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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

That was a Millennial generation thing. Back in 2002, "Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd" by Speak and McNally, was arguing for that. They pushed heavy self-promotion. That got us the "brogrammer", "move fast and break things", and startups that tried to buy market share with venture capital.

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I don't see the connection of the brogrammer's to the idea of being your own brand and embracing the weird. To me, the brogrammer's were the result of the huge influx of money into the tech ecosystem. It was the arrival of those just chasing a paycheck and stock options rather than those who enjoyed programming for its own sake.

The things you list seem completely unconnected to me, and not driven by people embracing weird. Stereotype "brogrammers" were very similar to each other.

Yes. To even mention venture in this era. It is more associated with status quo than being weird.

Didn’t PG have an explicit investment thesis to fund people who wore hoodies and looked / acted like Zuckerberg?

Eventually people figured that out and started wearing hoodies instead of suits on purpose.

> We tell founders presenting at Demo Day, 'If you dress up too much, you will read to the investors as a stupid person.' They're coming to see the next Larry and Sergey, not some junior MBA type.

https://www.wired.com/2010/04/ff-hackers

lol I didn't realize it got as bad as them literally telling founders to dress like that. The irony is of course in no small part because of YC, the junior MBA types flocked to SV, so that's who the VCs ended up meeting anyway, wearing a sweatshirt instead of a suit jacket.

So were beats, hippies, punks, goths...[1]

[1] https://www.clrn.org/what-is-counterculture-in-sociology/

Not true. Not sure why you are hyperfixating on millennials either. Startups and programming/crunch culture existed in the 90s all the same.

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