
`Bro culture' at startups keeps talented women out: Harvey Mudd President - SirLJ
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/09/silicon-valleys-bro-culture-slammed-by-harvey-mudd-president.html
======
publidat
The rapid ascendency of 'bro culture' as an accepted problem in startups feels
as politically manufactured as the 'alt-right' was to the 2016 election.

Both may have a whisper of truth behind them, both may have some adherents,
but the numbers have been blown out of proportion because it's politically
useful for some people to invent this boogieman.

~~~
glenda
I do have to say, after joining a small decidedly non-startup company, the
culture at most startups is toxic simply due to that fact that they're so
informal and mostly full of men. That means there will be certain situations
in which the women (if there are any) may feel uncomfortable as their needs
and concerns are not being actively considered.

~~~
whitemale
Should people not be allowed to build a startup or a company where some groups
of people might feel unwelcome?

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tabeth
Given the relatively low entry costs to create a technology company, what's
stopping the talented women from starting their own companies and competing
with a superior product or service? It's sad to say this, but at the end of
the day, you comply or you compete [1]

[1] To be fair, women (and minorities for that matter) have tried and "the
forces that be" sabotaged them. For example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood,_Tulsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood,_Tulsa)

~~~
totalZero
Nobody is accusing bro culture of literally firebombing women in the startup
world.

~~~
Ralfp
_Literally firebombing_ means bombarding women in startup world with
incendiary ordnance, be it be plane or artillery barrage, and to my best
knowledge no such action took place.

------
kleiba
"Men behaving badly is a theme that permeated the tech industry long
before..." \-- ahh, nothing like a sexist generalization to make your point.

~~~
notyourday
I guess these people never worked with Wall St masters of the universe.

------
newsbinator
I don't really understand why the culture of some companies is something that
needs to be fixed. As long as there's nothing illegal going on (like
harassment), then what difference does it make from the outside whether a
company has a toxic environment?

If women don't want to work at those companies, that's fine.

I'm not a woman, but I don't want to work at those companies either, and
that's fine too.

Is there anything stopping 'sis culture' companies from being formed and
dominated by women?

Or companies dominated by people who make everything about video games or
sports or chess or cosmetics.

Some of these companies will succeed, most will fail. As long as no one's
getting harassed, why should we force them to have this culture or that one?

~~~
Grustaf
Exactly. If reports on the Linux kernel mailing lists are to be believed for
example, it's an incredibly toxic culture. Most normal people would probably
want to stay far away from it. Yet Linux has seen unbelievable success.

~~~
newsbinator
It's worth considering that some subsets of some industries require a regular
influx of high-functioning jerks in order to grease the wheels of progress.

Perhaps in those areas anybody who's not a jerk wouldn't have the strength to
keep debating minutae with pedants long enough to accomplish anything
monumental.

------
guessmyname
For anyone wondering _(like me)_ what is _" Bro Culture"_:

> Bro culture doesn’t have an accepted definition. But it’s instantly
> recognizable. There are, however, a few clues to its existence:

> @ CEO - White male, no experience, no adult supervision, somewhat good
> looking, glib, overconfident, arrogant, obnoxious and amoral.

> @ Management Clones of the CEO. Frat brothers (sometimes literally) he hires
> for “culture fit” a move best described by the over-used, and always
> bullshit, hiring idiom: “someone I would go for a beer with after work.”

> @ Women Second class citizens and often looked at like sorrority sisters.
> Rarely promoted, often hit on, and to survive they need to know “how to get
> along with guys” which is startup speak for don’t come to us with your
> issues, it’s bro’s before ho’s.

> Ref: [https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/03/11/bro-culture-
> poison...](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/03/11/bro-culture-poisoning-
> silicon-valley/)

And a more generic definition:

> Bro is a male youth subculture of "conventional guys' guys" who spend time
> partying in ways similar to each other. Although the popular image of bro
> lifestyle is associated with sports apparel and fraternities, it lacks a
> consistent definition. Most aspects vary regionally such as in California
> where it overlaps with surf culture.

> —
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro_(subculture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro_\(subculture\))

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I think in all of the years I've been around startups and the valley I have
seen maybe one company that actually fits the description of "Bro Culture."

