Hacker News Reader

Comment by MangoCoffee | Hacker News Reader

Blizzard, Ubisoft and gaming industry in general seem to be plagued with sexual harassment problem. is this the result of Silicon Valley bro culture?

View on HN

> is this the result of Silicon Valley bro culture?

My guess would be "no" for the following reasons:

1. Neither Blizzard nor Activision nor Ubisoft are headquartered in Silicon Valley.

2. "Silicon Valley bro culture" itself seems to be a largely manufactured story.

It is a cultural problem but the game industry is not SV based. Blizzard Activision is SoCal, Ubisoft is French (with studios in many locations). I worked at a studio owned by Activision (in SoCal) in the early 2000s and the culture was certainly toxic.

I just find it funny how often commenters here assume all broism originates in SV.

To be fair most broism does originate in SV though doesn’t it?

What definition of "broism" are you using?

Crypto Broism is from SV

I think "broism" originates from colleges, and is then carried over to businesses by new, young employees who never had the necessity to actually grow up and become decent people. Therefore it is not a geographically focused phenomenon.

I'd also link it a little to the '08 crash and the invasion of Tech by Finance types. But that's becoming ancient history.

I wouldn’t discount it as a possibility, but I’d assume it’s closer to Hollywood sexual assault coverups than tech stuff.

Anecdotically, to this date and after 4 workplaces (FAANG included), I am yet to see what a bro culture is.

To my eyes and experience over 10 years interacting with people, I have seen nothing of the sort, for which I believe this kind of culture must be very conditioned to the right (or wrong?) mix of individuals that by far do not make justice to the average SV engineer.

I've seen it, and to be honest I've only seen it in the ranks to the exec team rather than the tech team in both FAANG and startups.

The tech teams and tech managers are usually trying to impress you about how they spent the weekend coding on a PDP-11, playing board games or mountain biking while drinking custom brand protein drinks. Generally harmless stuff like that.

The exec teams are where the sociopaths live and work, and I've seen all sorts of bro one-upmanship there. The worse types, by far, are the rugby bros. The tales these guys tell each other are always of the "here's a horrible thing I did, so don't mess with me".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com