221–230 of 361 posts
Also, since when do you have to join a nerd subculture to be accepted as a programmer? Since when is being a nerd and being a feminist mutually exclusive?
I don't get this article. And I don't get nerds.
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I think the difference there that goth is a subculture, while tech and software development is a job. Sure, there's also various subcultures in the software development industry, but there isn't one big subculture there. There's the abrasive brogrammers, there's the sensitive political correctness advocates, there's the quiet nerd that just wants to be left alone, there's the hiring manager looking for new employees,…
> I think the difference there that goth is a subculture, while tech and software development is a job. And here I think is the crux of the problem; it's what the article was about. Tech became mainstream, and attracted people who look at it as a job. From the point of view of us native nerds, we became colonized and are being pushed back from the thing we built as our little place in the universe where we would feel…
But now you are excluding others from joining your world. Are you not as bad as the people who made you feel displaced?
Why not take the stance that you can be better?
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That resonated with me for completely different reasons. Most of the "extremely weird nerds" from my high school were people with pretty serious functional problems who never did make it anywhere. They are pretty much the forgotten ones. The successful "nerds" were always at least introspective or 'ironic' and could function somewhat normally in social situations including attempting to play whatever status games tha…
Then there's those of us who can do that for a limited amount of time before it overloads them - it's something that requires a lot of brain effort, and doesn't come natural. Then again, I do stuff like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnRSu9LjV7E
Yep, AKA introverts with social skills. (Shyness is another possible axis.)
Personally, I feel the problems with buying into the big monkey hierarchy aren't that you can't be diplomatic or can't read social cues. The problems are that it is (A) a drain on your mental energy compared to being an extrovert and (B) feels like an endorsement of a system you'd rather not endorse.
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The problem here is that hacking, gardening or whatever else people do is not "owned" by those who practice it currently or did before others and neither should it be. If they wanted to start their own Abrasive gardening club, where they would be abrasive to each other, then not many people would complain. I don't think it would be healthy, but they are free to do so. What they aren't free to do without push-back is…
This is flat out wrong. If a group of people start a hacking or gardening social subculture, then it is "owned" by them. If people start a goth subculture, others who join subsequently don't have a right to say "I don't like all the make up and candles and satantic stuff. If you want to start another club and call yourselves by a different name, that's fine. But you don't 'own' being goth." If someone doesn't like th…
If you want to have a private, invite-only community that has strict rules of abrasive (or other) behaviour, that is also possible.
If, however, you run around the world telling everyone how amazing your culture is, how it's producing things that will change all our lives, how it's great for getting a well paying career, etc, etc, all of which the hacking culture has done, then you have nobody to blame when people start paying attention. We asked for all of this, and we reap the rewards, good and bad.
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The right to free speech doesn't mean the right to not face any social consequences for your speech.
Funny that you should bring that up: Until recently it was the other way around - tell someone you aren't straight and risk losing the job. Why is it suddenly be acceptable the other way around?
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Thirding what my sibling commenters are saying, just for the additional data point. The article was about hackers , the set of outcasts that self-identify based on rough consensus and running code and merit. The article wasn't about hackers , the buzzword that is good to have on your meetup and LinkedIn profile. Such is the extent of the appropriation of hacker culture--there is this weird notion that workplace profe…
That's why I moved to "maker" if I absolutely have to pick a one-word label. So it goes.
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What exactly did she do? I recall she complained on Twitter, and exercised her freedom of speech to express her opinion. A number of people shared that opinion and also spoke freely about their opinion. In the fullness of time, his employers acted like craven cowards and sacked him. Did she sack him? No. Was he scarred for life? Ostracized? No, he found work again quickly. But what happened to her? A bunch of other p…
> What exactly did she do? I recall she complained on Twitter, and exercised her freedom of speech to express her opinion. She took his photo and shared it on twitter. That's as good as calling him out by name. > Was he scarred for life? Ostracized? No That's not how he describes it. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... Search the page for "Santa Clara" > To anyone on the outside of that in…
As far as I know the guys name was not widely, if at all, published.
