racially biased.
- informatimago 12y ago
  Again, wrong. Nerd culture has no misogynistic dark side. But women have a very anti-nerd dark side.
freshhawk 12y ago
There isn't one stereotype from that era for good reason. There are a bunch of disparate ones. There were and are cyber-hippies in large very progressive groups. They are the ones being talked to here. Some of them are the reason that these tech culture problems are recognized as important problems. So yes, the stereotype acts as a stereotype: taking on only the set of features needed to support an argument. So don't use or think in terms of "nerds", as that's too coarse to be useful or to tell you anything. Tech is an industry with various subcultures. The OP didn't use the stereotype anyway.
meric 12y ago
The nerd subculture is composed of White males among others, and certainly not dominated by them. It's funny you say nerds have a misogynistic dark side because often a group of nerds first congregate because they weren't interested in spending effort to be popular or attractive and so were a group of rejects and misfits hanging out with each other. You can force some women into 'nerd culture' to make it diversified but then the misfits and rejects are only going to leave and make another group because, well, they're rejected and seen as misfits by the other people you forcefully put in there. The same will occur in the tech industry, as you forcefully insert people from other subcultures into the tech industry, rejects and misfits that first started the industry up will be, well, seen as misfits and become rejected, and will thus leave. The tech industry will become more diversified and conformist, and the misfits and rejects will move on to other things, and then some big wave of change will come from those other things, and those other things would be full of misfits and rejects who happen to be white males, (well america is majority white, what else do you expect), and then we can start this misogyny debate all over again. You can't force everyone to work well with misfits and rejects. Though you can kick out the misfits and rejects, there will always be misfits and rejects, if not here, then they will be somewhere else, working on what society has ignored, so far.

by swatow 12y ago

yummyfajitas 12y ago

There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person directly ("creep", "racist", "nerd"). It's a fairly general purpose attack that can be targeted at almost anything. One of the more dangerous places is in hiring and evaluation; witness how objective and meritocratic nerd hiring practices (e.g. hire-by-github, death by brainteaser) are now attacked. Similarly, the idea of an individual contributor is also under attack ("you can't have a 10x programmer, you can only have a 10x team"). Once objective measures are eliminated, we'll just descend into petty politics of the sort that "pretty people" are very good at.

