Hmm.

I'm 17, so here is what I have to say on that. Keep in mind I live in a rural, farm town so it might be a bit different in more urban areas. I don't know. I'm just basing what I'm saying on what I hear online, and my own observations.

Computer related fields are DEFINITELY looked on as a "good career" and "the future", but I see a lot of my peers, even if they are vaguely interested, believe that they "aren't techy enough" to have a computer related job in the future. Which I always find strange, because you don't have to be "nerdy" or anything. You just... learn? Like any other job that requires some kind of skill. You don't have to be "plumber-y" enough to get a job as a plumber, and similarly you don't have to be "techy" to get a job in tech. Anyway...

Most people my age that I'm around don't know the difference between Google and the Internet, and it still tends to be the socially awkward, nerdy people who get into computers. So, to answer your question, maybe social awkwardness or being nerdy is less of a "requirement" now than before because being a "geeky computer user" isn't really a stigmatized thing anymore since everyone interacts with computers in some fashion nowadays and my generation as a whole seems a bit more open minded with a lot of things compared to previous ones, but it's still definitely a stereotype that's sticking around and probably will stay around for a while.

> my generation as a whole seems a bit more open minded with a lot of things compared to previous ones

I know this isn't your main point, but I don't see much difference so far. I think the internet has allowed people who don't fit in locally to fit in with groups they find online, which is good, but that's been happening for 30 years.

I'm going to counter this. I feel it's still stigmatized as hell. Got to much experiences with it. (The Netherlands)

Hang in there.

If you're still in middle or high school (i.e. Between 12-18yrs old), you're at the worst part of your life for liking computers and geeky stuff. People around you don't know how to deal with anything that doesn't conform, so they are pretty ruthless about people who like different things. It's nothing personal about you. It's insecurity on the part of other people.

If you can hang on a little longer - just long enough to get to University - you will see a total change in the environment around you. That was the first time in my life that anyone around me had any idea of what electronics or programming was. It was magical.

It's a hard thing to hear when you're in the middle of what feels like an endless, miserable slog, but hang in there! University more than makes up for how lousy high school is.

I second cushychicken. Tons of us had similar experiences.

Mine were sometimes rough, sometimes beautiful. More rough though.

It can help if you have any inclination for the performing arts. Music, dance, theater. Many more of those people are accepting of differences and or quirky. I was and value those people and times highly.

But yeah, hang in there. This all does improve.

Edit: I am getting older now. There is another phase! You will eventually find your place among peers and do what you all do and it will be amazing.

Family, work, friends, projects, all of it.

Then, at some point your own grow, and you get to help them, plant seeds. My granddaughter has this spark we are talking of here. And she is young, and I can share, and remember back to when I was young.

My own kids had no real interest, but did learn the basics. Fine. They can do if they need or want to. But this little one in my care now is so damn much fun!

Call it the circle of geek nerd life.

And this all reminds me... are there older mentors you could hang with at times? If so, you should do it. I learned so much and it really helped with the angst. Older people, who I looked up to, saw me as I am and it all being fine, their nudging and teasing more out of me were very good times.

There is more "room" for normal people, but the true devotees I think are still a bit out-there. I have been noticing recently that I fundamentally think differently to my peers, but am completely at home with people I have met through common technological ideology.

A "friend" recently told me off for being too nerdy, and I couldn't help but think (maybe it's too self-centered of me, but still) "Fuck you, people like me built the world as it is now so people like you can spend all day playing video games".

I’m grateful for having a friend group that’s mostly not in the tech industry but just accepts my nerdiness nonetheless.

This kind of technical culture has been around donkey’s years, if you read some of the conversations between early wireless telegraphy operators it sounds a lot like the early internet! Babbage himself basically told a British politician to “STFU noob, garbage in garbage out” when asked whether his difference engine would emit the right results if its operator put in the wrong figures into it.

usually, with friends, you can say "fuck you, i'm a nerd then" and they would be cool with that

Exactly, and then it gets easier with people that don't really matter

You should have told him that.

I remember having ~0 friends, not worth the risk. Trite, but that's my thought process.

"Fuck you, people like me built the world as it is now so people like you can spend all day playing video games".

Well, if they spend all day playing video games who exactly is or is not the nerdy one here.....?

I know a lot of people who play video games, but need me to help them build a computer or reinstall windows. Despite interacting with tech all the time they have zero desire to understand how it works. Also they didn't say that they don't play video games too. They are just also interested in tech.

> Well, if they spend all day playing video games who exactly is or is not the nerdy one here.....?

Not the video game players.

By nerdy I really mean following up details and learning things for the sake of it. Video games are not nerdy any more, nerd culture has completely won over the last 15 years or so.

> "Fuck you, people like me built the world as it is now so people like you can spend all day playing video games"

Did you personally contribute to this great "world building" or are you just being tribal?

They literally wrote "people like me", not "I personally built all those games".

> I'm 40-something and I wonder if that's the case with today's teenagers or 20-something generation.

That's exactly what I've realized and why I decided to get serious about cs. I didn't start in cs because I thought it was for geniuses. Then I realized a lot of non-geniuses were getting the good paying jobs, so I switched to cs just to realize that's what I actually enjoy learning about.

So yeah, it looks like it's the new banking for overachievers but the lack of passion is easy to spot I'd say.

