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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#41

Post by the_snooze »

icodemuch wrote: post #23
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…

I read the article as acknowledging this pressure by arguing that Weird Nerds should not be forced into people management positions. Without the workplace pressure on Weird Nerds to become people managers, would they still manage people? Maybe not. I can’t speak for academia, but in tech companies I’ve worked at I’ve seen a marked improvement in management when there’s a tech track for engineer advancement such that…

Being a professor at a research university is really multiple non-overlapping jobs all at once: managing your research group, bringing in funding and publicity, helping run your department and research community, and teaching classes. PhD programs really only prepare you for the nuts-and-bolts of research, and maybe teaching. Only if you're lucky, your advisor was thoughtful enough to make proper introductions to help you get started on funding and prestige out of the gate.

It's not surprising that lots of people opt out or wash out of this system because the expectations don't match the formal preparation for it.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#42

Post by megadal »

woopwoop wrote: post #36

I've met a handful of people who have won at least one of the top prizes in mathematics, i.e. a Fields medal, Abel prize, or Wolf Prize. I would describe none of them as "weird nerds", and I don't think any of them are autistic. I chafe pretty hard at the suggestion here that one has to be socially ill-adjusted to advance scientific knowledge at the highest level.

That's not the suggestion though. It's that a lot of high performers in STEM tend to be "Weird Nerds" and by selecting against that type, you alienate a large number of potentially great researchers.

Not selecting against weird nerds doesn't mean selecting against "socially well-adjusted Nerds".

In fact, the article says that a person can in fact be exceptional at politic and science, despite their tenets being antithetical in many cases.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#43

Post by neilv »

> Weird Nerds (I called them autistics, but people really hated that^2) [...] But it’s also hard to believe someone like her could ever become the most pleasant interlocutor at a dinner party, or the most socially adept and organized manager.

The part about "organized manager" is surprising. If we're going to stereotypes, I would've guessed that a manager who was autistic would likely have being organized as one of their strengths.

Regarding "socially adept [...] manager", I've worked with two software engineering project managers who were autistic. They were both very different (one amiable, and had much better than average understanding of human behavior and emotions; the other came off as making an effort to tolerate people). Both were not only well-respected, but liked, and were effective at difficult work&people-herding jobs.

Even with the manager who came off as not really liking anyone by default, and even on a very difficult project, almost everyone on large teams respected the project manager (excepting one person, who couldn't stand something about the project manager, or the nature of the project). And I didn't hear the grumbling like I'd normally hear about a manager who was unfair, incompetent, or dishonest.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#44

Post by bee_rider »

Academia is just messed up because the path to the top is to become an absolute expert in some topic, (PhD, postgrad), then become a performer/people manager/grant writer/office politics master (professor). It is really dumb. You are rolling the dice twice for expert level skills, and the second roll comes after huge personal investment.

Not really sure what the solution is. Maybe a huge increase in the number of national labs, as a vent for those who hit the first roll but fail the second.

We also need a vent for people who are good at teaching but not super focused on research. Drastically increase the community college system, IMO, and start paying the instructors enough to have nice middle-class lifestyles. Stop making people-people and weird nerds compete for rare grants and let them both do the things they are better at.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#45

Post by walt_grata »

ianbicking wrote: post #4

There's definitely been a move to demand individuals be good at everything... old stereotypes of the nerd brought a lot of negatives, but they were also apologetic, acknowledging the trade off, that paying attention deeply to one thing does lead to being worse at other things. The exact stereotype differed by domain... the performer who is a diva, the self destructive author, the manic artist... each with a hint of n…

I duno on some of that. Until I was about 39 I was a "weird nerd" and then my wife (Dr of special education) finally convinced me to talk to a Dr and get get tested for autism. Turns out I'm ASD 1, would have been Asperger's in the past. Autism has a very wide range of ways it shows itself.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#47

Post by Michelangelo11 »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #30
Michelangelo11 wrote: post #27

I do think it's a major issue that academia is increasingly bureaucratic and corporate, but I don't quite agree with the article. It's not that very smart, truth-motivated people have bad people skills (e.g., off the top of my head - von Neumann, Feynman, and Newton were all pretty good with people when they needed to be), it's that they are motivated largely by discovery and not by status and money. But academia tod…

Academia pays absolutely terribly for an elite job, it's all status. You could make more than 90% of tenured professors as a manager of Buc-ee's

Yes, good point, thanks. I was thinking of the high end of disciplines with strong ties to industry, mainly STEM and business, but that's actually just a very small, although prominent, part of academia.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#48

Post by pavel_lishin »

doublerabbit wrote: post #21
pavel_lishin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose, and that's fair enough. I just tend to trial their behaviour. "No that's not alright, cut the crap otherwise your out of here" Why play with them and not just cut them out completely? By keeping them in group your only enforcing their unpleasantness.

> Why play with them and not just cut them out completely? By keeping them in group your only enforcing their unpleasantness.

The people who actually ruin the game and make it not fun to play, we do cut them out.

But other people, well - I guess the threshold for playing a cooperative game with someone is different than the threshold for inviting them to a party at my house. Plus, at D&D, they spend a lot of their time inside a character who may be more interesting and pleasant than the person rolling the dice.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#49

Post by newzisforsukas »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14
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…

> 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

If you have no financial constraints? In what world do you spend massive amounts of money to mitigate people being "weird"?

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#50

Post by largelady99 »

woopwoop wrote: post #36

I've met a handful of people who have won at least one of the top prizes in mathematics, i.e. a Fields medal, Abel prize, or Wolf Prize. I would describe none of them as "weird nerds", and I don't think any of them are autistic. I chafe pretty hard at the suggestion here that one has to be socially ill-adjusted to advance scientific knowledge at the highest level.

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