~~~
pkaye
I wonder if people see much "Bro Culture" in Silicon Valley (South Bay) area?

------
notyourday
She's confused. Startups are the Wild West of America. Wild West comes with
Wild West rules. The rules are simple:

1) The loudest ones get heard

2) The most ruthless get some combination of (fear + respect)

3) Those from a combination of (1 and 2) get funded

4) A fraction of (3) succeed, and a fraction of those does phenomenally well.

5) Everyone else in a pool will murder to be (4)

6) When (4) for some reason stops performing as (4) is supposed to perform, it
becomes not "Jack is drunk at work again but we are exiting soon and I will be
multi-hundred millionaire so I'm just going to figure out how not to piss off
Jack as he is my payday" but "That drunk Jack pissed off a big customer by
hitting on his wife and now he is hitting on me and I'm just not paid enough
to deal with his shit" That's when the cracks start showing. That's when the
"culture" becomes not a culture of "we win rararara!" but "these people are
behaving like frat boys!" We saw this at Zenefits. We see that at Uber.

We are starting to see it at _Tesla_.

AirBNB is going to be next - there are already grubmings about its "culture"

[Edit: Formatting]

~~~
hueving
So you're saying earlier IPOs are the answer?

~~~
notyourday
If I knew what was the answer, I would be posting on HN on Sunday while
watching a long running processes that did not quite work overnight.

We do have empirical evidence that people who think they are going to make
gobs of money are willing to put up with a lot more than people who know that
they wont make that pile of money.

Scenario #1:

Boring job - $120k/year salary + benefits. HR would send you home if your
shirt is untucked. That kind of a company.

Scenario #2:

Same Boring job - $120k/year + benefits. Potential to make > $20MM on exit but
one has to deal with "bro culture".

#2 is probably going to be a preferred by anyone who at any point in their
life had a crappy job. Remove the > $20MM exit and #1 is a winner. Remove it
after it has been implied and that person would be rather mad at the company.

------
kevintb
It's amusing how a simple statement like this can provoke so much defensive
responses. Bro culture keeps talented people out, sometimes men, mostly women.
It's _bad_ for business!

We wouldn't be questioning something like: "racist workplaces keep talented
minorities out." Can you imagine someone responding to that with "Let them
readjust to me, not the other way around"?

~~~
ihsw2
The difference is it's a noticeably sexist statement disguised as non-sexist.

Would you argue that your statement "racist workplaces keep talented
minorities out" is equal to "white workplaces keep talented minorities out?"

There is a difference between an argument against "bro culture" and an
argument against "sexist culture" \-- one is neutral whereas the other is
clearly anti-male.

~~~
amyjess
Bro culture isn't the same thing as male culture.

I personally know a lot of men who want nothing to do with bro culture,
support feminism, and are generally good people. In fact, men who partake in
bro culture have a number of slurs that they use to target men who want
nothing to do with bro culture: these slurs include "nu-males" and "cucks"
(and the latter has racist overtones, too).

So, yes, I want the men who get slurred as "nu-males" to completely push bro
culture out of the tech industry and replace them.

~~~
hueving
I think you're confusing bro culture with red pillers.

~~~
greglindahl
HN: a place where it's more interesting to debate how to label men who say
'cuck' than it is to debate whether or not calling people 'cucks' is positive
for a company's culture.

------
wyck
What about bro culture in plumbing and sanitation, does that keep women out?
Or maybe the fact that women in progressive free countries have to choice to
choose a career path they might actually be interested in?

