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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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191–200 of 505 posts

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#191

weird nerds depend on a kind of nobility and magnanimity from the people they work with that is perhaps a bit much to expect in academia, or anywhere that isn't a high-growth environment where participants can afford the risks of eccentricity. middling people indexed on in-group status aren't equipped to handle exceptional people who don't reciprocate what is essentially corruption, and so they force them out.

> middling people indexed on in-group status aren't equipped to handle exceptional people who don't reciprocate what is essentially corruption, and so they force them out.

I think you hit the head of the nail there.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While I think this is true, some people have it harder than others. So sure, anyone can learn emotional intelligence, but if it's 2x the effort for someone the ROI is much worse.

A toxic individual can tank the productivity of the whole team, if not the whole org. What's the ROI for them on being fired?

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Performer who is a diva" is not directly about focusing on one thing at the expense of another. Performers are trained to be divas by having no real friends willing to confront them, and by being infantilized by the people around them who lie about their faults, are excessively accommodating of bullshit, and don't ever make them take responsibility for mistakes or reflect on their impact on other people. The result…

I somewhat agree, but I think there's more to it than that. To be a great performer, you have to care about delivering your own "message" as authentically or at least "in totality" more than anything else. Critique may be useful in understanding how your vision is being received, but actually delivering the vision requires believing in your own vision more than the visions of others. The same could be said of CEOs. I…

The "diva" stereotype, starting with opera prima donnas, has plenty of real-world examples. These are people who were constantly pampered by support staff who treated them as royalty, and then ended up being huge jerks to anyone who even looked at them the wrong way. Lack of empathy and basic respect is not just about iconoclasm or compartmentalizing criticism or whatever.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#195

Speaking from big tech, you get things like rust (mozilla) or React (facebook) when your engineers are given the space to solve industry scale problems. Those are both "weird nerd" contributions since the original creators weren't interested in the celebrity public facing side of it. In the React case, I'm not sure it would have become the framework it is today unless Dan Abramhov pushed it outside of the company. Th…

What industry scale problems does React solve? I don't have the most experience in React but it feels like it's gotten very complex in recent years.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#196
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a bucket you fit people into, it is one aspect of a persons personality, out of an almost infinite number, and is also a continuum. The idea originally comes from Carl Jung, and his point in coming up with it was for people that personally identify themselves as fitting into a particular bucket, to realize this, and be able to consciously explore the part of yourself that doesn't fit into it, that you might…

How does saying "Im an introvert" not put yourself into a bucket? Youre quite literally using someone elses made up categorization to define who you are, and people tend to speak of this as an innate and overcompassing trait, and moreover using these made up categorizations as a cause of other behaviors. I dont like making small talk with cashiers at this point in my life" essentially becomes "I am an introvert, so I…

The point is people are already unconsciously putting themselves in buckets- being conscious of it is the first step towards actually moving past it. By being conscious of exactly how you are doing this, you can also begin to explore and accept the parts of yourself that don't fit into those buckets (what Carl Jung calls the shadow).

The "buckets" themselves (archetypes) are simply explaining different aspects of human experience and personalities, but absolutely nobody fits into them neatly, and they are limitless- you could probably come up with hundreds of them if you wanted to. Which you think are important and worth talking about is really a matter of opinion or personal values and goals.

These ideas are widely misunderstood and misused in both popular culture and the social sciences, but that isn't the fault of the concepts themselves. For example, the categories in the popular Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are from Carl Jung's archetypes, but people use them exactly like you said- to essentially justify their own behaviors, when the point is to explore the parts of yourself that are the opposite of that. This idea often horrifies people that are fans of MBTI and use it like you are implying.

I'm sure you would agree that people already have different personalities, and see themselves a certain way, and often dislike traits in themselves and others that are somewhat opposite traits to those. For example a person might see themselves as an analytical logical person, and look down on people who seem to be guided mostly by emotions. It can be hugely valuable for a person like this to start to understand and accept the emotional part of themselves and others, but that likely won't change the fact that they are still a person that prioritizes "thinking" over "feeling."

