> but seriously. You need to be able to hold a conversation. You need to be able to talk productively with your fellow people, including difficult conversations. You need to open to negative feedback, to be able to take criticism or contrary viewpoints without turning into a puddle of some combination of depression/rage/self-hatred, or people are just not going to get on with you.
You implying that non-nerds have any of these traits lol no they don't it's just that they exhibit more of group-thinking and less individualism, so they provoke less situations that might potentially cause conflict.
My experience with nerds is "ok each has their own opinion this is going to be difficult but let's try cooperating" whereas non-nerds act exclusively "my way or the highway" because they have never previously encountered the idea that their view of the world might be wrong "because I'm the majority".
> You implying that non-nerds have any of these traits
The thesis of the initial discussion is that it is unfair to hold "weird nerds" to certain standards.
The person you are responding to is claiming that actually some of these standards are important.
Your response to that of claiming that the standards are important is to say that actually normal people don't pass those standards either.
This doesn't refute the argument that the standards are important, but would actually agree with them that actually yes it is totally fine to hold people to important standards, weird nerd or not. (And in fact, you think the weird nerds are even better are following the standards! So what is the issue of holding them to those standards then?)
When people say "I want you to have good social skills" they think "I want you to collaborate with others and not cause drama". These two might seem similar but they aren't. It's okay to expect people to live up to expectations, but at the same time you might admit that these expectations are unfair and put certain people in disadvantage because of their innate traits.
Imagine you have an all-Arab company and you hire a Jew. Of course there's going to be a lot of drama, even it that particular employee has fantastic social skills, and would thrive in an environment full of people from their own culture.
My point is, in order to achieve the same result "collaborate with others and not cause drama" nerds need much higher social skills than non-nerds, simply because they're a minority.
It might reasonable to hold people to important standards, while these standards might be inherently unfair. It depends on whether you value effects or effort.
I would absolutely, 100% expect professional behavior from a bunch of arabs and a Jew who found themselves working together, and it's frankly illuminating that that was your go-to as a scenario that would inevitably cause workplace friction, especially following a line about "innate traits."
And that's before we get into nerds being a minority which is just... no. Nerd shit is so mainstream at this point and co-opting minority status to talk about you really being into geology or something is... a lot.
There's a lot going on here and I'm not interested in unpacking it, have a lovely day.
Your reply can be summarized as "workplace is magically immune to natural friction that occurs when people from vastly different social groups interact because I strongly believe in HR's wishful thinking and besides, talking about two social groups that are commonly known to hate each other to the point that they don't want to recognize each other's statehood is just non-compliant and goes against our community standards"
You implying that non-nerds have any of these traits lol no they don't it's just that they exhibit more of group-thinking and less individualism, so they provoke less situations that might potentially cause conflict.
My experience with nerds is "ok each has their own opinion this is going to be difficult but let's try cooperating" whereas non-nerds act exclusively "my way or the highway" because they have never previously encountered the idea that their view of the world might be wrong "because I'm the majority".