From an organizational level, we're 98% regarded as human resources for management's usage.

From a personal level, few people have the capability to appreciate what we care about. They can measure us with yard sticks & jira points & dollars-of-valued-delivered, but none of these outsiders can adopt our value system & see us as we see ourselves, none can rate us by what matters to us & how we go about & care about our lots.

This post is about opening one's view & recognizing other peoples game. Im contending nerds find few who can rate their game, see what they're really playing at, what real success is & what matters to them. Who else out there has hard really hard to understand games, has a value-system alien to others? That is the defining question to me.

Often we see mis-allocated respect too. Nerds given undeserved respect, sourced in shallow understanding, undermining our trust in the world's sensibility & discernment. The "cowboy coders" and 10x discourse revolves around these outsider/alien/unsensing values being used to determine respect & rank, causing endless offense & distrust & alienation to nerds, confirming to us we are alone in chasing our good game.

The respect you consider is shallow & exterior & the respect we want & that matters to us is often trapped & esoteric. Real success - often yes of the business - often derives from what others cannot see.

> From an organizational level, we're 98% regarded as human resources for management's usage.

100% of employees are regarded as human resources for management's usage, so "nerds" aren't unique in that regard. The idea that money goes in and business value comes out applies to business nerds, facilities management nerds, HR nerds, accounting nerds, etc. Everyone is beholden to a business operating system responsible for creating value.

This can seem like a bit of a downer when viewed through the "what's it all mean?" lens, but hey, that's capitalism.

Exactly this. As I said in another comment that was alluding to sprint points - "nerds get no respect" is a much less true or insightful statement than "workers get no respect under capitalism, and many nerds are workers". I suspect that the OP I was replying to believes that nerds are entitled to _more_ respect than the average worker, hence their perception.

He's right about this - nerds get a lot of money these days, but no respect.

Some of the world most famous people are nerds. The richest people in the world are nerds. Elon is 100% a nerd, and he can basically get any Hollywood star he wants.

I'm a nerd, and I consider myself pretty successful in life. I totally agree with the other poster that your view on the world is very different.

You really believe Elon could get “any Hollywood star he wants?” He is rich and famous, but considered a weirdo at best.

> Elon is 100% a nerd

According to what metrics?

Rings true for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

I know lots of engineers and scientists are devoted to art, opera, literature, history.

Next to zero artists or singers who are familiar with say, the laws of thermodynamics.

> Next to zero artists or singers who are familiar with say, the laws of thermodynamics.

You don't have to dig very deep to find counterexamples. Dr. Brian May was the lead guitarist and a founding member of Queen. He holds a PhD in astrophysics. Tom Scholz was a founding member of Boston and has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. Dr. Brian Holland is the lead vocalist for The Offspring and has a PhD in molecular biology.

As a more personal example, I spent my high school science classes competing on each test for top marks against Wesley MacInnes, who today is an actor and country music singer. (He was the school bully in the last Power Rangers movie. It was an amusing role. Wesley was an extraordinarily kind person in real high school.)

I would argue that their science career came first. Even if less remunerative.

> graduated as class valedictorian in 1984. During high school, Holland was the best student in mathematics in his year,

from wikipedia

Excuse me but what definition of “nerd” are you operating under because I want to travel back in time and not literally have the shit beaten out of me and go enjoy an art and history education for the pure academic joy of it.

Are you from the US? The whole jocks/nerds thing is a bit alien to me.

In my school, the top athletes were also good students. The dux was the linchpin of the football team and also wrote poetry.

I’m from the US. But the jocks/nerds thing is alien to me too for what it’s worth. In my experience the conflicting difference was jerks/nerds. I wasn’t close friends with many athletes but many of them were friendly, and yes great students. And one who I did become close friends with wasn’t particularly inclined to poetry AFAIK, but we did form a “band” and record an (embarrassing now) “album” together.

It's easy for nerds to get respect from other nerds.

But I agree with him that nerds get little respect from non-nerds.

You are saying that women don't respect successful men? Because in my world, nerds are successful.

How deep does the respect go? Is it a knowing respect that understands the real strengths & weaknesses of a person's professional persona intimately? Honestly I think it's probably kind of alienating & unideal that so many partners cant really communicate & share effectively what it is they face. We might get respect, but that doesnt mean the other person actually understands the game, or our moves.

There's a whole idea of "workwife," as in, the professional partner that can comprehend & share & commiserate & bond over the "other" 40 hours of our lives. Someome else to co-play the work game with. Because so so rarely are our partners positioned to be able to, no?

The post is about a lot more than respect. We can give each other respect for all kinds of things, all manner of reasons & successes. Respect can says more about the person giving respect than it can the person getting respect. This post is about a different kind of empathy, of understanding people as they want to be be seen, find ways to meet people on their courts & finding ways to be good witnesses to their moves/triumphs.

Women respecting successful men who are nerds is generally them respecting the "successful" bit, not the "nerd" bit.

women respect such men as long as those men meet their needs. could be any man, nerd or not.

This is an incredibly toxic outlook that fails to take into account that women are also fully featured humans with personalities. As a man, you likely get along with people both nerdier and less nerdy than you. Women do the same.

Not to mention that the "nerds" group is not gender-specific.

Does that go both ways? Who do you (presumably nerd) respect? Sales people? PMs? Jocks? Influencers?

And how many points did you complete this sprint, scubbo?

a) I don't know, I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I'm trusted to simply execute and deliver on the things that I think are worthwhile. They might happen to align with Agile planning processes, that's nice for the manager who happens to be running it, but that's not my concern. b) Even if this was something that I was being concerned with, "working in an environment where my productivity is monitored and measured" is hardly disrespect. Or, at least, it's no more disrespect than every other worker in this capitalist hellscape suffers - and nerds (more accurately, "job roles that are commonly associated with nerdy people") tend to have a much easier and freer professional life than others. So, if you want to say that nerds are disrespected, it's truer to say "workers are disrespected, and many nerds are workers".

We’re talking trad nerds, not Allnerds/techbros.