"Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
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He sounded to me like some tragic Van Wilder-esque figure trying to clutch on to those college good times forever.
What is somewhat frustrating about all this stuff is that, while brogrammers or hipsters or whatever Bay Area-clique is in this month, can be targets of derision, the Valley is actually diversifying its personality structure, if not its sex. It's refreshing to see people that have different lifestyles to the geek stereotype, and it's broadening the appeal of these companies.
It's getting easier and easier to sell Computer Science as a career to male undergraduates, because they're seeing that there are people just like them higher up. It's very annoying that those same higher ups are screwing up female motivation.
I guess what I'm most confused by is why a talk titled "Adding Value as a Non-Technical No Talent Ass-Clown." got accepted in the first place. Really? I know SXSW isn't a hard science conference, but that seems awfully fluffy for an event that clearly has no trouble filling seats. Maybe it's one more sign we're in a bubble...
Edit: lots of folks are picking on the second sentence above and I think taking it out of context. It was a specific reply to the idea of banning a presenter based on the notion that he "already presented a sexist presentation" -- a fact offered without support. That's just bad thinking. If the guy deserves a career ban, then make that case. Don't throw it out as a tangential point in another post.
At a minimum, if the talk proposal was overwhelmingly compelling from a content angle, I'd have little issue with being explicit, up front and individually direct with said person about the expectations for how speakers conduct themselves.
Choosing to reject a talk from someone because of who the presenter is or how they have handled themselves in the past is completely legitimate and it is not "censorship" – a conference is a curated event and someone has the job to make sure the content fits the conference.
If you want a brogrammer conference, go start one, but don't demand that we accept that sort of crap at ours just because you think you're hot shit and can offend anyone you want because "it's funny".
Why on earth not? Part of ensuring cooperation on prisoner's dilemmas is punishment. It should be bad for your career to act like an asshole and make us all look bad.
Consider it done.
As an organizer of PyCon, this Van Horn person and any others who lack basic judgement and decency skills as well as having gained a reputation for that are not welcome to present at our conference.
Yes you do. You don't want a heavy editorial hand, but you want there to BE a hand. Wanting absolutely no judgement is a great way to let total crap in.
I think what you need here are different conferences.
And we all know how that worked out.
The reason why this culture persists is because people are rewarded for promulgating it. Matt is a VP at Path.
Yes, let's ostracize him. Hell, let's burn him at the stake.
/s
Women really are underrepresented in programming in the US, so we don't even have the refuge of saying it's unprofessional but harmless. This talk isn't a huge problem in itself, but it is one tentacle of a monstrous beast of a problem.
And I'm not saying we should crucify Matt or even give him the stink eye, but I do think we should make it clear that we're not OK with that kind of talk.
I would appreciate it if you'd elaborate on what you think is wrong about this.
Sure.
What you suggest is essentially: in order for Path to present itself as a "diverse, vibrant workplace with exciting, fun, kind people", Path has to be:
1) less diverse (throw this guy out for diverging more than is allowed to)
2) no-fun (jokes are no-go unless they are PC)
3) not kind (throw a guy out for making some ho-hum jokes)
I don't even believe that making sexist jokes means that one is sexist or promotes a sexist attitude. Humor has to be irreverent. You can find jokes about every situation, from war to cancer, to race, to gender. They doesn't mean the person that tells them is pro-all those things, or against or those other things. A joke is just a joke --especially if its not targeted at a specific someone, but speaks in generals and groups. Heck --Godwin's law be damned--, there are even holocaust jokes, and even jew comedians are telling them. Are they supposed to be pro-nazi? No-- it's just that a joke is just a joke, it's not a manifestation of one's inner beliefs or his general behavior.
This guy could be the kinder person at Path, and especially helpful towards women colleagues, whereas another "progressive, no-sexist-jokes" guy could be an arsehole of epic proportions. Jokes are not the tool to tell them apart. Behavior is.
No matter how you try to butter this guy up, what kind of jokes you tell is a large part of who you are, because you find them funny (or you wouldn't tell them). I can tell a lot about you just from this comment, and it's not positive.
Jokes might not distinguish people. When you choose to tell them does. Would you hire someone who told a Holocaust joke at an interview? Sounds like it. Would the rest of us? Absolutely, unequivocally, no.
Well, the distinction is not that clear cut, since humor belongs to every time in life --and especially in public gatherings and presentations.
Notice how people were not troubled by humor itself here, but by the type of humor. If he made math jokes very few would say that "I came to learn, not watch him hobble through a routine".
>No matter how you try to butter this guy up, what kind of jokes you tell is a large part of who you are, because you find them funny (or you wouldn't tell them). I can tell a lot about you just from this comment, and it's not positive.
What little you can "tell about me" is mainly shallow biases from pop psychology and the usual normative PC culture of the '10s.
Let me assure you that it's totally irrelevant and BS with respect to who I am (or anybody else you judge that way is).
Let me put it in other words: when the totally friendly, PC, non-sexist guy at the next cubicle back-stabs you to that promotion and treats everybody, especially his female colleagues like shit, you'd learn that appearances are shallow, and what-jokes-one-likes doubly so.
Except if you truly consider every viewer that laughs with South Park to be a misogynist, racist, anti-christian, anti-homosexual, redneck-hater, etc etc... or anybody that ever bought a Playboy.
I guess it comes down to the repeat occurrence. If it were is first, or even second offense, I could overlook it, but it's a repeated thing. Given that his job (biz dev) is to build relationships with big brands, it also seems like he's ultimately shooting himself in the foot regarding longer play, larger relationships with high dollar companies.
I hate to say it, because it's nearly an ad hominem -- it is an ad hominem if you believe Mitt Romney or the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision -- but the only time I ever see that company mentioned without negativity is when their ads show up in my Twitter client.
I am man, and this sort of culture makes me very uncomfortable and angry. I imagine it's even more aggravating and discomforting to women in these situations.
