
Before brogramming, table flipping, and beyond - kev009
http://technowoman.blogspot.com/2015/04/before-brogramming-table-flipping-and.html
======
mikestew
Not that I have any desire to go back to collared shirts, ties, and dresses,
but the author caused me to wonder if it wouldn't do something to dial the
"frat house" dial back a notch. Because, gawd, does it get old.

I gather that I'm about the same age as the author. And she's right, there was
a time that we worked side-by-side with the wimmin folk and didn't think a
thing of it. Hey, it was a brave new world of software, and in that brave new
world gender didn't matter anymore. I remember it as a time of software being
a good place for women to go because it paid well and it didn't matter as much
as other fields if you were "a girl". It worked out well for my Mom around
that era.

But I don't know when it changed and _why_ it changed, so I don't have good
answers for the current situation. But things have changed for sure.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
I'm in my early 30s and wish there was a better middle ground. I feel like
there is a dichotomy: work for a highly brogrammer company building a fun
product from scratch as a slave laborer, or work for boring XYZ.net as a
steady Eddie. I want a personal life but I also want to build something new
with respectful people in an inclusive environment.

The do-or-die environments of most startups just pushes everyone but the bros
out.

~~~
MAGZine
Full disclosure: work for PlanGrid

If you are in the bay area, you might want to take a look at PlanGrid. We have
a diverse culture which we're proud of, value work-life balance, and still
build cool things that make a difference.

~~~
cballard
From your jobs page:

> Unlimited vacation days

If a candidate requested a firm six weeks of accrued PTO, would that be
granted?

~~~
matt_wulfeck
My CO also offers unlimited vacation (though they are careful to say it's
actually "untracked vacation"). In my experience you can always try but
there's a certain amount of unspoken personal capital that's involved that
makes the whole process unnecessarily ambiguous.

~~~
cballard
Yes. If you really care about work/life balance, just offer six or more weeks
of real PTO.

I internally translate "unlimited vacation" to "as little vacation as
possible".

~~~
MAGZine
It's something that could be negotiated, I'm sure.

Personally, I'm interested in minimum vacation policies instead. The founders
do reiterate frequently that 5 weeks is expected.

------
_greim_
My daughter once remarked about something STEM-related: "he can do that
<technical thing> because he's a BOY." We tried _so hard_ to not raise her
that way, and I'm sad the "meme" still managed to slip through and take root,
and at such an early age. What role did I inadvertently play? No idea :(

~~~
dikdik
This just seems weird to me as a millennial male. I am obviously lacking some
perspective, but my advanced and AP math and science classes in high school
were always very split by boys and girls. The upper echelon of students in
those courses, of which I was consistently part of, were moreso women than
men.

But when I look at what my old classmates are doing now, most of those girls
went into teaching, law, and business related roles. A couple went into
science and engineering and one is a dentist. Of the guys, most of them became
doctors, engineers, and pharmacists and a couple work in agriculture and
wildlife conservation. All of the women I am referring to know they are smart
enough to do whatever they want, but they obviously decided to favor non-
technical roles for their own reasons.

~~~
dllthomas
In the case of my wife, she moved away from more technical fields in college
precisely because of her impression of who her classmates (and, later, co-
workers) would be.

~~~
dikdik
Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Eventually women will have to take some
leadership here and not expect men to say, "we're firing half our company and
only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out
and attract more people down the line."

