
As Tech Firms Come to Oakland, So Do Hopes of Racial Diversity - kawera
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/12/03/458008179/as-tech-firms-come-to-oakland-so-do-hopes-of-racial-diversity
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TulliusCicero
> I'm hoping that the culture of Oakland is just an overwhelming wave against
> any type of invading horde of 'tech bros' coming in,

I've worked at Amazon and Google, and I don't know where this idea of the
"tech bro" or "brogrammer" being omnipresent in tech companies came from. I
know maybe one person who might fit this description. It just seems like an
insulting label that someone came up with because they hate tech companies and
gentrification, and then the media decided to run with it because it made for
entertaining news. Is there any actual data showing that "tech bros"
constitute a substantial % of the tech industry?

The way I see "brogrammer" used these days is basically like "hipster": it
means 'people in [incredibly broad category] that I don't like'. For the
hipsters, the category was young adults in urban areas, and for brogrammers,
it's young adults at tech companies. It's just a way for people to pretend
that their personal prejudices are actually the fault of the people they're
prejudiced against (similar to the old "welfare queen" stereotype).

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savanaly
Have worked at two separate medium sized tech companies, in other words worked
closely with about twenty different developers, and never met someone I would
characterize as a tech bro. Perhaps I'm one of them and one of their
characteristics is not being able to recognize the quality in themselves or
others?

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proksoup
I think it's a spectrum.

For me the ones I consider "more bro" than myself are those that exhibit
subtle sexism that they are clearly trying to be joking about but it just
comes off as ... PC bro. But I'm sure I have plenty of Bro qualities myself.

I've seen enough unintentional sexism in my experience to think the claims of
prevalent bro'ness are not entirely unfounded.

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colmvp
> "There's all of the platitudes that diversity's good for business," Kapor
> Klein says. "But you look around tech, and you look at how hugely profitable
> companies like Google and Facebook — all these behemoths — and they're
> staggeringly undiverse, and they're doing just fine. So we need to focus on
> different strategies."

FWIW, there are Asians (and even then, that's a simplification of the term
since Asia is such a large and diverse continent) at these companies. Yet for
whatever reason, we are never counted as part of tech diversity.

~~~
santaclaus
The Federal government, at least, often distinguishes between
minority/majority and underrepresented/overrepresented. Women, for example,
are a majority in the overall the United States' population, but are
underrepresented in technology. 'Asians' are a minority in the overall United
States' population, but overrepresented in technology.

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TulliusCicero
"There aren't enough people from underrepresented groups here" is basically a
tautology.

~~~
jdmichal
It is, but the existence of underrepresented groups is not a necessity. That
is, there is no requirement that there be an underrepresented group. But if
there is an underrepresented group, then it is a necessity that not enough
people from that group are present.

What I'm really trying to say is, that particular phrase is repetitious, but
not useless.

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horsecaptin
It starts with education, people. How many blacks and women start studying
engineering to begin with? How many of them see it through to graduation? How
many decide that they actually want to work in the field that they went to
school for?

I bet those that already work at Facebook and Google don't want to work with
people who aren't qualified to be there, strictly in the name of diversity.

~~~
mc32
I have to agree. But it's also a cultural issue. There are disproportionally
few American women in tech, but if you look at Eastern Europe, China and
India, it's not as skewed, and some of those cultures are sometimes
characterized as 'patriarchal'.

So, yes, education but also culture which eliminates cultural barriers --which
tend to begin in the home as well as peer groups where someone who wants to
study something not popular in that group is steered away from pursing such
avenues. It's not feminine, or you're going mainstream, etc (i.e. breaking
with subculture dynamics)

~~~
jdmichal
Even in the US, computer work was originally seen as a "woman's job" \-- an
extension of things like phone routing and secretarial work.

[http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-
how-...](http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-
how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D)