Simply refraining from laughing at a distasteful joke or turning a blind eye to vulgarities is a cop-out. We are all apart of the culture; if you're not calling this shit out, you might as well be laughing along.
If you see these behaviors, make an example to call that person out. Make it very clear that this behavior is not accepted. Failure to do so is implicit approval.
When women in these situations make it clear that some behavior is not acceptable, they'll inevitably be met by "Woah don't be so serious, it's just a joke! Lighten up!" And the more upset and determined that woman is to make it clear that something isn't acceptable, the more likely they are to be labeled a bitch.
Because I'd bet you that 90% of the bad behavior you see in that type of situation isn't blatant sexism; it's small "jokes" and "jabs" that all add up to a bad workplace environment for women. And it makes it that much harder to defend yourself when there isn't just one glaring offense that people can blatantly see.
I think making this behavior unacceptable would be helped a lot more if men in the workplace stood up against it. It's not so easy for a woman to do it alone.
This is very PC, but BS nonetheless. At the stage when people can be profitably hired by start-ups, the male/female ratio is nowhere near 50% among technical candidates.
I'm not saying that frat culture isn't harmful, nor would I dare to guess why women are underrepresented among development professionals; but defending a thesis with such grossly false assertions can only harm it.
"Shapiro, who has blogged in the past about sexism in the tech industry, notes that "it is a widely understood truth that the single biggest challenge to a successful startup is attracting the right people. To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity." "
His point, as I understand it, is that if a startup has a bro culture, then women won't want to work there. That includes women in marketing, women in sales, women in HR, women as project managers, etc.
And yes, it is a serious issue. Even if you accept the (highly questionable) thesis that only men like to program, are you willing to argue that a growing company will never need women in marketing, sales, HR, management, etc?
In that light, he is quite right when he says: "To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity."
I interviewed a startup where one of the co-founders openly mocked me for wearing a tie; when he asked what my interests were (sports and music, amongst other things), I got criticized for not liking "Starcraft and normal programmer stuff."
The issue isn't one specific subset of tech industry culture; it's a result of the startup scene shifting HR roles to technical people who often don't have the soft skills necessary to deal with such tasks effectively.
On the other hand, at least you found out up-front that this particular company probably wouldn't be a good fit for you.
Until I see evidence that "bro companies" are more successful than normal ones, I have no qualms about shunning them.
I only work on products that espouse the latter.
Huh. When I started writing this comment, I did not expect to come to that conclusion.
Oh wait, exactly the opposite of that.
Recruiting is one of the absolute most important things a startup does. Don't make the mistake of conflating Fortune 500 HR (lame training, policies, etc) with startup HR. Startup HR is about finding great people, building a good company culture, and retaining people. Those things matter.
And while the team of 3 great developers can probably recruit and hire developers, can they recruit good marketing people? Good operations people? Good PR people? All those things matter quite a bit.
So what you're left with in a single-minded company of brogrammers and soft-bros is effectively a brain drain that leads to the kinds of flubs the author describes that drive customers and sponsors away.
Gender is irrelevant to logical analysis, which is the foundation of programming. If you don't have parity in your pool of candidates, there's a cause, and it's probably social.
Nursing and teaching used to be men's work. Women weren't thought to be capable of it. Too weak. Too sensitive. Too illogical.
Women aren't going into software development? Then there's a problem. Don't be part of it.
Do you have any citations for that? My impression is that nursing and teaching were considered women's work before they even existed as distinct professions. Nursing was originally done by women's religious orders, and was founded in its modern form by a woman, Florence Nightingale. And teaching was open to women in America since at least colonial times.
Better examples might be law and medicine, high-status professions that were once all-male but now are considerably more gender-balanced than software development. I don't know the reason for the disparity, but I doubt it's because software engineers on average act more fratty than lawyers.
I suppose you could make an argument that historically most itinerant teachers were probably men, but this really seems like a very different job than what we currently consider teaching.
Please? I'm curious if this is local to you, or a more widespread thing.
It depends on which kind of teaching. Teaching of children has been seen as a woman's job for a very long time. On the other hand, professors and philosophers were classically men.
It could be something that starts out much earlier in life. I got into computers very early. The only person in my class at the time that cared for them was also a male. Even still, the act of programming itself just doesn't draw many people early on - which for the most part is why we currently have programmers. They got interested early.
Lawyers, Doctors - those are things that can be decided late in school. 'Hey, I think i'll go to school for this now'. Programming just doesn't have that draw - or didn't. Perhaps now that it does, we'll see far more females in the programming workforce in 4 years time.
Programming isn't the only job that pays well and rewards the highly intelligent. Women probably aren't going into software dev because they're socially acclimated enough to realize what a bad deal it is. Software skills change like the wind, and there is always a fresh crop.
Yesterday it was rails, today it's node. People who can hack people like programmers hack computers have far more valuable skills. Social skills don't become obsolete, a rolodex is far more reusable than most pieces of code.
It also isn't one culture that permeates through all of programming. Go find a place with the right cultural fit for you.
As a programmer I mega-cringed when I read this and would certainly never work for you or any company you worked for if I read this.
So please, be more dismissive.
(Re: Downvotes - So I guess we should just treat programmers with derision and those with rolodexes as the bosses, case settled!)
Brain chemistry is relevant to logical analysis. Gender has significant effects on brain chemistry.
There are also social problems that contribute. But the gender ratio would not be 50-50 even in a completely egalitarian society. Women like my wife [0] are rare, partly because of "brogrammers" chasing them off, but also because a smaller proportion of women are interested in the particular types of analysis that are relevant to programming.
Example: where I grew up, girls were considered to be better at technical disciplines because in class, girls sit still and pay attention while boys clown around and pick fights.
On a larger note, please don't add to the fire saying that women are less interested in any kind of intellectual pursuits, be it aspects of programming or else. This is exactly the kind of dickery that needs to go away.
1) That's pure speculation. You have no way to be sure of that.
