Silicon Valley slips back to Bro culture | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley slips back to Bro culture

nytimes.com

22 pointsmathattack35 comments

I think the article makes a valid point in kind of a silly way, which is to hold up five or six of the absolute worst outliers of the industry to make a point about inequality. Are they a useful reference point to represent the problem? Yes, but that should have segued the article deeper into the weeds of why this is happening and how it can be fixed. There's an implication that some massive sea change might have been expected following #metoo, but I suspect the reality is that what we're going to get instead is slow, forward-moving progress towards diversity - so let's talk about it in realistic terms and figure out how to make it go faster instead of focusing on the outliers, expecting a miracle, and then acting like no progress has been made just because there was no Thanos Snap-level equalization event.

> let's talk about it in realistic terms and figure out how to make it go faster instead of focusing on the outliers

The media's power lies in focusing on (emotionally charged) outliers. That and wordplay (e.g. a NYT article said "whites and Asians dominate" some top-ranked schools, when whites alone were in fact underrepresented [1]).

Asking them to stop is asking the king to give up his crown.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/nyregion/high-school-admi...

Stories sell better than data. If you pitch a software deal with “Look at company X eating the lunch of company Y, who chose someone else” you will sell more than “We see a 12% profitability increase with a 73% confidence level”

Same with news.

I want Silicon Valley to produce quality products and innovation. I don't care what culture it has as long as it respects the Constitution and the laws of the land and everyone gets a fair chance on the basis of the work they actually produce. NY Times has declined big time in recent years.

NYT has slipped into outrage culture

Since 2016…. But I don’t think it’s profitable anymore

I'd say not just NYT but journalism and culture as a whole has.

"everyone gets a fair chance on the basis of the work they actually produce"

This is already not the case and the article very clearly highlights this, if you had bothered to read it.

Except you didn't even read the article. We cannot expect innovation by giving Adam Neuman (Who burned billions in VC funding on WeWork) another billion dollars for a second chance. This is also against the 14th Amendment but of course if it doesn't affect you then you won't give a fuck

Sure, the public doesn't benefit, but why wouldn't Andressen fund Neuman?

Neuman produced a cult that generated a beautiful pyramid scheme for those who got out early. From a VC point of view, the only issue was that VC's didn't have enough of a collar on Neuman to be able to shove him aside when he became a liability. I'm sure that mistake has been corrected.

Anyone who thinks VCs are anything other than self-interested sociopaths hasn't been paying attention.

The only thing Silicon Valley produces now are

1. venture capital pyramid schemes,

2. adware privacy-invading nightmares,

3. the next "x" with "x" being some successful social network that they want to make even worse so it can be monetized more easily,

4. buildings in which executives and managers sit, controlling far-flung centers of innovation where actual work happens, and

5. whatever HP is vomiting out next quarter

Innovation has moved elsewhere.

You don't believe me. I know you don't.

The executives, sales, and marketing folks currently driving Intel into the ground are in Santa Clara. The engineers trying to save it are in Oregon, Colorado, and overseas.

Speaking of Intel much of the Zen microarchitecture was done at Austin, and Colorado, and India. Not silicon valley.

Of course, Apple is still there, somewhat. Getting someone on HN to say Apple is innovative would make my day!

People in Oregon, Texas, Colorado, North Carolina, and elsewhere are building the future.

People in Silicon Valley are trying to figure out the best way to squeeze people in order to wring dollar bills out of them.

Good ones still exist, biotechnology, Robotics, a few other domains.

This is a very cynical take. Incremental innovation has captured most of the attention in the last decade but there are a lot of smart people in SV working in AI which will lead to real innovation in personal computing and robotics this decade. Some of these innovations will emerge out of smaller companies that are "classic venture bets" and will give big tech a run for its money.

Does't mean that innovation isn't happening elsewhere but SV still leads in raw talent density in everything related to computing.

What an inanely dumb comment - could've been written by Trump himself.

I don't particularly care for the NYT, but I've found that people with overly simplistic and hyper-narrow views of the world have become more common in silicon valley in the last 8 or so years. Chances are the reason for this is exactly what the article calls out, silicon valley was once about technology and innovation, it is now about business. It hence attracts business people and has changed the general populace of it quite a bit.

> I don't care what culture it has as long as it respects the Constitution and the laws of the land

You know that there are people outside America right? The "constitution" is not a global concept, but Silicon Valley cannot thrive without globalization.