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We wanted to make tech be ever more awesome, we told everyone we knew how cool it is, regardless of whether they were interested. We asked for this, whether we like it or not :)
> We asked for this, whether we like it or not :) Yes, unfortunately we did. We dreamed for an amazing world, but it's not what we got when the world joined in.
We democratised technology. We built a global IP network-of-networks and used it to connect a UNIX-like kernel in everyone's pocket, in a way that serves and delights them.
I distinctly remember a large family gathering in summer 2010 where I expected the usual pattern of sitting in a corner of the garden with the handful of other techie cousins, discussing whatever was new in our world. Instead, I had people coming and asking me if I was holding an iPad, and if they could play with it. That was a profound moment for me, it told me that we'd really achieved something special - a form of cutting edge technology that wasn't something non-techies ignored until they were forced to use it for work or banking or some other mundane task. Instead, they were drawn to it with the same fascination and wonder that I have always been. For that moment, everyone present, was a geek. I loved it.
Have some of the complex technical things that I once held as "mine" become dulled by the need to serve the masses? Of course. If that annoys me from a philosophical or technical perspective, my best choice is to forge ahead again and find a niche equivalent, or build something for myself.
In many cases, I welcome it, because something that I once had to invest time and effort into, is now smoothed over and shifts into the background, making time for me to focus on something else.
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> I think the difference there that goth is a subculture, while tech and software development is a job. And here I think is the crux of the problem; it's what the article was about. Tech became mainstream, and attracted people who look at it as a job. From the point of view of us native nerds, we became colonized and are being pushed back from the thing we built as our little place in the universe where we would feel…
I don't understand this US vs THEM mentality. Yes, you were the nerd that might have been excluded from other people's world because they didn't deem you 'cool enough'. But now you are excluding others from joining your world. Are you not as bad as the people who made you feel displaced? Why not take the stance that you can be better?
What I am not fine with is the cultural invasion, the people suddenly appearing, realizing there is more of them than us "weirdos" and telling us "this is our field now, you are outnumbered, you must conform to our standars". "OK, join our field; the good land is rich, and can provide for everyone. But why won't you let us live in peace, why you need to keep bullying us?".
This US vs THEM mentality is something that was not created by "weird nerds" - all those nerds wanted was to be accepted. But we had to escape, because mainstream society doesn't accept our way of thinking (curiosity, intellectual interests, intellectual honesty) and bullied us. It's them who started it, and it's them who are invading our safe harbour again.
And it probably would still be fine if social justice crowd just stayed away.
Anyway; the article explained it very well, actually.
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I understand what was being said. But in my experience many groups say this but in fact don't even come close to actually achieving it. Groups of white males have said this for a long time, "we are merit based, gender or ethnicity aren't considered during selection", but it just wasn't true. Much of the time it is a conscious decision to avoid the qualified diverse candidate, other times it isn't. Just because she or…
> I understand what was being said. But in my experience many groups say this but in fact don't even come close to actually achieving it. Groups of white males have said this for a long time, ...right in front of our very noses at this moment is something very interesting: me atleast I don't have a clue what gender most nicks here on HN belong to. And I don't care. The same way I don't care about the gender of our UX…
I'm not implying that anyone of these particular commenters are sexist or bigots, or aren't making decisions solely based on merit. I'm saying that we as a group, be that either widely defined as humans in general or narrowly defined as a certain group of nerds, tend to not notice our biases when we make decisions. We may believe that we are making a choice based on the absolute best merit based criteria, but often we don't realize our choice was highly tinted by learned bias.
I myself try to disregard my learned biases, but often don't realize I failed until after the fact. We need more people who don't care about gender, race, social status, etc when making hiring decisions. Studies have shown that when identifying markers are removed from resumes and job applications, the considered pool of applicants become more diverse. A good start is people who are at least aware of their own biases.
Too often we use statistics to enforce our bias. "Well, moms statistically don't code, so we won't take seriously this mother who does".