2) That same speculation is often, and very often used as an excuse for offensive discrimination.
So it's simply the most safe, skeptic, scientific and socially healthy attitude for us. To stay as far away from that speculation as much we can.
Quantify how sex affects the brain in specific ways that effect the likelihood of developing an interesting in programming and being an effective programmer. Until we can do this, essentially saying "physiology affects your organs" is a pretty empty statement.
Law involves a great deal of logical analysis and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of capable women lawyers, despite a good deal of institutional discrimination in the past.
This pseudoscience typically accompanies discussions of gender and racial superiority.
I'm not going to try to argue the brain chemistry thing^, but the social/culture aspect is a large problem and (as you bring up) can also partially explain why there are few women as well as men choosing to live effeminately in programming or technical jobs.
^Edit for clarity: Because I think its a totally loaded statement and don't want to even start down that path, not because I agree and assume its fact.
For example, if a certain recruiting tactic would double the number of qualified male applicants, but halve the number of qualified female applicants, it is clearly a short-term gain for a company.
That's why the statement quoted in the grandparent post is wrong.
Obviously it's bad for the industry to have a culture that is so exclusionary of 50% of the population, but that's more of a long-term goal. There is very little any company can do to e.g. increase the number of women graduating from CS programs in the next 3 years, since that number is more-or-less fixed now.
But at the same time, it's really difficult to attract more women into CS when the atmosphere isn't welcoming of women in the first place. It's a bit of a cycle really.
Many commenters on this site, pg included, have noted that the economics of hiring are rationally biased to false negatives. This makes sense, because the price of false positives is so high. Unfortunately, this tends to accentuate societal factors, such as prejudice.
The consequences of hiring someone that doesn't fit into a particular company's culture are quite severe -- not to mention potentially expensive. There can be a lot of reluctance, some of it understandable, to hiring anyone who is different in any significant way from current employees. That most obviously includes women, but (at companies where most employees are young and single) also older workers, people with children, etc.
The lack of women is the most glaring, but I suspect if you ran the numbers that there are a lot of other groups underrepresented in software development. It's not so much that women are being specifically excluded, as it is that a certain type of person (male geek, to be blunt) is being specifically sought.
My guess is that the "bro culture" is designed to attract a different population of men, who ordinarily would have gone to Wall Street or similar industries, but are attracted to the present web boom.
When the bubble's over, I predict the brogramming fad will fade. I certainly wouldn't want to work at a place with that culture if I could avoid it, but it seems like an essentially temporary phenomenon.
My own conjecture is that women don't want to do software development because it's boring and difficult. I'm sure they could if they wanted to, they just do not. With a few notable exceptions to the rule.
Sure, you can just pass it off as "boys will be boys", high school boys are stupid and immature. But even the adult mentors were so exclusionary. I had to fight tooth and nail to be involved in the programming and building aspect of the competition even though just wanted to stick me to making their website look pretty.
It took me a couple of years to get that bad taste out of my mouth. I initially didn't even go into college for a STEM degree before I worked myself up to take Computer Engineering.
When you have experiences like that in high school and you hear stories about sexism in the workforce, it's intimidating to enter a field even if you do enjoy it. I'm glad I made the choice I did but the vibe other women get from degrees like CS isn't conducive to promoting a better gender balance.
Except it's a well known fact that until the 80's, roughly half of US programmers were women, and all around the world, the percentages of women in computing are growing, not shrinking.
And please don't say that people who stay away from technical careers do so because it's "difficult". You are one conjecture away from suggesting that white and asian males are intellectually superior to everyone else.
Why would women find this more of a problem then men do? You're just replacing one unproven assertion with another, the latter that women are more sensitive to "boring and difficult" jobs than men are. I can't think of any compelling reason or even any evidence for that, given the number of "boring and difficult" jobs done by women.
Also, given the average salary and demand for developers in the current job market relative to other fields, women -- as a group -- would have to have a rather strong aversion to software development to be avoiding it purely because it's boring and difficult.
I don't see any reason to take that particular conjecture seriously.
It's important that we discuss the actual cause here if we want any hope in solving this. Let me throw out another one that I find has less weaknesses then the usual arguments: There is a tremendous lack of female programming role models. Yep, chicken and egg problem, but no one said this would be easy. Perhaps what we can do is start celebrating the ones we got more? I'm thinking of Marissa Mayer as a potential starting point but I don't know a lot about this part of psychology.
I'm not sure that's completely true. I've been told that the gender imbalance in CompSci programs is less severe in India than it is in the U.S., for instance, relative to the overall gender imbalance in their workforce.
But in general it wouldn't surprise me if there is higher worldwide correlation among companies in software development than in other industries, because software development is so new, and because so many of the dominant companies are concentrated in the U.S. Other industries, e.g. healthcare, operate in very different environments from country to country, so you would expect them to be less highly correlated.
http://134.173.180.115/berger/pdf/Halpern2007.SciSexDif.Pub....
Software developers are largely male for the same reason that construction crews and prisoners are - rather than the reason Nobel Prize winners in Physics are.
What, if anything, there is to be gained by encouraging women to join men in wasting their lives away in the IT salt mines, is another question entirely.
1) I don't think it makes sense to scare away any potentially awesome developers. My experience is that the problem is getting enough qualified and motivated people to apply, not sorting through too many applicants. (But I suppose YMMV)
2) Look at the other comments here. I'd estimate that 50%+ of developers are offended by this behavior, regardless of their own gender. I'm a guy, but I would not work for a company that is openly hostile towards women.
3) I think getting the office culture right is critically important for a startup. I think promoting a frat culture among developers is bad for business. If nothing else, imagine what effect it would have on your ability to hire and retain non-developer staff.
It's equally absurd to view these two cultures in the same light, or to make one more like the other.
Thus there are far more men than women who are wildly rich and successful, but also far more men than women who are failures or in jail.