I don't have the data but given the salaries I assume FAANG software eng is now the target of people that used to go for ibanking/MBB consulting, basically high achievers motivated by achievement in the eyes of others. If that's true, it's going to be a massive demographic shift from the CS folks I went to school with in the late 90s. Based on some of the discussions I see, I think this has already happened in places.

I've this feeling too. The people on CS today is way more "normal" than even in the 90's. But there's a shift in salaries: the biggest bite now goes for managers and developers are mostly seen as replaceable lower value workers. True nerds don't feel at home in the marketplace anymore.

That's why we start our own companies, or join small startups.

I mean, you can also be a """true nerd""" and not really be too interested in competition and hard hitting jobs.

I found a really nice spot working in a developer enablement / platform engineering role. You can continue to be condescending to average developers and then steer them in the right direction!

Before software development was the career the rich kids went to, instead of, say, Wall Street, I don't recall us computer nerds being called "high achievers".

I think it helps to think of "high achiever" as PR spin for the go-to status/prestige careers for children from affluent and connected families. Whatever that is at the time.

If we wanted to call someone in software a "high achiever", I suppose it could be used to describe someone who breaks the class barrier, to get the affluent go-to status career. Despite whatever affluence-biased gatekeeping the affluent established once they took it over.

As a recent graduate of a high-ranked uni, this is somewhat true, but i think CS pulls some from IBanking but also from law, general engr'ing, and medicine. I and many others i know entered school thinking about medicine.

While many people in CS that go to FAANG, et. al are high-achievers, most are the cohort of those people interested in science and technical work more than social focused work. Much bigger overlap with pre-med defectors. Also we had plenty of "anti-social" kids, but interestingly they achieved less and were more likely to work at a small regional company after graduating than a SV tech firm.

I don't think that kind of person would last long as a dev, or get promoted very much.

I think its exactly the people that get promoted disproportionately to the rest. That's their thing...

EDIT: I probably misinterpreted your point, I think you refer to "people that used to go for ibanking/MBB consulting, basically high achievers motivated by achievement in the eyes of others"

Why? Are you saying that person with good social skills can't work as a dev? I don't see the connection.

I've heard guys say "My goal is to stop coding after two years in the industry".

It's tough to stay motivated and learn constantly when you don't like engineering and coding...

As someone who has interviewed and hired a lot of recent CS grads I can confirm they are way less weird than the fine people I met at the beginning of my career.

I'm disabled so when I was child my playtime was tightly controlled as my parents were worried that I might get hurt so I played with toys and thereby electronics.

When I was a teen I understood that I'm a liability in sports although my friends tried to be inclusive so again I spent my time doing nerdy things alone until I got my computer and naturally became good at it.

In college I was forced to take on Computer Science by my parents as they felt it was the least physically tasking yet provides a good career; They were right.

Even though my story fits the narrative of socially awkward being good with computers, as a disabled I didn't have much of choice and I feel this might be true for many.

I've worked in IT for a decade and a half, and I just don't think there's the same room for the stereotypical "not a people" person, as there used to be.

As awareness and importance of the field has grown, it has become a lot more diverse and involves a lot more interaction with other people.

For better or worse, you can't just hide in your safe corner and quietly build stuff anymore, you have to interact with people and accept having the lights shine on you from time to time.

Just for an overview of my workplace, I think we've got maybe 7 or 8 nationalities, one person is a dance instructor, one is an almost stereotypical handsome player who woos all the girls at parties, one plays D&D with his kids, one is a weightlifter, one competes in bicycle races on a high level. It's still mostly male, but there are more and more women in IT now.

Common to all of them - no matter their other traits - is that they're all extremely inquisitive and curious and have a great desire to learn, and I think that's the most important factor.

Around 20 years ago I found it quite difficult to find anyone actually interested in computers. I mean not for gaming but rather exploring cool tools and software development. And even among those interested only few had that much interest that they would go and learn a programming language or install Linux. Of course that was a time when Computers and Internet access were rather expensive and documentation was usually only available in books. So naturally most kids using computers had parents with some sort of engineering/mathematics background or were themselves really interested in that.

I think this is now changing in unexpected ways, one is that devices are becoming really locked down. (On the other hand you can now install a full-featured GNU/Linux as a app... FWIW when I tried Linux the first time it was with Winlinux or so on Win95) On the other hand documentation has become extremely good, it's more common to see devs with no engineering/math background at all.

> I wonder if this is less common today though

no, autism spectrum disorder (formerly called asperger's) is not less common today. and, btw, some hypothesize the awkwardness comes not from a lack of empathy, but actually hyperempathy, and stallman's concerns for social policy can be seen as empathetic

> and, btw, some hypothesize the awkwardness comes not from a lack of empathy, but actually hyperempathy,

I don't think it's either; I think it's a different empathy. For some, it might be a subset of “normal empathy”, and for others it might be a superset, but those are probably exceptions. From talking to people, it seems like strong empathy with the easy-to-imagine (e.g. familiar) experiences of others, but less empathy with unfamiliar experiences of others – sometimes to the point where it's hard to tell the emotional state of others, or even predict how they'd react to certain situations.

I'm guessing this has something to do with the "harder to model other people as being different people" thing that some people have – see the “pencil in a Smarties tube” test.[0]

[0]: https://www.toxicdrums.com/smarties-pencils-child.htm

Well, the day has only 24 hours so every hour that you spend on dealing with people is an hour you do not spend on dealing with computers and vice versa. And one has a shot at getting good at what one does often.