Be nice to nerds
FIVE years ago Zach Sims, a sprightly, striving 21-year-old, launched Codeacademy, a startup, to offer online courses about how to write software. He remembers pitching his idea to prospective investors only to hear a “chorus of no”. At the time, the naysayers thought coding was a weird, fringe activity for computer-science geeks. They were wrong. Since 2011, more than 25m people have signed up for Codeacademy. Meanwhile, in-person crash courses that teach computer programming, called coding boot-camps, have spread worldwide, as more people aspire to tech jobs or running their own startup. This year tuition fees at these boot-camps will reach around $200m in America alone.
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you may end up working for them,” wrote Charles Sykes, author of the book “50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School”, first published in 2007. Today there are more reasons than ever to treat nerds with respect: never mind the fact that every company is clamouring to hire them, geeks are starting to shape markets for new products and services.
Stephen O’Grady of RedMonk, a consultancy, calls developers the “new kingmakers”: they are driving decisions about the technology that their companies use to an extent that has never before been possible. From personal computers to social-media companies like Twitter and Facebook, many gadgets and platforms started out with curious tech enthusiasts experimenting in their garage or dorm room, only to turn into mainstream hits. Slack, a two-year-old messaging firm that aims to displace e-mail, started as a tool for software developers to communicate with one another before it spread to other functions and companies.
But nerds’ influence now goes well beyond technology. They hold greater cultural sway. “Silicon Valley”, a show on HBO which will soon start filming its fourth season, presents the “brogrammer” startup culture in all its grit and glory, and suggests that mass audiences are transfixed by what really happens behind closed (garage) doors. Techies in San Francisco don not only hoodies but also T-shirts with “G∑∑K” emblazoned on the front. Those too risk-averse to become university dropouts like Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook rush in rising numbers to Silicon Valley as soon as they graduate, forsaking careers on Wall Street to code their way into the 1%.
Nerds carry more clout in part because their ranks have swelled. IDC, a research firm, estimates there are now around 20m professional and hobbyist software developers worldwide; that is probably low. Geeky, addictive video games are drawing more into the fold. Each month at least 70m people play “League of Legends”, a complex multiplayer online game; that is more than play baseball, softball or tennis worldwide.
As a result, companies had better pay attention to the rise of a “nerd economy” that stretches well beyond their direct technology needs. Venture capitalists were first to pick up on this. Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, says he is constantly watching “what the smartest people are doing on the weekends”, because it hints at what the mainstream will be up to in ten years’ time. With this rationale, Andreessen Horowitz has invested in various gadgets and products that early adopters have embraced, including a nutrient-rich drinkable meal for engineers too busy to take a break from coding, called Soylent. Another investment is in a company called Nootrobox, which makes chewable coffee for people too lazy or antisocial to order a liquid shot from a barista. The “mouth of the cultural river” has shifted from New York and Los Angeles to San Francisco, says Mr Dixon.
Not only nerd food has won venture capitalists’ attention, but also their fashion choices. Warby Parker, a glasses firm, and Stance, a startup that makes bright, geeky socks, have attracted $200m in venture capital. Both cater to techies as well as the fashion-aware (the line between hipster and nerd can be fuzzy). The “sharing economy”, exemplified by Lyft and Airbnb, also was originally a nerd thing: they prefer renting to buying stuff.
Incumbent businesses, too, have started to take their cue from all this nerdiness. Brands like Mountain Dew and Doritos have sponsored video-game competitions and “rodeos” where competitors race drones around stadiums. By intrepidly going where the nerds go, brands hope to get some credibility. “Hackathons”, where companies invite prospective and current employees to stay up all night, eat pizza and code, are de rigueur as a means to recruit engineers. Even very traditional companies like MasterCard and Disney have started to hold them.
Sometimes, however, it can all be a bit embarrassing. GE, an industrial giant, has run a television ad campaign about how it hires software developers that feels as awkward to watch as an engineer trying to do stand-up comedy for the first time. Haagen-Dazs, an ice cream-maker, has put up billboards in San Francisco that proudly declare “We’re a 56-year-old startup” and present the written recipe for vanilla ice cream as if it were code.