If we're talking about start-ups who need to hire from the top 10% of programmers, who might be from the top 0.5% of the population in terms of logical ability, then this theory would actually partially explain the dearth of female programmers. Again, this is just a theory.
But at the same time, blatant cultural insensitivity certainly isn't helping.
But while programming obviously involves teamwork, communication, etc., fundamentally it really is about building castles of logical processes, and I'd say your "pure" programming skill is limited mainly by one's logical ability.
Slapping together enterprise components might not need it so much... I'm talking more about complex algorithms, architectures, etc.
Are women less agressive than men on average? Maybe. Are women less aggressive than the kinds of guys who come up with "Gangbang Interviews"? Probably. Is a sociologist going to get funding for a study that obviously stupid? Probably not.
Yeah, the handicap is already baked in.
Shame on the author.
The other reason I find this "siri sexism" theory hard to believe is how the OP phrased the complaint. "... the male programmers didnt think to include abortion ...". Does the OP really think that everything in Siri is hand entered? That a bunch of (men) sat around and wrote out everything that Siri could be asked? The OP knows about search engines right?!
There was no action on Apple's part, deliberate or otherwise, that caused it.
No wonder these same people think this behavior is acceptable once they enter the workforce. They're getting it from authority figures from day one. I never experienced anything like this in any other department at uni.
What is it about sexism on HN that brings out every troll, sock puppet, white knight, astroturfer, and any other internet message board cliche?
The most sexist thing I've ever heard in a decade of real world work and interactions in the software industry can't hold a candle to what anonymous internet posters apparently see on a daily basis.
I blogged about some of this when it happened about a year ago on livejournal, and that post made it to the front page of hn back then. I've experienced a lot of bullshit from brogrammer types. Of course, sometimes there's no bullshit. Some of my fellow CS grad students are awesome to work with. I'm dating one, and he's a champ. Others have 'calendar girls' up at their offices, or make lame jokes like "Do you taste pineapple? That's funny, cause I've been eating it all week." (Which is an oral sex joke, kids). When people gossiped that I'd been sleeping with the Algorithms prof (who was like 65) because I got into the class without taking the prerequisites, other guys came to my defense. There's good and there's bad, and it's certainly not all bad. But some people are really, really awful, even in the real world.
Edit: And to be fair, I go out to the bar on Fridays with my coworkers (fellow grad students), which is where some of these things happen. At my undergrad institution, some of this happened while bowling on our weekly bowling night. Most of this stuff didn't happen at work - it happens at events that are guy programmers and me. If I had kept in social circles outside of my field and only interacted with these people in a professional setting, and never ever networked, I would have been fine.
Nothing in the post above sounds unbelievable to me.
I have never seen this sort of behavior and was TA as well as a student. What campus did you see this at?
That's just fratboy behaviour. It doesn't have anything to do with the class or the department itself.
It goes the other way often enough as well.
Instead of being disgusted by jokes about nudie calendars, do something about it. Go give your own presentation. Recruit more women at your company. Turn the boys club into an everyone club.
I'm not saying that everything people are doing is okay, I'm just saying that I think there are more productive ways of dealing with it than being offended.
That's what scares me most about the joke. Its becoming a thing because people are too naive to realize that it isn't actually the new wave of best practices from the valley.
Various movies marketed to teens have elicited similar "life imitates art" trends. Now it's hoax memes. When I was that age, it was the movie "Animal House."
Make a claim in a possibly-ironic tone; see how your audience takes it; if they seem to agree with your overt sentiment, become unambiguously sincere; if they seem to disagree, become unambiguously ironic. Either way, you can adapt your apparent opinions to fit in to your current social group without any risk of reprimand for expressing a dissenting voice.
I sometimes wonder if the perpetually-ironic actually have any thoughts or opinions of their own underneath their layers of dry snark.
To be honest, I was worried I'd get uncharitably compared to Will Self. But then, I always get that feeling when tempted to use the word "postmodern", so I thought I might as well go with the flow and let the pretension fly. ;)
More so, there is only so far you can go with irony. If you're a hipster and you drink PBR ironically at the end of the day you're still drinking PBR. The same thing goes if you are projecting the image of a misogynistic workplace.
This [2] was for real.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qi_AAqi0RZM#%21
[2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/03/how-casual-sexism-put-sqoot-in.phpHanlon's razor is apt in this situation.
Misogyny is not funny, and it wasn't a part of the Twilio joke - at what I recall of it - as most of it focused on what makes for an annoying programmer. Some misogynists have appropriated the brogramming meme, but it is not an excuse for misogyny. Misogyny is not funny, regardless what the pretense of it is.
"It's just a joke" is straight out of the misogyny flow chart. People are doing "more productive things than being offended" by writing this article and discussing the topic maturely in the comments in places like Hacker News.
Once a community overcomes its sexism and does start treating people equally then we can start joking about it. However at the moment these jokes give strength to sexists and discourage women. As such, we should not make these jokes yet.
Or to rephrase it "Too Soon"
It's not funny, and it never was. Also, this sounds so much like someone who is truly bigoted trying to save face and cover up for their sociopathic tendencies.
I'm glad that many people (including men!) are calling out and ostracizing "brogrammers". The whole brogramming phenomenon is childish at its core and is not welcome in an industry already beleaguered by sexism. If you are a brogrammer please either grow up or leave the IT field to the adults.
No, it's an inside joke. There's a big difference there.
It's often manifested as smart guys concealing their brains in a fog of conscious, ironic boneheadedness.
The problem is when it crosses the line and becomes a fad to follow, or actually alienating to women in the profession.
More of a reality than a concept.
I read this a lot on reddit. Someone will preface their comment with "I'm going to hell for this" or "Apologies in advance" as if that's supposed to excuse it. I get the feeling it's because these people don't see themselves as ____ist, so when they do something ____ist it's "just a joke" or "I'm not serious!"
I think for us to get rid of this culture, we need to make these people realize they're actually sexist. They're not a nice guy making a sexist joke; they're a sexist guy making a sexist joke, and this is how everyone sees them.
