Fixpert

Before I start this post, I want to make sure that everyone knows that I try my best to steer clear of rants on my site. I noticed that I don’t like to read blogs that are regularly negative. I won’t make a habit of this I promise. With that said, I want to hear if anyone else has experienced what I will call the Nerd in Denial, or NID.

Recently, I have had some experiences with this strange creature. The NID I speak of is not one specific person, but rather a portrait of a type of person. The NID is a web designer or developer, works on the computer all day every day, but the NID has yet to embrace his true inner nerd (be honest, there’s a nerd inside all of us). NID still makes fun of all things nerdy: Star Trek, D&D, podcasts, science, technology, on and on.

When people in high school made fun of nerds, that was to be expected, right? But, it boggles my mind to see folks who work in technology that actually make fun of other people for caring about…technology. This doesn’t make sense to me. The only explanation that I can come up with is that maybe the NIDs got into technical fields not out of interest, but because they thought they would make good money. What a bummer for them, because I can’t imagine doing this job if I didn’t love it. I love technology, I love that being a web designer is a challenge, that technology is constantly changing, and that your skills need to change along with it. I love that in the span of 6 months, if you haven’t been paying attention, things on the web have changed in a major way. So, I feel it’s the NIDs’ loss if they’re not engaged and don’t love what they do.

Has anyone else worked with or talked with a NID? Any thoughts or feelings on this?