People often mistakenly call this Carl Jung stuff "pseudoscience" because they are misunderstanding it as trying to be science. It is not- it is a tool or technology for personal growth, and is not attempting to be a literal explanation for how the human brain works or anything like that. It would be more accurate to relate it to religious or spiritual practices like meditation.

The fact is that introverted people are quite rare compared to extroverted people, and extroverted people do tend to see it as a bad thing and want to do things like "help teach introverts to be less extroverted" but may be horrified by the idea of the opposite- learning about and accepting their own introverted aspects.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, I've worked with younger people in tech. I'm seeing a mix of effects, positive and negative, from increased diagnosis rates. On the plus side, some people are using their diagnoses to find helpful support material, techniques, and advice. On…

> I've had to explain to numerous people that having an ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the same performance review standards as their peers at work. I can’t speak for you, but that isn’t at all accurate as far as I know. I myself would not say these kinds of things to a coworker, and definitely not to a subordinate one or one that reports to me, as I don’t work in HR or legal department, and I’…

> I can’t speak for you, but that isn’t at all accurate as far as I know.

> I’m not intimately familiar with actual existing accommodations for ADHD and other conditions under the FMLA and other disability discrimination laws and regulations in the US or other countries.

Why are you saying it's inaccurate if you don't understand the laws and regulations?

The FMLA that you cited and linked is for emergency medical leave, not for ADHD accommodations.

You're also making a mistake that I see a lot: Getting an ADHD diagnosis is not the same as having a disability. It is possible to qualify as having a disability due to an ADHD diagnosis, but it's a substantially more difficult standard to achieve and prove. The average ADHD patient will not and cannot qualify as being disabled due to ADHD.

This is exactly what I was talking about: There has been an explosion of over-confident opinions about how ADHD and other mental health conditions intersect the workplace that have no basis in reality. The amount of incorrect ADHD information circulating on places like Reddit and TikTok is leading people in the wrong direction in large numbers.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#198
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line you draw between "weirdness" and "neurodivergence" is interesting. Would neurodivergence have to be native (so, not grown "naturally") and at which point does weirdness fit on the spectrum ? Recently I think people are more receptive to lower degrees of neurodivergence. I see it the same way people understand that you have a gradation between having difficulties climbing stairs and not being able to walk. We…

ASD has different levels of diagnosis. I've been told by a therapist specializing in ASD that there are a lot of diagnosed and undiagnosed ASD workers in tech. It's very possible the only reason they are "full blown clinically diagnosed" is because they haven't been tested.

At this point we could diagnose basically everyone on the planet with some flavour of neurodivergence. I’m sure there’s one that makes people good at sales, one that makes people ruthless CEOs, one that makes people programmers, etc.

But I just don’t see the point of diagnosing people with things unless it causes some kind of actual disability and dysfunction.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#199
I really wish somebody had sat me down before grad school and told me just how important it is to sell yourself. So much of research is a form of sales: you have to sell your work and by extension your ability; you need to convince the department that you are a star so that they go to bat for you; you have to convince star professors to co-author with you so that you can get good publications; you need to attend all the conferences in your field and sell your research to potential reviewers and editors. Putting your head down and just doing your work is a terrible strategy and will get you absolutely nowhere.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point the question is “why?”. We can keep atomizing human variability into smaller, more graduated buckets of neurodivergence, but what’s the point, esp. for those that don’t really suffer negative impacts, and for which there isn’t really any remedy besides acceptance?

My guess is to try to improve human relationships. Trying to understand why someone has consistent surprising/inappropriate reactions might help. The flip side is someone who consistently seems to be surprised by how people are reacting to them and wants better connections.

I do know that people do not like me. Don't get me wrong, my coworkers all get along with me and I think most enjoy working with me but in general people outside of work don't want to be around me. Hell I couldn't even keep my wife interested enough to stick with me.

So how could we study what makes me turn off other people and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely that I would be able to change myself and there is almost zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts others will change their natural reaction.

In addition, I am not sure that this isn't how things are supposed to be. This may be part of social evolution that just makes the world tick.

I would prefer we stop classifying people and just let them be who/what they are without pointing fingers at them.

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