It is absolutely possible to make a joke that is understood as sexist without being one yourself. That's actually the schtick that a lot of comedians go by.
Prefacing your comment with "I'm going to hell for this" is perfectly fine and in most cases, it does show that the person truly understands they're making a comment that could offend others.
Whether or not that person really does appreciate the extent to which their comment can be hurtful and whether or not they really are sexist (to whatever degree) is a different matter altogether. Filtering your output because of others and your true conviction are two different things and you're not doing anybody a favor by forcing a causality here.
Whether or not you "are sexist" on some innate level is between you and God, or your psychologist, or whatever. Nobody at work gives a damn, really. What matters are your actions, and in particular the effect they have on others and on the work environment generally. If you do and say sexist things, then there's a problem. Whether you really are or aren't sexist on some sort of deep level is, for the purposes of maintaining office harmony, irrelevant.
It's very rare to find anyone who will actually cop to being racist or sexist, and I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and believe that they probably really aren't. But if someone quacks like a duck and walks like a duck often enough, they're going to get called a duck.
Would you agree there's a difference between a comedian telling a sexist joke and a respected speaker at a tech conference telling a sexist joke?
> Prefacing your comment with "I'm going to hell for this" is perfectly fine and in most cases, it does show that the person truly understands they're making a comment that could offend others.
However, they didn't stop from making the comment, so I'd say it's even worse: They know what they said is offensive but don't care.
> Filtering your output because of others and your true conviction are two different things and you're not doing anybody a favor by forcing a causality here.
I'm not forcing any causality. If you tell sexist jokes, it's not a stretch for people to assume you're sexist. But all too often we don't; we write it off as "just a joke" because the person did a slight nod to their offensiveness. Instead, we should take it the other way and stop excusing this behavior. It does nothing but alienate women.
I think this might be the crux here: If you simply cannot find humor in such jokes, that's just the way it is and I can spend all day trying to convince you that it is possible - we simply cannot resolve this.
But it's not about whether the person telling the joke does or does not care about whether it is offensive. Actually, a lot of comedians tell joke knowing full well and precisely because the jokes are offensive.
> Instead, we should take it the other way and stop excusing this behavior. It does nothing but alienate women.
I don't think this is a problem that we can "solve" just like there is "solution" to human diseases. The complex moral and emotional minefield that is human interaction is like an immune system: A dirty solution to a truly dirty problem. It often sucks, but there is a reason why it's there: Because it just, sadly, happens to be the best solution to a problem.
I fully agree that the "mild" form of sexism that is often laughed away is terrible and a lot of people do a lot of hurt without even noticing a lot of the time. But I don't think there is really a solution other to just being a human and acting appropriately like one.
In addition, there are personal/professional costs too:
* It does nothing but create the perception that you're not a professional worth listening to.
* It also does nothing to make a non-brogrammer want to hire you (or the company you work for) in the future.
These guys aren't actively conspiring to exclude women from tech (in fact, they tend to jump at any superficial opportunity to demonstrate the opposite), but they're angry about being called sexist and they really don't want to capitulate to the suggestion that their behavior merits serious adjustment (which is not surprising considering the correlation of ego with 'brogrammer').
The surplus of cash and minor acclaim only emboldens their resolve; there is a subconscious belief that their financial success has conferred the wisdom to authoritatively determine the appropriate bounds of sexual commentary for a professional setting and anyone who can't deal with sexist bullshit can just get the fuck outta tech because the startup is king and sensitive women (and men) just can't handle the heat of 60 hour weeks spent reclined in front of a widescreen LCD.
These chauvinistic kids really need a wake up call, but frankly, I fear the money is just too good for them to ever really care.
It seems to me that there are two ways one can approach this subject. On to proclaim that these are intentional acts of portraying females in a negative light and keeping them out of the tech industry. The other, that these are just a bunch of nerds, trying (and in large parts failing) to make coding something "oool" or a "manly" thing to do.
As always the interpretation of these things is to a certain degree based on the personal frame one puts these events in a context with.
There are a lot of ways you can approach this subject. I'm going to rely on an example I used before[1]. Let's assume that if you're on this site, you probably build some kind of web technology. Were you aware that a portion of your users are colorblind? Did you just do a mental double-check and go "shoot, I should check up on that?"
You didn't actively do anything against colorblind people, it simply wasn't on your radar. You can go through your entire site design, do A/B testing, deploy, get good results, and still be completely unaware of this. When someone comes up to you and says "I'm colorblind, you should add 'OK' to this green button because it's hard for me to use your site without that," what do you do?
"Sorry! I didn't intentionally mean to make it hard for you to use! I deeply regret that you can't use the site."
or how about
"Hey! Chill out! We were just trying to make a good site and the numbers say we're ok!"
Both of those answers sound pretty awful and insensitive. And yet, these are the responses to your "two ways" listed above. Probably the correct answer is "Oh wow, we weren't aware that was a problem. We're going to go fix it, can you tell us specifically what is wrong?"
Which is exactly the kind of response we need to sexism in technology. It boils down to being aware of how your actions make other people feel, and when an issue is brought up you consider it earnestly. When you figure that out, and learn to handle when you haven't, you can stop "being afraid of accidentally offending someone" (itself casual sexism) and you can actually work to make things inclusive.
One great read on this is Ellen Spertus' MIT AI Lab Technical Report[2].
If you run {startup X}, and your business guy puts out a presentation with women in bikinis that makes one of your female employees uncomfortable, and you don't do something about it immediately, she has a potential sexual harassment claim that is going to cost {startup X} _years_ worth of funding in legal fees and damages. The "oh {business guy} is just a bit awkward and didn't know any better" defense is NOT going to go far in court.
If you thought some piece of software had a chance of failing and costing you millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of distraction, wouldn't you do _everything_ possible to fix it? Legal policy needs to be treated the same way.
