There are more "nerdy", non-boring tech people, but you are correct, you won't find them at AirBnB, Facebook, or Amazon. So don't go there if you want to find it. There's a place in my town that uses drones to inspect Air Turbines - I can guarantee there are more interesting people there. Go into small, crazy businesses that exist to do cool tech. "Cool" people, in my experience, are pretty dull, at least for the societal definition of cool. Find the nerds and geeks, they are still out there, but they still aren't the cool, in group. They are weird and thorny and sometimes smell a little. But they have really fun ideas!
My fear is that the 'All Birds Nerds' exclude 'Nerd Nerds'.
'nerd nerds' don't know what they are doing in terms of presentation or communication.
If 'nerd nerds' are 'hip' it's completely by accident.
I also think 'nerd nerds' just say whatever, meaning that occasionally they will say something un-PC, or lacking in empathy and be 'pushed out' for that reason.
There was a time (and some people are still like this) where utterances didn't imply an ideological alignment, it's just something that's said.
In 'All Birds Culture' everyone is careful how they communicate.
I'm sure there are some nerd nerds at AirBnB and frankly not everyone in All Birds Nerd culture is the prototype either but the 'mainstay' at AirBnB would be All Birds Nerds.
Someone who wears a 'Metal' T-shirt, completely un-ironically, because they like Metal, and wore it 5 times without washing it, because they forgot, and have disgusting greasy sideburns just 'because they like it' ... and an article of clothing made out of snakeskin ... that's probably a nerd nerd.
I suspect, with no evidence, that the distinction you are making here can be described as neurotypical nerds (what you call All Birds nerds) versus neurodivergent nerds (autistic, adhd, whatever you want to bucket them under)
Neurodivergent people tend to have a bit less of a social filter, they are more direct and honest, often to the point of bluntness (leading to the 'just say whatever' behavior you mentioned)
They also tend to be pretty unfiltered when it comes to their passions, and hyperfixate on them to the detriment of other areas of their life, like laundry.
And yes, these people are often excluded basically anywhere they go, and they have to mask their behaviours to appear more normal to get jobs. In that respect, the All Birds culture has absolutely pushed them aside, or pushed them under.
This is just my 2 cents, attempting to put some definitions around the All Birds and Nerd Nerds groups you described. I could be entirely mistaken.
I think you’ve done a good job of summarizing the landscape – it matches my experience.
The progression seems to be the decline of the nerd-nerd monoculture in the professional tech environment. With some irony, the increase in diversity is from the non-neurodiverse. Product managers, engineering managers, vertically integrated teams.
I believe on the most part this creates healthier productivity for the business – but likely at the social expense of the neurodiverse. Their technical skills can be more readily exploited by the hustlers.
I think part of the problem is that we haven't moved from the "nerd nerd monoculture" to more diverse cultures. What has happened instead is that we've adopted an MBA, Agile-driven monoculture instead. That culture is honestly pretty hostile to neurodiverse people by forcing them into marching orders and restricting their freedom to be themselves.
Neurodiversity is probably aligned with that but I suspect a lot of people are just not self aware, never learned to communicate in a political environment.
A neurodiverse, even introverted kid who went to private school then Ivy League, and had 'a lot of money / no fears' growing up ... probably will have been socialized in the political sense.
Grow up in a small town or the burbs, people are 'judgy' about some stuff, but not anything complicated or nuanced.
I'm not in any camp, but really not until I was 30 did I notice how much stock people put into small signals. Like 'likes fishing' or 'football' etc..
Especially in such a competitive environment, people are I think looking for flaws.
Torvalds, James Gosling, Wozniack, Sergei Brin - those are nerd-nerds.
(I once saw Sergei Brin walking down the street in what looked like a back brace and mime outfit. Serious. WTF? Middle of the day.
Sundar is All Birds Nerd, but he's a business guy anyhow.
I feel a lot of YC culture errs on the side of All Birds Nerds.
> Torvalds, James Gosling, Wozniack, Sergei Brin - those are nerd-nerds.
Remember that college educations, especially highly skilled STEM ones, were very rare for their parents' generation (born in the 30s - 50s)
Torvalds - Father was a politician, grandfather a famous statistician
Wozniak - Father was an engineer for Lockheed
Brin - Father a math professor, mother a NASA researcher
Gosling was the only one in this bunch who really just came out of nowhere. I agree with what you're saying about Nerd Nerds and All Birds Nerds but the founders of Silicon Valley were always well-heeled. I think the culture changed for rank-and-file engineers mostly because of the money in the field. While founders would certainly make it big (Moore, Gates, etc) the average engineer was payed well but not fantastically.
One could feasibly work in other white-collar fields (law, accounting, airline pilot, etc) to make similar money and those who were interested in the largest pay packages and large amounts of prestige went into fields like finance or medicine. Folks who went into tech typically chose tech because they liked the problems that you could solve in tech or liked the people who chose to go into tech (often somewhat neurodiverse). Nowadays tech salaries are insane and most people who enter tech are doing it for money and prestige foremost. These folks are going to be the All Birds Nerds; smart folks who are more interested in making money and rising the ranks rather than playing around with tech.