That's why the 25% stat is bullshit. I'm not denying bro culture is a problem,
but its not the complete reason why there is a low adoption rate.

~~~
jssmith
This is a really interesting comparison. Plumbing jobs have a reputation for
high pay, as do jobs in tech. Is hooking up APIs as miserable as fixing
faucets? Maybe, but I really think that self-reinforcing cultural patterns
play a big role in perpetuating these gender imbalances: women opt out because
of culture that results when there are few women.

The women with the most other options are perhaps most likely to go elsewhere.
Some of the men who have the most options may be right behind them.

~~~
wyck
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask)
I recommend watching this, it will shatter some preconceptions.

------
rullelito
> In 2015, women held just 25 percent of computing jobs, according to the
> National Center for Women & Technology. Start-ups are even less diverse.
> According to data from PitchBook, just 16.8 percent of U.S. companies funded
> last year had at least one female founder.

This can't be far from how many females have studied computer science. Not
that this is the only way to get "computing jobs", but it says a lot about the
wider trend. I think I had 0-4 females present in my computer-oriented
nonobligatory classes.

~~~
vilmosi
Stop calling women "females".

~~~
whitemale
Stop nitpicking about pointless semantics.

------
rocky1138
I feel like this article should have defined what "bro culture" is before
going off on it. I have no idea what "bro culture" is.

------
brndnmtthws
It keeps talented people out. Not just women.

~~~
Lagged2Death
[http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/archive/2016/07/07/all-
houses-...](http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/archive/2016/07/07/all-houses-
matter-the-extended-cut/)

------
R_haterade
I don't think bro-culture is something anyone aspires to. I had a great
experience working for a company that often is criticized as a "boys club",
but I consider what I experienced there to be Man-Culture, not bro-culture,
and I think the baby is thrown out with the bathwater in this kind of debate.
My suspicion is that any company that ends up with a "bro-culture" is simply
trying and failing to implement a "man-culture."

At the other extreme I've worked in "inclusive" environments, and I'm just so
fucking sick of it. You spend too much damn time worrying about other peoples'
feelings to get any meaningful work done.

Interestingly the man-culture place had a lot less tolerance for harassment
(except harassment by women, for some reason that was tolerated.) I think it
stemmed from more paternalism, which came hand-in-hand with the Man-Culture.

EDIT: Wow this comment section is getting lit up today. My respect for this
community continues to grow.

------
carsongross
Similarly, does 'sis culture' at colleges keep talented men out?

[https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-REGjzKeq_LY/T53intthiXI/AAAAAAAAR...](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-REGjzKeq_LY/T53intthiXI/AAAAAAAARXw/PHTklVvROe8/s1600/degrees1.jpg)

This seems like a larger and more relevant problem for the president of a
college to address.

------
phy6
What about all the women founded startups, do they have bro culture as well?

~~~
betaby
Yes.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/mans-suing-yahoo-for-
gend...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/mans-suing-yahoo-for-gender-
bias_us_56b25e1ce4b08069c7a5d2ad)

But men told to shut and and man-up

------
li4ick
I don't understand this sometimes. Do they want to reeducate the entire world,
just because of some demographic? Let them readjust to me, not the other way
around. It's not based on gender, there's plenty of people that hate this
culture, and that's normal. What do you propose, eliminate it entirely?

~~~
KirinDave
It is impossible to eliminate an idea or culture save by the most extreme
measures. What we'd like to do is start remdining everyone going to work and
going to fund that they have a responsibility to push back against and avoid
funding this culture.

------
twunde
I think the most insightful part of the article was the use of HR as a signal.
I can see it being a particular problem for companies with young founders who
never worked at large companies with HR so there's less awareness of workplace
norms, particularly issues like sexual harassment or maternity leave

------
flashgordon
How about "old people"?

------
s3nnyy
Why is this on HN?

~~~
KirinDave
Because it is interesting enough to be upoted, relevant to the industry,
relevant to a business, and newsworthy.

Why wouldn't it be? What kind of political agenda do you bring here that would
demand we not talk about it?