Would you please edit name-calling and swipes out of your HN comments? They're against the site guidelines and evoke even worse from others. Please make your substantive points without any of that. Your comment here would be fine (and more persuasive) without those bits.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It has always been a Frat, more was spent on marketing tech as a diverse environment than actually hiring people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures.

I still don’t know what “bro culture” is. At one time I thought it meant fraternity bros, as in the WASPy “my dad is a lawyer, let’s get blackout drunk” kind of bro. But in the last few years I’ve seen it associated with Silicon Valley, a place filled with engineers who worked themselves to the bone for huge paydays. To me the two groups are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Jocks vs nerds.

The only thing I see in common between the two groups is that they’re both groups of ambitious men, with a chip on their shoulder of unknown size.

Whenever I see these articles they read to me like “look over there, the men are making noise again”. Yeah, that’s what men do.

Has anyone considered the fact that there are far fewer powerful women because women aren’t generally interested in working 80 hours a week?

It’s the size of the “chip on their shoulder” and the transition from people who care about tech (and money) to people who care about money (and tech).

There’s a reason the frat bro tends to become a successful salesman or something in the stereotype. It’s not because they are passionate about sales.

> Has anyone considered the fact that there are far fewer powerful women because women aren’t generally interested in working 80 hours a week

You know, I don’t think this is really even related at all and ignores a great deal of nuance to the point of sounding pretty tone-deaf.

Tbh I think this is just the classic situation of “elite” humanities people dunking on “elite” nerds. I’ve had the same experience of having no idea what the actual definition of “bro” is, and I’ve decided that it sounds made up simply because it is. “Those people who think differently than I do and also make a lot of money in their jobs? Must be something bad about them. Bros.”

It's a continuous stream of baseless, chiding articles like this that have tanked the NYT's credibility. If you really think tech firms have a Bro Culture, you've either never met a Bro or have no idea what tech culture is like.

It feels like nowadays it really doesn't matter if author is familiar with the topic. Most of the time a superficial knowledge about the stuff will be enough to throw assumptions and accusations all around to see if these stick and if they don't, then buzz created for views and user profiling will be enough. Content produced, ka-ching - money earned, cheers and 'till next time.

I wonder when was the approximate moment when journalism become more a casual blogging about anything.

Not sure by what strange logic you interpreted this as an attack on “men”.

They’re using “bro” in a similar sense to how it was used to describe Martin Shkreli as a “pharma bro”. Specifically, it’s unrelated to “hard work” and precisely related to the kinds of narratives that these people spin. We’re seeing a shift in narratives away from a focus on qualitative innovation, speaking of products and engineering intricacies, and towards a focus on money and “competition”.

Martin shkreli, for example, was not interested in chemistry and biology and actually improving health. He was interested in getting rich off of driving prices up on niche drugs with no alternatives. The same is become more and more true in Silicon Valley.

It’s the kind of narrative of the monopoly. When what you need to maintain power is sales and PR, rather than qualitative innovation, the culture will shift towards sales and PR.

It’s certainly not an attack on women. “Bros” are always men. “Bro” behavior is part of the male biological drive.

Citation needed

Their style and affects converge, maybe, as the hardworking nerd models his idea of cool on the fraternity members at university, mostly because the nerds were too busy working hard to pause and think about their individual identity. The entitled frat bros were the readiest to hand working model for important social markers.

> Has anyone considered the fact that there are far fewer powerful women because women aren’t generally interested in working 80 hours a week?

Wtf is this

I'd like to believe it was the original poster's goal to point out that women tend to make smarter choices regarding work-life balance because they've been socialized to "want it all" meaning work is only one facet of success alongside family, friends, community and personal fulfillment, while men tend to be socialized to pursue high income to the detriment of all other aspects of life. As a consequence of this, if you want to have a diverse and inclusive workplace, you probably shouldn't base promotions based on who's responding to emails at 8pm.

At this point I don't expect anything good from the New York Times.

Every time there's a piece critical on tech from a news site, I remind myself that the news media holds a gigantic grudge against tech for taking away their audiences and their profits. It's a valid grudge, but it of course colors everything they write about tech.

Do you really think the media industry behaves a single entity and churns out pieces because the entity as a whole is jealous of tech?

I don't care about the NYT, but do you really see andreessen horowitz, elon musks and the likes as anything more than shysters?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com