Do persecuted non-nerds have the right to (in any way) cordon off computer science as a refuge free from nerdiness? Because that's what articles like these seem to be suggesting we'd need to do, by saying that nerd social cues like Star Wars and geeky T-shirts are excluding women.

I think that's an overwrought reading of the article, for two reasons: first, the article isn't prescriptive about Star Wars, and second, it's reporting simple facts; whether you feel comfortable about it or not, nerd culture's coupling with software development does alienate potential entrants to the field.

But let's not bother deploying dueling readings from the article, and instead see how much you and I actually disagree:

I do not in fact think it's reasonable to suggest that individual software developers should avoid nerd signifiers to avoid alienating people. I feel safe presuming we agree about that.

Do you feel like it's reasonable for companies to avoid aggressive identification with nerd culture? To not ask candidates what their favorite Star Wars movie is, or to try to balance out outings and fringe benefits so they only appeal to sci-fi fandom?

Do companies do that? I've never experienced any embrace of "nerd culture" at any place I've worked.

Sure! Here's an example I'll ruefully draw from the last company I helped manage: all-hands offsites at local breweries.

I'm a hardware engineer. Most hardware companies are too tight fisted to have offsites (making physical things is expensive). The few that I've been on have been very tame because the last thing management wants is an offended employee.

Having an offsite at a brewery is kinda shitty because not everyone likes to drink. Did anyone try to suggest another venue?

Yes, or at least, the concern was raised (among the small minority of people who weren't excited about going to Three Floyds).

It's not, like, a management decision I'm super duper proud of.

I don't understand the connection between beer and nerd culture --- or masculine culture, actually, since plenty of women I know love beer.

I wasn't trying to be gender-specific with my example, just showing how something you can do as a manager to build culture can exclude and alienate people.

(Though: I do think beer drinking trends masculine.)

It's really hard to win at this. Whatever you do as a culture or team building exercise is going to either offend or just be uncomfortable to some subset of employees, unless it's so bland as to be boring for everyone.

It seems like a borderline example. I feel that the "brogrammer" stereotype was invented up mainly because the nerd stereotype was too sympathetic. I'm genuinely curious if there are examples of the kind of stereotypes in the article being promoted right now by tech companies.

As an aside, these sorts of critiques of mainstream/White culture are somewhat contradictory in that they criticize any specific cultural identity as being exclusive and insular, and yet whenever this is lacking, they point to how boring mainstream/White culture is. Even lack of crime can be turned into evidence of boringness. For example, for every article on the negative effect of nerd culture on diversity, there is an article complaining about the decline of nerd culture and the rise of corporatism. The latter tend to be highly revisionist and pretend that the tech industry was founded by LSD taking hippies who coded inside isolation tanks. But the contradiction is still stark.

Right: nobody bonds over building shareholder value. They bond over shared interests. But there are no _universal_ interests, so team-building is a quandary. I think the best you can do is rotate events and make sure most people are interested most of the time.

Maybe after the beer offsite, you can visit a winery, or a famous local coffee house, and then a museum.

I think the closest universal interest for me has been music. I don't really drink and I don't really talking to drinkers when I'm sober but I always love going out to gigs with pretty much anyone.

It's not exactly the most interactive activity when you can't talk for 80% of the time, but it's still enjoyable and sociable.

Beer seems more in-line with bro culture than nerd culture. This particular article seems more against corporate nerd culture than against corporate bro culture, but I've definitely seem articles speaking out against brogramming culture. Bros and nerds are quite different things (even though it seems like there are a lot of hybrids in Silicon Valley), but it seems to me that the only way to not alienate anyone is to have zero corporate culture.

Palantir is named after an item in Lord of the Rings. From what I've heard from friends working there, they have an internal conference called HobbitCon, meetings rooms named after LotR, and refer to their office as "the shire".

Did I say that persecuted nerds have the right to cordon off CS as a refuge for their culture? I thought that I said the opposite. Your later comments suggest that you break things down exactly as I do: it's ok for nerds to be nerds, and it's ok for nerds to cluster in tech, but it's not ok to promote the idea that only nerds can do tech, or to promote an stereotype that goes beyond reality.

Did you read my comment carefully? Was I unclear at some point? Do you disagree that a lot of male nerds are resisting the diversity movement because they feel that it attacks them, and that this article notwithstanding, often the diversity movement does attack them?

The very fact that your previous comment was misinterpreted by tptacek to the point of castigating the imaginary nerds to give up their imaginary rights to "cordon off computer science as a refuge free from nerdiness" indicates to me that those people who are wont to blame the men in tech have little empathy to begin with.

The nerd culture has been one of the most inclusive cultures I've been with. As esr wrote, "No compiler or network stack or 3-D printer gives a crap about the shape of your genitals or the color of your skin, and hackers as a culture don’t either." http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6642

And Jefferson wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...".

just because someone famous described a culture certainly doesn't mean it's true universally.

Of course not. The provided quote from Eric S. Raymond -- who, in my mind, is more of someone who intelligently analyzes these matters better than most people than is someone popular/ famous/ worshipped -- is to illustrate the 14 years of personal experience dealing with nerds (7 years in India; 7 years in the West; plus various interactions over the internet with people from other cultures) wherein it became clear, again and again, that the nerd culture has been one of the most inclusive cultures I've been with. Indeed, just in the last month I have seen two incidents where the non-nerds (the so called "women in tech") have clearly demonstrated their lack of empathy (and there have been more such incidents, outside of tech).