The bigger issue is that - should you have a woman on your team - you just told her in not so many words that you perceive women more as a piece of visual stimulation than an actual person. That hurts.
The even bigger issue: You subtly say to all the attendees of your talk that you consider it OK to look at women that way. Enough people do that, you have created a climate of harassment - it just stretches over an entire industry.
You're wrong about it requiring repeated events [1]
[1] http://www.connellfoley.com/seminar/employharass.html - Search in the page for 'Taylor v. Metzger'. (IANAL, but it's usually better to be safe than sorry when it comes to not being an idiot.)
I believe the problem can be curbed by companies that watch out for this sort of thing, but you'll always have a certain unpleasant minority of "boys being boys".
I'm not sure I've actually seen this interpretation being presented here or anywhere else (though I veer off blog comments, they are sometimes good, but not worth the risk of reading the Facebook-quality ones). I think it's pretty well recognized that this is the product of both immaturity and stubborn ignorance, which makes it acceptable for too many folks in this industry to just trample over women nonchalantly with their attitudes and ``jokes''.
"The most telling aspect of these incidents, says veteran Seattle developer Christy Nicol, is that none of the company leaders involved appeared to realize initially that they'd done something wrong. They had simply crafted messages aimed at young men, apparently assuming: Who else would be drawn to programming jobs?"
"If you're on the clock, act like it."
That typically means no inappropriate jokes/comments or profanity in workplace communications (email, conversation, slide decks, etc.), dressing appropriately (i.e., casual at work, but not too casual, dressing up for meeting with third parties), etc.
This idea might be considered "old school" here on HN, but it has kept me out of trouble for a long time, and I'm sure it could work just as well for 'brogrammers' as well.
I know that the tech workplace culture is quite relaxed about many types of borderline inappropriate behaviours, but to use another clichéd rule, "just because you can doesn't mean you should".
This isn't really a culture/society thing. This is a workplace/professionalism thing.
I have definitely seen this personality type in sales and executive positions though, also banking and finance, and among VCs.
But among programmers? No.
Now let's talk about why the US has fewer female programmers than Russia, China and India since that's not always been the case.
The work environment is the reason, and also pay. Hostile and confrontational gang-attack style interviews such as the person mentioned in his talk (and spoke out against) are a turn off for many, and women more than men. The writer walked out on the talk before he got to his point, but it sounds like, by criticizing the practice of gang attack interviews, and about to talk about attracting women, he may have been about to point out that fraternities that treat women as peers and respectfully end up with more female interest than fraternities that engage in gang assaults. Comparing recruiting to courtship is not a bad analogy. People don't like being abused and high quality people are going to avoid being in relationships, whether work or personal, where abuse is occurring, such as the many places that have gang attack style interviews.
Brogrammers are funny for three reasons spanning three groups:
1) The irony that hacker culture has adopted the mores of frat culture. 2) That people think 1 is actually serious and adopt the faux culture. 3) A truly clueless group that thinks the whole gig is for real and "offensive".
Precisely.
A backlash seems almost inevitable at this point. Maybe they figure any publicity is good publicity?
My pet theory is that there is a super-secret, down-low, unspoken sociopathic streak running through the Valley that is fairly reminiscent of Wall Street: Aloofness and cold cruelty almost approaching either "evil genius" or "autism spectrum". They don't see alot of women in high positions in the Valley, but they hire them for booth candy or front office whatnots. So, of course, they're doubly cruel to women.
https://twitter.com/#!/gselevator
While much of the behavior we've seen is silicon valley is far from exemplary, there really isn't much comparison with wall street, at least not yet.
Though not foreseeing a backlash about "gangbang interviews" at this point strains credulity - the network of tech conference presenters is small and well connected.
I'd have to think that the very words "uncomfortable work environment" would strike fear into the hearts of any investors, far more than any competitive threats.
HR lawsuits are a _huge_ risk, _especially_ for a small company, it seems like a no brainer for people smart enough to run an internet company not to know that a piece of paper and a clear set of instructions, and dealing with this stuff appropriately could save them millions down the road.
I guess that I'm not surprised that people could want to set up environments that I consider wrong, or stupid, etc; that happens all the time.
My surprise is that a culture dominated by graduates from elite colleges who grew up with American norms can be completely blind to the idea of sexual harassment/protected class lawsuits.
Maybe it will just take one promising startup _in our industry_ to get totally sunk by a big lawsuit to really help change things, but if so that's a sad statement.
Playing company can certainly bleed you dry before you ever get a chance to build something that can sell.
I've never wanted to join a frat because they all seemed like idiots, but I can't say I haven't been jealous of them for the girls that seem to hang around.
All that being said, do you understand what I'm getting at? No, I don't wish for hipster sunglasses and drunken weekends. I am what I am, and typically that means I'm too shy and/or nice to girls for my own good. But at some level, the brogrammer culture looks cool to a guy like me.
I hope that makes sense and adds something to this discussion, it seems like most people are a bit older here and only approach it from that perspective.
Different women find different things attractive, but one thing that is almost universally unattractive is desperation and a lack of confidence.
> To literally handicap yourself by 50 percent is insanity.
From the figures I've seen, the handicap is in the 25-30 percent range based on the percentage of women in the industry.
But I like his line of thinking. It's an old libertarian argument too: racism and sexism will be rooted out the market by those smart enough to take advantage of the inconsistencies in the labor pool. It's a tremendous opportunity if it's as bad as it seems.
(Incidentally, can anyone think of a case where you've smacked your head and said "Wow! If only I'd given more credence to the people who are most emotional about this stuff, I would have made objectively better decisions!")
I'm pretty bored of bro culture in general, and startup bro-culture in particular, but the dialogue here seems broken.
