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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#11

Post by makeitdouble »

I didn't fully understand what the author meant by "Weird Nerd", and this bit was the key for me:

> Weird Nerds (I called them autistics, but people really hated that)

And I totally get why they're trying to come up with a word that markets better, and yes many people react negatively to "autist" or calling someone "on the spectrum".

At the same time, man prominent people are making public their diagnostics and assert being on the autism spectrum, and I wonder if it becomes a disservice to them to not use the term when appropriate, precisely because of how it's perceived now.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#12

Post by doublerabbit »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Everyone get your bucket ready, I'm going to throw an anecdote into it. I play D&D. This exposes me to a wide variety of people, but unsurprisingly, a lot of them are probably what the author would consider Weird Nerds. Most of them are perfectly pleasant people, and I look forward to spending time in their company, both in the context of playing D&D, and just as a way to socialize. Heck, at my last session, a player…

I ask, if that person is truly unpleasant have you spoken to them about how unpleasant they are?

Not to defend but how is someone to recognise a fault of their own if they're not called upon? Unless its truly terrible and they know they are doing it on purpose.

The issue we live in nowadays we are all scared how to tell each other how we feel towards and that we now safe harbour them by throwing them a label and approving that to a degree.

I'm direct and blunt, if someone is doing something in a group I call them out of it; I expect folk to do the same for me.

I may be offended but you should be offended, there's no harm in that.

Granted it's a double edged sword. You tell them; they preach to their safe haven and breathe the toxic fumes of their peers. Or they actually recognise it.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#13

Post by whilenot-dev »

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I’m not sure I follow the first sentence. What does this have to do with Women in STEM? (I’m not being political. I just don’t follow the connection)

I'm on the same page as you here.

Even the proposed rule

> Any system that is not explicitly pro-Weird Nerd will turn anti-Weird Nerd pretty quickly

just feels like a misunderstanding of the paradox of tolerance[0] ("in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance").

So we need to question what the author means with "Weird Nerd", because if a weird nerd just isn't expressing intolerance, I can't fathom how anyone could have an issue with it ...and become "anti-Weird Nerd".

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#14

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Yossarrian22 wrote: post #5

The author is missing a crucial pressure that pushes against weird nerds, the people that have to work underneath them. I’ve had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and I’ve spent the years since warning people away from that person, their career and their contributions to their field have stagnated due to all the people like me that they burn…

Many weird nerds are on the spectrum and require very good people managers above them to mitigate their quirks, and should never go into people management themselves.

The industry has really changed though. It is much easier to hire social well adapted people who can code at all than to hire a bunch of people with social problems who can code really good. The former is scalable at least, the latter breaks down as no one can get along.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#15

Post by idiotsecant »

Yossarrian22 wrote: post #5

The author is missing a crucial pressure that pushes against weird nerds, the people that have to work underneath them. I’ve had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and I’ve spent the years since warning people away from that person, their career and their contributions to their field have stagnated due to all the people like me that they burn…

Yes, the weird nerd is rarely a good people manager. As useful as they might be as an individual contributor when property channeled, they can easily be a -10x contributor when you put them in charge of people.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#16

Post by ToucanLoucan »

Yossarrian22 wrote: post #5

The author is missing a crucial pressure that pushes against weird nerds, the people that have to work underneath them. I’ve had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and I’ve spent the years since warning people away from that person, their career and their contributions to their field have stagnated due to all the people like me that they burn…

The author bemoans that any org that is not sufficiently pro-weird-nerd becomes anti-weird-nerd, and in conjunction with this comment which laments the experience of working under one alongside my own experiences of similar, I think it's worth remarking that many Weird Nerds not only do not foster social skills of any sort, but in fact view this as a badge of honor, as "proof" of their weirdness, and just, I'm over that shit.

I love weird nerds, I love the sort of people who obsess about things, who work on them as obsessively as I do, I love info dumps, I love people who are passionate even about bizarre, niche shit I don't care about (actually, I love them even more for it!) but seriously. You need to be able to hold a conversation. You need to be able to talk productively with your fellow people, including difficult conversations. You need to open to negative feedback, to be able to take criticism or contrary viewpoints without turning into a puddle of some combination of depression/rage/self-hatred, or people are just not going to get on with you.

And I fully accept that autism runs through this pack of people like a freight train, and that's fair, I am always down to provide accommodations, I will talk to people how they need to be talked to, I will bend the norms of social interaction so it's more palatable, all of that, zero issues whatsoever. But even with that in consideration, relationships of all kinds are a give and take, and if all you do is take, people will notice, and people will avoid you.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#17

Post by at_a_remove »

Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I’m not sure I follow the first sentence. What does this have to do with Women in STEM? (I’m not being political. I just don’t follow the connection)

The first half of the sentence ("women in STEM") is meant to reflect on the confounding approach to the person mentioned in the second half of the sentence, a woman in STEM. First half "YAY GIRL POWER GO!," second half is that same bunch of people, presumably the Twitterati in question, being down on an opinion held by a woman in STEM who, well, the Nobel Prize is pretty good as a confirmation that you are STEMming very hard, when what they ought to be doing is, "Hey, we were just talking about women in STEM, maybe we should not reflexively criticize the very model of the person we were praising when she has an opinion which might be new or troublesome to us."

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#18

Post by pavel_lishin »

doublerabbit wrote: post #12
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Everyone get your bucket ready, I'm going to throw an anecdote into it. I play D&D. This exposes me to a wide variety of people, but unsurprisingly, a lot of them are probably what the author would consider Weird Nerds. Most of them are perfectly pleasant people, and I look forward to spending time in their company, both in the context of playing D&D, and just as a way to socialize. Heck, at my last session, a player…

I ask, if that person is truly unpleasant have you spoken to them about how unpleasant they are? Not to defend but how is someone to recognise a fault of their own if they're not called upon? Unless its truly terrible and they know they are doing it on purpose. The issue we live in nowadays we are all scared how to tell each other how we feel towards and that we now safe harbour them by throwing them a label and appr…

Sometimes, yes, we talk to them.

But I'm a DM, not their therapist or their dad - I'm not obligated to hand-hold someone through a radical restructuring of their personality.

And, it might not surprise you to find out, some people react very badly to being criticized. And I'm not particularly interested in having an argument over my subjective opinion of a person. I just don't want to be around them anymore.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#19

Post by idiotsecant »

lainga wrote: post #8

> I still stand by my association of Weird Nerds with autism, but for some reason people really do not like to call Weird Nerds autistic. I'm sorry, what , even if they're preponderant you can't just call all of them that any more than you can collectively call all basketball players "Marfan Syndrome havers"

Tell me honestly that most weird nerds are not on the spectrum and I might be able to work up enough energy to clutch my pearls at this.

I say this as a weird nerd who is definitely on the spectrum, like I suspect many HN readers are.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#20

Post by idiotsecant »

doublerabbit wrote: post #12
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Everyone get your bucket ready, I'm going to throw an anecdote into it. I play D&D. This exposes me to a wide variety of people, but unsurprisingly, a lot of them are probably what the author would consider Weird Nerds. Most of them are perfectly pleasant people, and I look forward to spending time in their company, both in the context of playing D&D, and just as a way to socialize. Heck, at my last session, a player…

I ask, if that person is truly unpleasant have you spoken to them about how unpleasant they are? Not to defend but how is someone to recognise a fault of their own if they're not called upon? Unless its truly terrible and they know they are doing it on purpose. The issue we live in nowadays we are all scared how to tell each other how we feel towards and that we now safe harbour them by throwing them a label and appr…

I think we both know the kind of That Guy we're talking about and a conversation isn't going to change things.
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