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Fierce Nerds

paulgraham.com

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Re: Fierce Nerds

#401

Post by cperciva »

novosel wrote: post #372
greyhair wrote: post #347

I worked with a number of brilliant people at Bell Labs through the 1980s/1990s. The most comfortably competent among them, the most productive among them, were also the least abrasive. They were also the most self deprecating. Not just one or two, but the majority of them. To the point that the aggressive geniuses stood out. And I worked for/with two abrasive ones as well, so I know the difference. The same was true…

There is a Russian saying: Who is a wise man? The one that always seeks to occupy the smallest place/room. Nota Bene: I am not a Russian, but simply encountered this formulation several times.

That saying, combined with the euphemism "smallest room in the house", paints an interesting picture.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#402

Post by crocodiletears »

hamburga wrote: post #397

Nerds are already high-status. Look who just hosted Saturday Night Live. The contrarian position is to be anti-nerd and pro-charm. Taleb on this: https://www.azquotes.com/author/18869-Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb/... > Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse

Is there any broader context to this quote?

Re: Fierce Nerds

#403

Post by getpost »

bumby wrote: post #319
getpost wrote: post #294

Since pg's essay is of a psychoanalytic nature, I'll reply in a psychoanalytic frame, for the sake of conversation, not criticism. [Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts.] During the last year or two pg has written more than a few essays and tweets which appear to be of a defensive nature. People like him contribute more than other people, it's alright to to be fierce, can't s…

> Whenever there is dichotomous thinking, cognition has moved away from clarity. Can you expand on this?

Clarity is about seeing how things are, not how you've chosen to divide things up.

(I added this as an edit to my other reply, but it seems the edit is lost.)

Re: Fierce Nerds

#404

Post by npunt »

zzzeek wrote: post #16

> Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, by devoting yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something like that. Maybe that's the right answer for some people. I have no idea. I do, and I think you should invest in these things (not "devote your life", PG shows his deep ignorance here of these things as though they are black and white). if you are in the overwhelming vast majority of "fierce…

Yeah this part was especially disappointing given pg's influence, and I think this is one of his weaker essays because the advice is not well thought out. If you have a chip on your shoulder, are insufferable, can't shut off aggressiveness, etc, the best thing you can do is learn when and how to channel it. That's the missing piece.

I know a lot of people that fit this mold, and for this type of personality there's nothing that will meaningfully dull the edge [1]. But, if they learn how to control it, they can avoid cutting their friends and themselves, and live a much happier life.

The last thing this world needs is more emotionally stunted leaders alone in their suffering.

[1] This point in particular seemed like pg engaging in pure speculation, not something based on specific examples

Re: Fierce Nerds

#405

Post by crocodiletears »

pseudalopex wrote: post #356
ping_pong wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you only believing what you read in the media or do you know people that actually work at Amazon? The fact that Amazon employees in a warehouse rejected unionization speaks volumes. And I know plenty of Amazon engineers that love working there. To put it in perspective, there may be employees that hate working at Amazon, but there are also 100,000 employees. If only 10% of the employees hated working there, that'…

I know people who work at Amazon. Not even the people who like it say it's kind.

I've only once had an employer I would describe as kind. Even then, it was but for the generosity of an aberrant manager, and not a commercial institution.

In most low-skill positions (especially the ones which favor physical labor over soft-skills), you are a body to be instrumentalized until you either leave leave or are disposed of. That's the reality of most work. Retention is as high as it needs to be to ensure continuous operations, and employee happiness is either incidental or primarily a slogan. The human element is made to be as irrelevant as the market will allow.

The Amazon Warehouse workers I've known have described it as warehouse work. Little better or worse in their experience than working at any other distribution center, though some centers are naturally likely to be ran more poorly than others.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#406

Post by steve_adams_86 »

tomcam wrote: post #378
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite people to work with are the gentle geniuses. I love to be wrong around them because I get to learn, and I love opportunities to present something useful I've done and know it will become a valuable contribution. I avoid the other kind of person like a plague now. They ruin otherwise excellent teams. They might be fine to have a drink with or something, but in day to day work, they are sand paper. Another…

I know, right? It is one of the greatest things in the world to be the dumbest guy in a room full of really smart, secure people. It’s like you’re getting a mini postdoc education for free, compressed into a few minutes.

