Being Humble Is Not So Terrible
Since coming to silicon valley two years ago, I've noticed an alarming number of rather public and well respected figures in the tech industry make sweeping generalizations about other people. This disturbs me and fascinates me. Two things to note here:
1. A lot of geeks that I know of have a chip on their shoulder from being oppressed, belittled, and generally made fun of when they were younger. These geeks come to SV, realize that they are treated like royalty hear, and vengefully react to anyone who may be underneath them. It's very much a situation of the bullied becoming the bullies; it's disturbing and fascinating that some of the smartest people in the world don't realize what they sound like.
2. Those of us who work in technical fields are always quick to say that people who are cruel or mean are just stupid. This ties back to point 1; we are quick to point out that bullies are just stupid or something of that nature. In retrospect, perhaps they aren't stupid. Perhaps they are allowing that side of themselves to play itself out while they are still young. Sure beats being one of those thugs as an adult.
A striking example: I think we can agree that the average intelligence of someone who reads the 37signals blog would be higher than the general population's average intelligence. Yet, you couldn't tell from reading the comments of this blog post (aside from the slightly fancier words). Though this is bigotry in a small way, I've often seen and heard discrimination in other, more troubling ways.
Rumors of a "Google Brigade" or companies that would not hire candidates because they enjoyed Sports, played sports, or had certain tastes in music are both things that I've heard of people experiencing. This is bullshit and amounts to the same sort of bullying as geeks may have experienced earlier in their lives. I don't lose sleep at night criticizing people that behave this way. They are entitled to saying whatever they like. All I'm trying to say is that this late-working, basketball playing, hardware engineer and software engineer will take your ass to school if you try that shit here.