Regardless of what kind of person he is, the presentation he gave was in poor taste and deserves to be ridiculed. Attacking the writer or publication for wanting to "drive more page views" doesn't change the fact that he gave a sexist presentation.
him: http://mattvh.com
Also, I did not see the presentation, so I can't comment on it firsthand, but as portrayed it looks to be in pretty bad taste. I don't know Matt that well, mostly through social media, but I can say that he's never come across as a knuckle-dragging misogynist. So ridiculing the presentation is fair, but trying to make him the face of the problem that is very widespread in the industry seems a bit unfair. (Not to mention this is all going to come up in Google searches for me, a programmer (not brogrammer) who lives and works in the bay area as well. /selfinterest )
It's not like you have the choice between being a BROgrammer or a PROgrammer. You can also be an Software Engineer that doesn't conform to either stereotypes or "subcultures" if you would call it that. People who call themselves brogrammes seem to lack the creativity to adopt a personal style that combines the best of both worlds: a smart, well dressed individual that enjoys working out without making a big fuss about it.
/rant
You could say the same thing about hipsters, but they are still a real part of the culture.
Or is it because they are so addicted to gang bang interviews that they aren't willing to give them up and are offended by anyone criticizing the practice.
I also despise gang bang interviews. There is no advantage to them and they should be stopped.
I also admire this guy for having the balls to come up with the disparaging and offensive term "gang bang interviews", because it does a great job of reframing the discussion about this practice. I will definitely start referring to them as "gang bang interviews" myself when mocking the practice.
Cheers!
But just in case...
Referring to them as "gang bang interviews": * implies an equivalence between having several people take it in turns to overpower and rape you, and having several people take it in turns to ask you questions * brings up the topic of rape in a context where people are expected to laugh * brings up the topic of rape for no good reason
Can you really not see how this would create an unpleasant experience for someone (ie most women) who's been taught since age 12 to fear the possibility of being raped at any moment? Can you not see how this would create a potentially triggering experience, one which would wipe out any benefit from attending the conference, for an assault survivor?
There are many parallels. As you point out the interviewee cornered in a room and find themselves attacked by one person after another. Most of the interviewers have the agenda to discredit and intimidate the interviewers whose looks or ethnicity they just don't like. If the person "looks cool" though then they go easy. It's hostile and confrontational and the interviewer is expected to take the abuse and not fight back or they are not demonstrating teamwork, where teamwork in many of these companies means being a passive beta that accepts abuse. Very different from talking one on one and having a chance to document one's competency.
Gang bang interviews are a form of violence, they are wrong, and they should be stopped. No one should defend gang bang interviews in tech. Or in any other fields, but gang bang interviews are prevalent in tech mostly, I've never seen the practice in any other field.
Would you dare to say what you just said to an actual rape survivor? Are you that emotionally tone deaf or just misanthropic? Having a bunch of people ask you questions in a way you don't like, in a context where you're free to leave at any time, is not a form of violence. Maybe it's a form of aggression but not one that can credibly be compared to rape.
What he says is insensitive, by why can't we just be adults and ignore it?
After all, pretty much any article on HN involving legalizing MJ offends me, but I wouldn't go to my HR department if I heard people talking about it in the workplace.
Or are you saying I should? When does it end?
The simple fact that you've been offended isn't reason to go to HR. You go to HR if you're being harassed or if people are actively creating a hostile work environment. It correlates with being offended, but it's not exactly the same thing.
If people were harassing you about your MJ legalization stance (or anything, for that matter), then it probably would be appropriate to go to HR about.
When does it end? Right there. Easy.
As far as "silencing" goes, I'm assuming that the commenter above isn't trolling and honestly doesn't know that what he's saying is profoundly insensitive. In an intellectually honest community, people can have discussions around what would and wouldn't be considered insensitive, especially when that's the basic context of the discussion.
Here's the VP of Business Development for a company valued at $250MM, and he acts like a child. The sexism, to me, is less repugnant than the notion that an idiot like this would have such a high degree of authority in such a highly-valued company.
If this is how there "executives" think, I'm sure they could care less about the ethical use and protection of user data.
First of all, this isn't programmer culture, it's executive culture. MVH got to the position he is in because his world view matchs the world view of executives and VCs in the industry.
Second, I'm amazed that people can be critical of 'bro' culture in this article, but when Peter Theil's course material appeared here, people were supportive of it, even though it was essentially an intellectual argument that this is the type of culture you want to promote at a startup.
Let the idiots filter themselves out. Obviously they love attention or they wouldn't be doing these things. No amount of negative press on Mother Jones will fix that. The only way is to make it personal: if you encounter this behavior personally, say something.
That being said, our society as a whole is pretty sexist too. I don't agree with it, but subcultures tend to reflect at least some elements of the encompassing culture. Any male dominated field (think about truck driving or construction) will inevitably have this problem I'm sure.
Speaking of truck driving and construction, you don't hear much from those fields about needed more women in those roles. I truly wonder why that is.
https://twitter.com/jobs/positions?jvi=ooE7VfwO,Job
If that's not appealing to the frat boy crowd then I don't know what is.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of people don't actually drink ( I know hard to believe! ), or have a life that doesn't involve drinking all the time. As someone who's been there and got the T-shirt I get jaded when I see things like this. A lot of the best coders are past the 'frat boy' stage and prefer a mature working environment when they see things like this it sends alarm bells ringing.
And there's a lot of room in between the extremes.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a social culture that enjoys a few beers after a hard day of work. On the contrary, it builds bonds between co-workers and leads to better work product.
"The frat boy crowd" approach is completely different -- irresponsible enjoyment of being drunk; the beer is incidental.
Note that in the workplace I mentioned, the CTO (a co-founder of the company) was a life-long non-drinker and participated enthusiastically in after-work social events that involved responsible use of beer and other alcoholic drinks. He just drank soda or water.
Yes probably.
It's all a continuum. Saying pre-req: "enjoyment of beer" is basically "No muslims". Having a lot of social functions depend on beer could be an issue. Imagine the high power workplaces of the past (and now I'm sure) where business decisions were made in the strip club, which women would feel uncomfortable in. Something like that for muslims could be consured as a weak form of sectarianism, and potentially make the employer somewhat liable.
