You are probably talking about people who just crunch out some half baked solutions for the sake of getting somewhere.
But there are other nerds who care, just not about the code quality, but about conversion, testing out business ideas quickly, getting to know their customers better.
There are nerds who care about business strategy.
There are nerds who care about accounting principles and clean financial reporting.
There are nerds who care about sales targets and partnerships.
There are many types of nerds out there. Don’t limit nerds to engineers, because “tech” world is not just an engineering world anymore. All these nerds you can team up with to build meaningful things, because they do care.
This resonates with me. I'm a Mechanical Engineer who loves the process of coding. I did take an intro to business class in undergraduate though, and my professor said one thing that has stuck with me for 30+ years - 'The fundamental goal of a business is to make profit now and in the future'. Vibe coded slop might get some traction and make money now, but high quality code will reduce technical debt and allow it to be made in the future. So, in some ways, both camps are right. The PM/Manager/VP want to make money now, but if they completely disregard the nerdy engineer, they will sabotage their future.
I see a disconnect between these two camps that will probably cause a lot of chaos in the near future. Those that figure it out will thrive.
They very clearly weren't talking about nerds in general but rather nerds who care about software.