Beware the Pretty People • Hacker News Board

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#21

Post by freshhawk » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

swatow wrote: post #2

Funny how the nerd stereotype is used in different contexts. In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side, and it is important to show that you don't have to conform to this subculture to succeed in tech. However, in the context of the corporatization of tech, suddenly the nerds are the good guys. And funnily enough, nerd culture was a…

There isn't one stereotype from that era for good reason. There are a bunch of disparate ones. There were and are cyber-hippies in large very progressive groups. They are the ones being talked to here.

Some of them are the reason that these tech culture problems are recognized as important problems.

So yes, the stereotype acts as a stereotype: taking on only the set of features needed to support an argument.

So don't use or think in terms of "nerds", as that's too coarse to be useful or to tell you anything. Tech is an industry with various subcultures. The OP didn't use the stereotype anyway.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#22

Post by mmaunder » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:10 AM UTC

Reminds me of something I heard Buffet say once in an interview with (I think it was) Maria Bartiromo: On Wall St we get the innovators then the imitators and then the swarming incompetents.

I think it's really this applied to the Valley - and I think what you're seeing is people who don't have tech chops, but they've seen what tech success brings and they want that, so they have to sell something else and in this case it's charm, good looks or good taste in shoes.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#23

Post by jqm » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:13 AM UTC

It isn't a zero sum game. People looking to make a quick buck don't stop misfits from playing with computers.

As if one must be a social misfit or physically misshapen to be involved with computers in the first place, which is itself a ridiculous premise.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#24

Post by salgernon » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:14 AM UTC

Apropos this article, today I received a box of "vintage" hardware and software manuals. It's a hobby, ok? But amongst them was an original photocopy of this article from psychology today, circa 1980:

  http://www.textfiles.com/news/hackpape.hac

In which the LOTS user "gandalf" bemoans the isolation and singlemindedness of the typical Stanford hacker, and the rebuttals from those he describes. It was an interesting bit of the social story that underlies the "weird" folk tradition.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#25

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:14 AM UTC

swatow wrote: post #11

yummyfajitas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…

But the people making these attacks are mostly actual feminists, liberals and diversity advocates. They are not business people or MBAs. Maybe the MBAs jump on the bandwagon, but I think they mostly do it to pick the winning side, not because they fear the latent power of nerds. That said, I think you've very accurately described the various attacks on traditional nerd/Silicon Valley culture that are occurring.

[deleted]

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#26

Post by hackuser » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:15 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #6

swatow wrote: post #2

Funny how the nerd stereotype is used in different contexts. In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side, and it is important to show that you don't have to conform to this subculture to succeed in tech. However, in the context of the corporatization of tech, suddenly the nerds are the good guys. And funnily enough, nerd culture was a…

There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…

Discriminatory behavior (sexist, racist, etc.) often persists, in my experience, because the perpetrators don't realize what they are doing. It's not that they think, 'I want to exclude women from tech jobs'; they blindly follow old patterns of hiring and other behavior. Humans naturally are very egocentric and have to work to see things from others' perspectives. When they do, they change; most people don't want to be sexist.

So of course many think it's meritocratic; they don't see the obstacles because they never experienced them. And of course some think they are victims of persecution; they don't see what they are perpetrating.

Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, if a system is truly meritocratic then why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)?

[1] U.S. population is 77% white, so I estimate 38% white male. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[2] Wild guess at the % of SV tech workers that are white male.

EDIT: Minor rewording for emphasis

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#27

Post by freshhawk » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:15 AM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #18

tux wrote: post #4

LOL What an article. "Now that the tech industry is cool, the pretty people are taking over, flooding out of top-tier universities with MBAs and social graces and carefully coiffed hair, shouldering the misfits and weirdos out of the way." Good luck with that :) Don't judge the book by its cover! "While we do, though, we need the weirdos, the rebels, the counterculture, to be gathering together and founding companies…

I'm not sure what techcrunch truly brings us, but I'm not worried about the "pretty people" crowding out the computer science, engineer, math and science majors. There are too many qualities that can't be faked and no amount of hair gel will compensate. It will always be easy to find someone who has paid the price over someone who just bought the clothes.

The power dynamic being discussed isn't about people being crowded out. It's about their autonomy and profit sharing being reduced. The same people will still do the work, that's half the point.

You are taking "pretty people" too literally.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#28

Post by jqm » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #18

tux wrote: post #4

LOL What an article. "Now that the tech industry is cool, the pretty people are taking over, flooding out of top-tier universities with MBAs and social graces and carefully coiffed hair, shouldering the misfits and weirdos out of the way." Good luck with that :) Don't judge the book by its cover! "While we do, though, we need the weirdos, the rebels, the counterculture, to be gathering together and founding companies…

I'm not sure what techcrunch truly brings us, but I'm not worried about the "pretty people" crowding out the computer science, engineer, math and science majors. There are too many qualities that can't be faked and no amount of hair gel will compensate. It will always be easy to find someone who has paid the price over someone who just bought the clothes.

On the flip side, wearing hair gel doesn't mean a person can't program a computer.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#29

Post by post- » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

There are a lot of problems with this article, but I want to focus on this paragraph:

> What’s more, there has never been a better time to try to found a genuinely subversive company than right now. Consider Y Combinator’s new openness to not-for-profit startups. Consider the remarkable recipient list of Reddit Donate. [http://www.redditblog.com/2015/02/announcing-winners-of-redd...] It seems to me that there is a hunger for real change out there. A huge audience. You might even call it a market.

I'm not sure that I trust Jon Evans' -- or any one person's -- assessment of subversion. The whole point of subversion is to overturn ("vertere") the status quo from below ("sub"), while this article seems content to maintain the current systems of marginalized nerd-dom (which has always been a suspect category) and capitalism (which is interesting and because as a system it preferences what's mainstream and marketable -- Evans has contradicted himself again).

When Evans writes, "Consider the remarkable recipient list of Reddit Donate," in support of his call for subversion, he glosses over the fact that the list includes some of the most mainstream nonprofits in the world (plus two well-known psychoactive research organizations). I'm not saying that these charities aren't doing good things -- I think it's fair to assume that they are -- I'm saying that supporting them can't be viewed as an act of subversion, and that assuming limited resources, support for them means lost support for other _actually subversive_ organizations that mean to do just as much good in the world.

"It seems to me that there is a hunger for real change out there." But change doesn't mean patching what exists; change -- subversive change -- means offering a replacement.

Re: Beware the Pretty People

#30

Post by thomasfoster96 » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

I'm still not sure what the title has to do with the actual contents of the article, but the basic premise contained therein isn't exactly ground breaking - people want to make money from tech, regardless of how much they care about culture or product.

The last few paragraphs are a bit more interesting. Understandably, lots of people are now seeing that you can gain things from your work or financial input into something that aren't just financial. For some people, non profits will provide greater rewards than for profits.