It's the best thing that's happened to my career by a wide margin. I'm 15 years in and definitely not the smartest person in the room on most topics, and I'm finally moving forward and really enjoying it after quite a stagnant period.

I try to remind myself to show some gratitude, not just for my team's knowledge and insights that they share, but for having selected me as a person to join them as well. It's a real privilege to have a good team. I think they consider me more of an equal than I give myself credit for but I really do get an education pretty much every day. Life is interesting.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#407

Post by bob1029 »

solipsism wrote: post #395
greyhair wrote: post #347

I worked with a number of brilliant people at Bell Labs through the 1980s/1990s. The most comfortably competent among them, the most productive among them, were also the least abrasive. They were also the most self deprecating. Not just one or two, but the majority of them. To the point that the aggressive geniuses stood out. And I worked for/with two abrasive ones as well, so I know the difference. The same was true…

Yeah, it's remarkable to me that this article could be written to provide advice to "fierce nerds", and not include a single sentence about not being an asshole. I work with "fierce nerds". Some of them are self-aware, and try very very hard not to be assholes to the people around them. They do this without sacrificing their passion. And they are tolerable to work with only because they consciously push back against…

This is the camp I find myself in.

It takes a lot of effort in some areas to stay calm and allow the other side to play out their argument, and I recognize how critical it is in maintaining a positive attitude towards work.

I find that minimizing unnecessary conference calls was a monumental step in the right direction. When a technical conversation is serialized through a Github issue, it tends to get a lot more thought and time applied. It is also easy to walk away from a frustrating issue, go for a run, come back, and write a much more reasonable reply than you otherwise would have if compelled to do so.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#408

Post by sharker8 »

nitrogen wrote: post #332
HeyImAlex wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew many people who fit that description, but with even a little social intelligence it seemed to me their experiences in highschool were pretty great; they weren’t nerds, they were just smart and studious and many were very well liked. Our homecoming king was on the academic decathalon team. Im not saying that smart, introverted folks with underdeveloped social skills don’t exist, just that they don’t exist oppos…

There is a pretty wide variance from school to school, town to town, and state to state/country to country. Maybe you were in a particularly well-adjusted school, and other schools and communities are still more judgmental of non-blessed interests? Or maybe the nerds remain, but they had different interests from the new main-stream. I'd hardly call Halo a nerd thing, for example.

Maybe it was a well adjusted school, or maybe it was a school in which achievement culture and college application stacking and reverse engineering had fully run their course. After all, 'well rounded' on paper people get into elite colleges, and people from elite colleges have a better shot at becoming rich. Nothing less nerdy than wanting to be rich.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#409

Post by courtf »

As usual, there's a fair bit of "just so" equivocating going here (success being the antidote to bitterness stands out as especially over-rationalized, as if anyone was really wondering why the successful are so cheerful, ignorance is bliss Paul). That said, I like this essay a bit more than recent previous entries. The level of fierceness your workplace can tolerate definitely varies a lot, and on multiple axis, one of which is whether or not it's currently fashionable for people of your category to have an attitude. There's also a difference between "fierce" and "anti-social" which could be explored a bit more. And lastly, competition has been ramping up since forever, and with it comes unproductive, unnecessary fierceness and extreme focus on short horizons for everyone,even those not naturally inclined toward either, which is lamentable.

Overall though, I'd say this does describe a certain set you are likely to find in tech quite accurately, although the correlation with success and wealth probably has more to do with investment preferences than any actual operational advantage created by this behavior. Believing in the need for hyper-competitive fierceness while also having influence over the direction of funding turns it into a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the reality is that luck and timing are much more impactful. No VC will ever just admit they're playing craps, and would rather everyone believe they have special knowledge that allows them to count cards.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#410

Post by hamburga »

crocodiletears wrote: post #402
hamburga wrote: post #397

Nerds are already high-status. Look who just hosted Saturday Night Live. The contrarian position is to be anti-nerd and pro-charm. Taleb on this: https://www.azquotes.com/author/18869-Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb/... > Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse

Is there any broader context to this quote?

Nope, it's from his book of aphorisms.
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