Understanding personality traits and how they relate to the people you're looking for has felt critically important as I work on my startup. It has come up over and over again in hiring (including MANY more inbound, exploratory conversations than I would have expected) and in client management (identifying the best point of contact on their side, but also keeping clients on track and responsive during an onboard).

“Nerds” being a meaningful category isn’t an idea limited to high-school caste/cliques, especially in tech; one of the reasons software flipped from being predominantly female to predominantly male is the popularization of the idea (IIRC, in the late 1960s or early 1970s) that stereotypical nerds (socially maladapted, querulous, technophilic males) were the optimal workers in the field.

The idea, which best as I know was only grounded in thin popular management quasi-science, has become increasingly less popular in the last few decades.

It is weird, though, that Graham’s affected contrarianism requires him to pretend that fierceness as opposed to diffidence is contrary to the popular stereotype, nerds lacking the skills to manage/moderate conflict manifesting in both conflict avoidance where they are uncomfortable and fierce, intractable, often petty conflict within their comfort zone has always been central to the stereotype.

With computer science being one of the most popular degrees being held by Gen Z, the "nerd" casting will slowly fade as computer work becomes more and more the norm vs. traditional trades and fields that require higher education.

Average Joe caught wind you could make Lawyer and Doctor money with a Bachelor's or less, makes sense to me.

It applies to a lot of what is happening in society today.

Fortunately for my generation, we didn't scrimmage or skate with helmets so we don't remember who wronged us. IDK how later generations manage.