It excludes Muslims? Religious based discrimination is illegal.
My company has a fully stocked bar. We don't force people to drink, but we have plenty of employees (including women) who enjoy it especially after a long day or in celebration of something.
Geek culture has for various reasons dominated the technology sector for the last couple of decades however the risk and reward situation involved in startups has been attracting a different type of crowd, the brogrammers. The geek culturists feel threatened by this new crowd and so attack them by accusing them of sexism (a valid criticism) as it goes against one of the core geek tenets of tolerance towards others.
I on the other hand, view the inclusion of different subcultures in the tech industry, regardless of how they act, to be a positive thing. I hope more subcultures will come along which will continue to break up the dominant stereotypes in the tech industry (and hopefully address the gender imbalance at some stage ... bring on the sisgrammers!).
Why should we care about those guys losing 50% (or not) potential employees. The only reason I see is those holier-than-thou people just want to impose their view on you. If those views are better the guys will choose them. With our current social decorum, I guess they will. I love freedom of speech.
I personally would have not apologized in the position of Path but I would also not have done what they did in the first place. Treating women that way is not the right way get to them in my circles.
I really don't see where the complaint on Geeklist came from. What about all those music clips/GoDaddy commercial?
It's such a big fuss to me because I read it on HN. I got to stop reading these decorum stories and be more productive.
So, hiring or soliciting hires on the basis of cultural compatibility, where legal, is just a tradeoff. You lose by turning off or dismissing part of the total pool, but if the culture is good, you get more out of those who are compatible with it.
Copying the latest fad culture is counterproductive. The companies piling on without any authenticity are idiotic. They'll end up with dregs pretty soon if they all keep going to the bro well (which I assumed was ironically intended - who knows any sincere bros?)
Of course, ironic culture is real (ironic) culture.
Here's the other thing to consider: They are not just sexist. They are classic users/abusers. And that "user" attitude you see them displaying, and perhaps manifesting (though there's probably a fair amount of braggadocio as opposed to effective execution) towards women? Even as a guy, they'll manifest it towards you -- in a second, if they see an advantage.
In short, these are not pleasant people to deal with. My individual choice, enhanced by a few learning experiences, is to avoid getting involved with them -- in any fashion -- in the first place.
And to the potential employer I'll say that, yes, for me this is a non-negotiable "walking point".
I think everyone realizes that there are far too few women in technology. The thing is "brogrammers" are not at fault here. Girls being pushed a particular way in school is. It is a larger cultural issue.
I will be the first to say that 'brogrammers' or whatever seem a little like dumbasses, but people need to stop taking themselves so seriously and get a sense of humor, aswell.
In my experience females in tech are celebrated.
This to me isn't a gender related issue, but a small general issue being blown out of proportion.
But don't assume that they're not allowed to be "sexist" (in quotations because what they've done isn't really "sexist", more like immature). They can run their companies any way they choose, within the laws of the land. They are under no obligation to cater to women.
The laws of the land are pretty clear about creating hostile work environments.
What Sqoot did was kind of sexist--implying that women were only good for getting beer. What most of these other instances have been are just bad taste.
(This applies to most -isms aswell)
The worse they behave the more publicity they will get, the more people will know about their product. Plus the Techcrunch/Pando Daily's/Motherjones... of this world need something to talk about.
Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the age of the Punk Startup.
I, for one, DO NOT welcome the new Punk Startup overlords.
The context is a competitive business landscape so let the competition's results sort it all out.
haha, I love this guy
Political correctness: or why should the far right monopolize all the moralizing, fear of sexual references and plain old dirty jokes? Progressive people can be prudish squares too.
Oh: and those kind of jokes can be blamed for not many women pursuing a programming career. Like, you know, how video games make kids violent, and lawyer jokes make people not follow a lawyer career...
in rural Utah, that is. Comedians, from Lenny Bruce to Carlin have used far more controversial stuff --are we, tech people as a group more backwards than the 60's and 70's people that persecuted them?
(That he wasn't a comedian is not a reason to not allow the guy his joke. Or, are there levels of humor only allowable to comedians? I'd take my conferences with any grain of humor one would like to put in them, thank you).
Seriously (or maybe not), humor has to be judged for what it is, not as a manifesto or an agenda.
For example, your "Proposal to make unittest2 more accurate". People could take offense to that, especially if it was presented at a conference "what's with the profanity", "where's his professionalism" etc. You would consider that justified?
Perhaps it's a double standard on my part, but the sexism in our industry is poisonous to our future and I think we would all be better off if we considered these topics to simply be off limits.
As for PEP712, while I wouldn't present it at a conference, I would be ok with whatever flack I received due to using the first two letters of a profane word.
However, I would also expect to be spit roasted online and hopefully in person if the proposal was to pop up a nude porn pic if all of the tests passed.
b) Violent video games do increase aggression in kids, it took less than 2 seconds to find dozens of journal articles on the subject.
Well, I accept them 100%. And millions of people too, if I judge from every comedy show, comedy movie, joke book, etc.
I think that says more about you than it does the jokes.
It also says that I don't like progressive squares and prudes as much as I don't like far-right nuts and prudes.
It also says that I'm not for censorship and hypocrisy.
Note for my rather ignorant downvoting friends: This was a real job ad from a YC company. It used that exact phrasing. Downvoting me doesn't make it stop being real. Perhaps you should deal with your feelings instead of clicking down arrows to make comments go away when they make you feel uncomfortable.
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
I don't know if I'd venture to call it engrossing reading, but at any rate, I think it's less boring than recitations of the guidelines.
Sure, it's not complaining or whining per se, but it has exactly the same effect -- whining and insults are, by their nature, intended to provoke an emotional reaction, and so drive the conversation further away from calm & reasonable. And calm, reasonable conversation is what sets HN apart from the rest of the 'net.
Nice tu quoque, by the way ("...less boring...").