majormajor 12y ago
Eh, I feel like a lot of that is an overreaction. The sort that makes it hard to have an honest discussion about stuff like diversity from either side. For instance, I've done a lot of interviewing with the Google-type whiteboard coding questions, and all it's really told me is that they don't show crap for how good they're going to be at their everyday job (e.g. will this person consistently submit un-tested code to code review, will they pay as much attention to detail in their job as they do in interview-mode...). It make sure people all meet a minimum bar for a certain sort of smartness, but that smartness doesn't have a lot to do with most development tasks. It works pretty well for identifying the superstars—there's always that tier that blows through whatever you give them way faster—but if you need to hire more people than you have superstars applying, it's kinda crappy. (Except for all the others that have been tried...) In the meantime, when not stuck doing interviews, I'll continue to pay attention to details, deploy code that's been tested and handles its edge cases, get stuff done, and get my hair cut regularly, play basketball, and buy nice clothes even if others in the office are in flip flops. And sometimes I'll wear flip flops too, depending on how I feel that day, whatever.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The sort that makes it hard to have an honest discussion about stuff like diversity from either side. I have no desire to prevent an intellectual discussion. Quite the opposite - as one of the nerds, I strongly favor a fact based argument over the status competition that this topic usually drives.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  If you've done those white board interviews, you'll realize there are also a lot of general software opinion questions, and those are supposed to measure what I call, the 'gives a shit' factor. 'Gives a shit' is stuff like testing your code, caring about writing stuff in a readable manor, caring about solving the general solution vs. mindless copy paste and so on. Depending on the interviewer, it can be %50-%80 of the interview.
swatow 12y ago
But the people making these attacks are mostly actual feminists, liberals and diversity advocates. They are not business people or MBAs. Maybe the MBAs jump on the bandwagon, but I think they mostly do it to pick the winning side, not because they fear the latent power of nerds. That said, I think you've very accurately described the various attacks on traditional nerd/Silicon Valley culture that are occurring.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
hackuser 12y ago
Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to be sexist. So of course many think it's meritocratic; they don't see the obstacles because they never experienced them. And of course some think they are victims of persecution; they don't see what they are perpetrating. Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, if a system is truly meritocratic then why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? [1] U.S. population is 77% white, so I estimate 38% white male. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html [2] Wild guess at the % of SV tech workers that are white male. EDIT: Minor rewording for emphasis
- swatow 12y ago
  >Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)? That is actually the least intellectual way you could approach the issue. You are relying on people self-censoring (and we may see some downvotes to provide some real censorship). But I will give you the uncensored answer. There are, in fact, a number of possible reasons apart from the one you have in mind. Here are some. 1) Tech is meritocratic so it attracts men who are less physically attractive or socially capable, because they mainly need technical skill. This in turn makes the field less attractive to women. 2) Tech is a monotonous job with low social status, and so it attracts people driven by ambition and desire for money, who tend to be male. 3) Women are fundamentally less interested in technology because they prefer fields with human interest (though this doesn't explain the gap between programming and, for example, math or physics). I have only really addressed the gender issue above, but I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem.
hackuser 12y ago
On meritocracy, including in tech: "'Meritocracy' is not what you think: don’t forget about the 'ocracy'" http://themonkeycage.org/2013/07/13/meritocracy-is-not-what-you-think-dont-forget-about-the-ocracy/ http://themonkeycage.org/2013/07/13/meritocracy-is-not-what-... (The Monkey Cage is a/the leading blog on political science.)
pyre 12y ago
> This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. I think that you're just falling into the same stereotyping game. Talking about all of this in such generalities is useless. Nothing is specific enough to be actionable or really be "proven" or "disproven." It just devolves into people shouting at each other.
O____________O 12y ago
objective and meritocratic nerd hiring practices (e.g. hire-by-github, death by brainteaser) That selects for adequately privileged (generally) white males with the spare time to create projects on github and a particular interest in brain-teasers. To my knowledge, hiring in all fields is an utter joke, with essentially zero research ever having been performed. It's entirely based on bias and guided by HR-fueled fears of lawsuits.
- meric 12y ago
  There are plenty of non-white people in github. If there are still too many white people on github, you're free to analyse other programmers from websites other than github, such as this Chinese one: https://code.csdn.net/dwzteam/dwz_jui https://code.csdn.net/dwzteam/dwz_jui All "colours" of people have free time to create projects.
  - O____________O 12y ago
    There are plenty of non-white people in github. I'd like to see how you analyzed the race of github contributors. I'd also like to know what "plenty" means. Personally, I strongly suspect that you'll see fairly small set of race/location/income combinations. All "colours" of people have free time to create projects. Given that we're not really talking about color, per se, I seriously hope that you don't honestly believe that statement.
    - meric 12y ago
      I'd like to see how you analyzed the race of github contributors. I'd also like to know what "plenty" means. Personally, I strongly suspect that you'll see fairly small set of race/location/income combinations. Why, me and my friends and colleagues, Chinese and South African and Ghanian and Kenyan are on github. I'm very offended you suggested only white people can afford to be on github. Given that we're not really talking about color, per se, I seriously hope that you don't honestly believe that statement. You specifically mentioned "white males". It takes half a day to write something you can put on github. If anyone can't do that it's because they're not as experienced as those who can. It's not much more effort than writing a resume. The point of github is so people who aren't interested in brain teasers can demonstrate their ability to write good code. You can argue people who aren't good at programming enough to be able to write something in half a day should be hired anyway, and I'll tell you the communism experiment is over. You, sir, are racially biased.
informatimago 12y ago
Again, wrong. Nerd culture has no misogynistic dark side. But women have a very anti-nerd dark side.

freshhawk 12y ago

There isn't one stereotype from that era for good reason. There are a bunch of disparate ones. There were and are cyber-hippies in large very progressive groups. They are the ones being talked to here. Some of them are the reason that these tech culture problems are recognized as important problems. So yes, the stereotype acts as a stereotype: taking on only the set of features needed to support an argument. So don't use or think in terms of "nerds", as that's too coarse to be useful or to tell you anything. Tech is an industry with various subcultures. The OP didn't use the stereotype anyway.

meric 12y ago

The nerd subculture is composed of White males among others, and certainly not dominated by them. It's funny you say nerds have a misogynistic dark side because often a group of nerds first congregate because they weren't interested in spending effort to be popular or attractive and so were a group of rejects and misfits hanging out with each other. You can force some women into 'nerd culture' to make it diversified but then the misfits and rejects are only going to leave and make another group because, well, they're rejected and seen as misfits by the other people you forcefully put in there. The same will occur in the tech industry, as you forcefully insert people from other subcultures into the tech industry, rejects and misfits that first started the industry up will be, well, seen as misfits and become rejected, and will thus leave. The tech industry will become more diversified and conformist, and the misfits and rejects will move on to other things, and then some big wave of change will come from those other things, and those other things would be full of misfits and rejects who happen to be white males, (well america is majority white, what else do you expect), and then we can start this misogyny debate all over again. You can't force everyone to work well with misfits and rejects. Though you can kick out the misfits and rejects, there will always be misfits and rejects, if not here, then they will be somewhere else, working on what society has ignored, so far.