earlier this week i read a fascinating article from a guy who worked for Yahoo! before, during, and after the dot com boom and bust.
i have reprinted here my favorite sections from the original article.
now, i know my readers, and i know none of yall are going to click through to the article link and read it. That’s fine. I didn’t expect you to. but if you’ve got like 3 minutes, just read through this short excerpt i’ve reprinted down below.
The author, Paul Graham, talks about how commerce and business changed after the dot com “bubble,” and specifically, he outlines all the internet trends that he predicts have impacted the world. (“What the Bubble Got Right”)
out of all 10 trends, these trends i can directly see and relate to and identify and it’s great.
Youth, Informality, and Nerds.
4. Youth
The aspect of the Internet Bubble that the press seemed most taken with was the youth of some of the startup founders. This too is a trend that will last. There is a huge standard deviation among 26 year olds. Some are fit only for entry level jobs, but others are ready to rule the world if they can find someone to handle the paperwork for them.
A 26 year old may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC. Those require experience. But those are also commodities, which can be handed off to some lieutenant. The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company’s future. What will they build next? And in that department, there are 26 year olds who can compete with anyone.
In 1970 a company president meant someone in his fifties, at least. If he had technologists working for him, they were treated like a racing stable: prized, but not powerful. But as technology has grown more important, the power of nerds has grown to reflect it. Now it’s not enough for a CEO to have someone smart he can ask about technical matters. Increasingly, he has to be that person himself.
As always, business has clung to old forms. VCs still seem to want to install a legitimate-looking talking head as the CEO. But increasingly the founders of the company are the real powers, and the grey-headed man installed by the VCs more like a music group’s manager than a general.
5. Informality
In New York, the Bubble had dramatic consequences: suits went out of fashion. They made one seem old. So in 1998 powerful New York types were suddenly wearing open-necked shirts and khakis and oval wire-rimmed glasses, just like guys in Santa Clara[, CA].
The pendulum has swung back a bit, driven in part by a panicked reaction by the clothing industry. But I’m betting on the open-necked shirts. And this is not as frivolous a question as it might seem. Clothes are important, as all nerds can sense, though they may not realize it consciously.
If you’re a nerd, you can understand how important clothes are by asking yourself how you’d feel about a company that made you wear a suit and tie to work. The idea sounds horrible, doesn’t it? In fact, horrible far out of proportion to the mere discomfort of wearing such clothes. A company that made programmers wear suits would have something deeply wrong with it.
And what would be wrong would be that how one presented oneself counted more than the quality of one’s ideas. That’s the problem with formality. Dressing up is not so much bad in itself. The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as “suits.”
Nerds don’t just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.
6. Nerds
Clothing is only the most visible battleground in the war against formality. Nerds tend to eschew formality of any sort. They’re not impressed by one’s job title, for example, or any of the other appurtenances of authority.
Indeed, that’s practically the definition of a nerd. I found myself talking recently to someone from Hollywood who was planning a show about nerds. I thought it would be useful if I explained what a nerd was. What I came up with was: someone who doesn’t expend any effort on marketing himself.
A nerd, in other words, is someone who concentrates on substance. So what’s the connection between nerds and technology? Roughly that you can’t fool mother nature. In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can’t finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields.
And as technology becomes increasingly important in the economy, nerd culture is rising with it. Nerds are already a lot cooler than they were when I was a kid. When I was in college in the mid-1980s, “nerd” was still an insult. People who majored in computer science generally tried to conceal it. Now women ask me where they can meet nerds. (The answer that springs to mind is “Usenix,” but that would be like drinking from a firehose.)
I have no illusions about why nerd culture is becoming more accepted. It’s not because people are realizing that substance is more important than marketing. It’s because the nerds are getting rich. But that is not going to change.
______
end quote
isn’t that awesome!! i think he hit it right on. comments, anyone? (nobody’s probably going to read this far either, maybe besides my dad and jon)
i wonder if this trend is perhaps also a generational difference? maybe our gen. “y” is just a tad looser than the baby-booms?
i think there will continue be an “old” or “traditional” guard of business types, even as “nerds” increase. Old people will get deference over young guys, suits and ties will be worn, and people will try to stay mainstream. Some business depends on these socially stabilizing factors, and that’s fine. I think if you consider the last 300 or so years of business, even though the nature of white collar jobs changed (think Industrial Revolution) the way people interacted with the commonly accepted practices of society did not.
of course those jobs, as the author alludes, aren’t very much fun. i don’t think “nerdy” guys value substance more than any other type, but i do think that the way people perceive so called “nerds” is changing and that is what I think the author is hitting upon.
another thing to consider is the type of person attracted to a job. creative types, whether techie or not, tend to be looser, more informal, young (at least at heart), and into their job (nerdy?). i think this has always been mostly the case.
i, of course, identify strongly with the author and believe his statements to quite optimistic.
but, judging from the looks of the people i know (only a few years older than myself) who are graduating from professional school, i doubt if the trends mentioned have really caught on all over yet.
technology is changing the way we do business, but I’m not completely convinced that it is going to change how old we are when we do it are what we look like in the office. i think those things are related to variables outside of the technology field, although i do understand the points the author makes.
interesting stuff to ponder….that’s my two cents.
btw….my favorite line in the excerpt, “prophylactic measure against stupidity”
nerdy indeed!
You have a secret admirer that reads every word you write. The only regret is that you don’t update often enough. You are cool and someday you will be rich. I have faith in you.