Exaggerating a bit? By a bit I mean a lot? I know that some geeks had hard childhood and were bullied, but way more others were not. Plenty of fathers were disappointed over children choosing various professions.
The way you people talk about it makes it sound as if all people who ever went into tech were bullied outcasts and that is simply not true.
At best you had an "ok" situation. Nothing like the "rock star" attitude you get today.
Not only geeks where the less popular in school, but the media mocked them. And this snowballed into the workplace where the only people threated like the IT department was the accounting one.
The pay was not nearly in the same area. Nobody would consider buying a dual screen for their IT dev a minimum requirement.
I can recall people dreading to call the sysadmin to deal with anything. Talking to them was considered a chore.
The best way to defend this is that before the ipod existed, noone would ever say "I'm such a geek". Today somebody playing too much on iphone would say that. We call girls with cute glasses "geeks".
Not being rock star is not an oppression. The ok treatment is what majority of people have. I mean, not being treated as something super special is not "considered less that nothing by society". It is being considered normal.
"And this snowballed into the workplace where the only people threated like the IT department was the accounting one."
There is nothing wrong with the accounting department. In pretty much all workplaces I have been at, they have been treated with respect. In any case, if that workplace treated accountants badly too, the workplace was shitty for more then one group.
"I can recall people dreading to call the sysadmin to deal with anything. Talking to them was considered a chore."
I have seen such behavior towards admin, but then again I did not liked talking with that particular admin either. I dont doubt that there were groups of great admins that were not treated fairly despite acting all polite and all that. Bad workplaces happen.
However, admin I considered chore to talk with was condescending too often and it was hard to get what I needed from him. He was good in tech, but talking with him was a chore.
"The best way to defend this is that before the ipod existed, noone would ever say "I'm such a geek"."
Yeah, I find everybody is a geek culture annoying too.
"We call girls with cute glasses "geeks"."
Guys with pretty much zero technical skills used to be called geeks just for liking a tv show or play videogame.
From my first job to my current one, I always made sure I was in good stead with the IT department (whatever its size) - it was where I could get cast-off hardware for my computer junk pile!
Because the dot-com bubble had recently burst...
The impression i have is that the geek label came into effect during the dot-com era as a way to be a web guy without the "no social graces" stigma.
These days you get geeks appropriating nerd elements as a element of their self promotion, resulting in hipsters...
I'm not just being nostalgic. Before quick money ruled over all a lot more actually beneficial innovation took place. Now that the Balkanization is in full swing and the battle lines are drawn we've regressed: realtime chat is fragmented, non-corporate online entities are sidelined everywhere and any attempt at widespread integration and change goes crashing headlong into shortsighted gold rushes. Why do something that works for everyone? You can't monetize that. You can't fight Facebook with that. You can't impress your financial suitors with that.
We could do so much more than we're doing today - and we did. The most painful part of being embedded in Silicon Valley this long is seeing so much potential and momentum sacrificed on the altar of shit like G+.
Please shitcan the hyperbole and grow some perspective. Until geeks are systematically denied fundamental civil rights, until their very lives are routinely under threat because of who they are, they have nothing on the average gay person, let alone the average Muslim, black, or transsexual person.
By the standards of society, most geeks enjoy very privileged lives indeed. They just lack the social wherewithal to play by society's rules.
"You wouldn't be able to get away with the same jokes today."
Or
"You wouldn't be able to publish the same story today."
I agree that time changes, but this is discarding the merits of those who did it then.
Believe it or not, at that time it was not easy either. The people that did it had huge balls.
Geeks were considered less that nothing by society. The working world didn't trust them, believe in them or value them. They were basically rejected, as something annoying you had to have somewhere in your closet. My father actually told me in 2003 that he was disappointed I choose to work in such a boring field.
Technology didn't exist. You couldn't google your way out of anything like today (now if you google, SO answer everything!). Networks and computer where slow and expensive (we now got unmetered VPS for 3€/month, come on!). Less libraries, less frameworks, no crazy powerful API (can you believe making uber before google map ?) and no proof whatsoever that what you wanted to do was achievable.
The market was unproven (the 2000 bubble killed so much). We had no experience in it. Not tools to recruit, sell, build...
It's was not easier to do anything. The constraints were just different.
The constraints of tomorrow will be also different.
Let's not use the change as an excuse.
Doing something that matters is ALWAYS HARD.