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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#131

Post by glitchc »

the_snooze wrote: post #41
icodemuch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hel…

You can blame the bureaucrats for this multi-facted outcome. Their ever-increasing pressure of getting new funding and balancing your books with frequent budget updates is what leads to so much time spent on those activities. And of course they tie those activities to your promotion, instead of the importance of your discoveries which is what should be the only thing that matters.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#132

Post by programjames »

doug_durham wrote: post #99
andrefuchs wrote: post #89

While I agree with the notion of the article, please stop calling gifted, driven, and non-conforming people "weird nerds." Both terms have negative connotations.

The intent is to de-stigmatize the labels. I consider myself a "weird nerd". I find the use of the label affirming. Perhaps ASD or other symptom descriptive way to describing things would be more "correct". However "weird nerd" is what the other parts of society use to describe these terms. Using the term to describe the positive aspects of these symptoms helps to take the sting out.

I think "genius" fits the author's meaning and connotation much better than "weird nerd". If the author wants to fight for genius rights, why start from a position of weakness?

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#133

Post by sneed_chucker »

sctb wrote: post #111
sneed_chucker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to me your comment also speaks to the increasing degree to which we medicalize personality traits. I'm sure your diagnosis is legitimate, but also I'm inferring from your comment that you are married and gainfully employed; so it sounds like you're able to build and maintain relationships, as well hold conversations with strangers or non-close acquaintances when necessary. In years past would any professional h…

Being married and gainfully employed and able to build and maintain relationships as well as hold conversations with strangers when necessary can come at an exceptionally high cost for neurodivergent people in the form of masking (like a kind of mental tech debt). Instead of overt social difficulty, this might present itself as anxiety, depression, and suicidality—those conditions are worthy of medicalization IMO.

I agree with what you're saying, but also - everyone has problems. Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical? Why do some people's problems get the validation of the medical system and others don't?

(These are non-rhetorical questions, I'm really not sure about the answers to them myself)

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#134

Post by andoando »

_yb2s wrote: post #122
fdw wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm understanding your statement to mean that caring about something because of itself, without external motivation (like validation or money), is neurodivergent. So neurotypical would be to only care about something if you profit from you caring about it? Is that reading correct? If so, I have to disagree vehemently. That is not my experience at all and feels extremely homo economicus and - to be honest - depressing…

It sounds to me like you probably are introverted, but might not be familiar with exactly what that means, or how neurodivergent is really is from much more common extroverted people. Most extroverts aren't ruthless machivellian self interested people like you are worrying I am claiming, but they are focused primarily on fitting in and being accepted by others- and do choose their activities and behaviors mostly base…

I hate this extrovert vs introvert thing too. People don't fit simiply into these buckets.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#135

Post by nurple »

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 had a "friend" like you once. We got along well, he would excitedly dive deep with me in tech because he wanted to learn programming, and I would excitedly dive deep with him into creating coffee and beer because I find the stricture in creation leading to creativity endlessly interesting.

However, whenever he'd have his "cool" friends over for parties I wouldn't get an invite, in fact never met any of his other acquaintances. He explained to me once that he likes to keep his different social lives separate, and I was apparently the only one in his "tech" social circle.

That made me feel like shit, and reinforced my self-view as failing to be a normal human.

This is a theme that's continued with multiple "friends" throughout my life, to the point where I eventually just gave up trying, gave up giving of myself to others to simply be siloed or discarded once they got what they wanted from me. I got tired of the lack of reciprocation in giving me a chance to be a part of their actual life even though they were apparently getting enough from me that they were willing to keep me around when it suited their needs.

I hope some day you gain some compassion and can see that people who are different than you are still people, and that treating them as lesser except when you can get something from them (like an interesting dnd game) is a huge part of the problem in these types of people retreating even more from the social and emotional norms.

At this point, why in the hell do you think I would even _want_ to be willful part of the society you inhabit, that treats other humans as you do?

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#136

Post by seanmcdirmid »

the_snooze wrote: post #32
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Any non-trivial engineering or research is a team effort. It's good to have a mix of perspectives and temperaments in a team to keep poeple creative and honest. But the team ultimately has to cohere in order to deliver. That's really the core job of a manager: to create an environment where people can work together meaningfully and direct it to productive ends.

I totally empathize with this, but there are hardly many people managers who can pull that off. And often those that can get promoted up quickly so that they aren’t managing teams directly anymore. It is much easier to produce with mediocre people managers with a team of socially well adjusted mediocre programmers, than a unicorn people manager with a diverse team of highly skilled programmers who aren’t necessarily great at social skills.

Individual efforts are completely different. A programmer like Notch can produce Minecraft on his own and then just get help to push it into a maintained product. This happens all the time, but you can’t produce that easily (and definitely not consistently) at the big corp level.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#137

Post by isotropy »

I read this as basically arguing that our filters throw up too many false negatives, like Kariko, in a high-risk/high-reward environment. It’s saying the cost of false negatives is way higher than the system realizes, and that’s because the system has drifted to be too much like the collaborative, incremental workplace that most of us live in. Typical work teams pay a high cost for false positives when hiring, so they guard against them at the cost of way more false negatives. The doesn’t work as well for moonshot fields.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#138

Post by fragmede »

akozak wrote: post #104

I have a lot of experience working with the weird nerd archetype and watching them navigate large orgs. First it's absolutely true that orgs that purport to support weird nerds will revert back to rewarding politicians. I've seen it happen, and typically has to do with who is doling out money. However, in my experience the vast majority of brilliant nerds way overextend themselves, and are much too confident outside…

> assuming emotional intelligence isn't an innate skill

it's a skill like any other, so if you put in dedication and practice, you can get better at it, just like practicing leetcode. whether or not an individual wants to do so is on them.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#139

Post by glitchc »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #120
glitchc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You conflate two things that are actually quite different. You don't need to be friends with the Weird Nerd, but you do absolutely have to respect their expertise in the subject matter, especially when it exceeds yours. It's in your employer's interest to do so. Not doing so means you're being less than professional and might secretly be jealous of this person for having attained a higher level of technical achieveme…

Respect for your knowledge, yes - but if you're the world's top expert in Subject X, while simultaneously world-renowned for being an unpleasant asshole, don't expect people to interact with you more than the absolute bare minimum required to do the job. And frankly, nobody's irreplaceable. If you're #1 in the world, but casually drop racist and sexist slurs, odds are that the #2 expert in the world isn't that much w…

And that's fine for most weird nerds. Being cordial and respecting of knowledge is all that's needed in the workplace. Most wns wouldn't make good friendship material either. Their opinions and tastes have a wide range from normal to rather eclectic. But without these people you will never be able to deliver the next new search paradigm. That's how they bring value and that's why the employer hires them. They also tend to be the ones that work very long hours, tinkering with stuff because it's "fun."

Re: racism and sexism, I suspect that's not just wns and may have more to do with upbringing than personality. Most wns tend to be free-thinkers, and barring some oddballs, they tend to self-select out of that way of thinking.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#140

Post by fragmede »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #102
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…

Mental illness is somewhat linked to creative productivity, sadly. Bipolar disorder is somewhat overrepresented in highly-accomplished musicians, artists, and writers (with the trend going as far back as the 1800s). It would not surprise me if ASD is overrepresented in scientists and engineers. However, people also imitate their tribe, and seeing "weird nerds" with mental illness may get other nerds to emulate that b…

Or plain just getting away with shitty behavior. Uncle Rick's a raging asshole and we still accept him as part of the family, which means so can I.
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