At some point women HAVE to stand up and take the lead for themselves.

~~~
dllthomas
Your original comment seemed to be arguing that this wasn't an issue because
these women probably wanted _first order_ to be doing other things. If that's
the case, then we probably shouldn't be pushing too hard to get them to do
things they don't want to do. I'm sure that _is_ the case for some
individuals; I don't know the distribution.

My point was to demonstrate that it's also the case, for some individuals (I
still don't know the distribution), that they were turned away for reasons
_other_ than first order lack of interest in the field; and in fact, reasons
we have something of an impact on.

My wife was turned away not simply because she thought she'd be working with
men, but because of her impression of the particular men in STEM fields that
she had experience of. I don't know if her impression was fair - looking back,
she doesn't know if her impression was fair. But we do collectively have the
ability to work to make sure such an impression is not fair and to work to
make sure we're giving the correct impression.

Given a negative impression of likely experiences in the field, expecting
outsiders to fix it is a collective action problem. If a woman correctly
judges that the existing population working in a field are likely to make that
field painful to work in, and she is the only one (or part of a small
minority) who _" stand up"_, then she's chosen a painful career for herself.
Those of us already in the industry can work to address the problem with
substantially less risk.

I'm pretty sure _" we're firing half our company and only hiring women who
aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people
down the line"_ is effectively a straw-man. It's certainly not what I would
advocate, and I don't see how my comment would have implied it.

------
noobie
I'm on a tangent but as a Third World millennial, this what I envy most about
First World millenials, a previous generation of _cool_ people who invented
and got to play around with all this cool tech. Everyone I know didn't have
parents that got them into programming or messing with hardware. Most of my
country's "Gen X" were teachers and technicians at best.

~~~
morgante
The vast majority of technical people in the US also had no family connections
to technology. There are whole memes about the annoyingness of constantly
being called on to fix your family computers.

------
coderdude
Is "Revenge of the Nerds" (1984) a symptom of many women avoiding tech or is
it one of the causes? The characters were nerdy, into tech, and generally
despised by their peers (most notably women and athletes). The only girls who
would associate with them were Omega Mu, who were a lot like the Tri-Lams. I
don't think anyone would want to be a Tri-Lam or an Omega Mu in real life[1]
(they are, after all, comically nerdy). I don't find it impossible that a
generation of women thought "You know, I'd rather have an Alpha Beta, not a
Tri-Lam. How do I avoid getting a Tri-Lam? Don't be an Omega Mu."

I don't think it's possible to know one way or the other. It's much more
likely that RotN and things like it caused or were caused by deeply rooted
stigmas against tech that made women shy away from it before even getting to
the point of being exposed to 'frat-like' conditions in the workplace.

1: [http://i.imgur.com/Pf35A0D.png](http://i.imgur.com/Pf35A0D.png)

~~~
_greim_
WRT the tie-in to the "nerd" phenomenon. Lots of things compete for kids'
finite mental resources. It becomes a variation of _do I invest in Social
Status, or Subject Matter X?_ Those investments happen in a small way at
first, but end up having an outsize impact on the rest of a kid's life.

Such choices are strongly influenced by cultural expectations for gender.
Those cultural expectations are, in turn, cartoonishly amplified in the
typical lord-of-the-flies high school environment.

Actually all of the above is just me—some random HN puke—speculating and
repeating things I've heard elsewhere. But it definitely sounds plausible!

~~~
mason240
One Paul Graham's more well known essays talks about how, in general, being
cool and being a nerd both take a significant time investment, and to be good
at one you have to forgo the other.

[http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

------
richard_mcp
Can someone explain what she means by "table flipping?"

~~~
mooreds
From [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-
tables-%E2%95%AF%E2%9...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-
tables-%E2%95%AF%E2%96%A1%EF%BC%89%E2%95%AF%EF%B8%B5-%E2%94%BB%E2%94%81%E2%94%BB)

"Flipping Table emoticon (written as: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) is a text-based emoticon
depicting a person flipping a table out of rage. Primarily used by East Asian
internet users to express rage, the emoticon became popular among Western
internet users following its introduction through internationally popular
online games."

~~~
x1798DE
That doesn't sound right in this context:

> Where did we make that left turn into experienced, table flipping talent
> leaving the industry and the culture of brogramming scaring new talent away?

That sounds like "table flipping" is a good thing, like "turning the tables"
on someone, but I'm honestly a bit puzzled.

~~~
sliverstorm
Maybe they mean, "experienced, completely fed-up talent leaving the industry"

------
auvrw
i really appreciated this writeup.. _silly things like 'you're not
architecture material', 'you did surprisingly well on the programming test',
and being openly berated for not wanting to 'step up' to a non-technical role_
are silly.

coding for 30 years then still being like, "what next? o right, ruby." is
awesome.

------
banku_brougham
Thanks for this, it's a much needed reminder. I'd like more of an experienced
programmer's view of table flipping. I only know it from the emoticons.

------
ianamartin
Quick anecdote from an earlier time. My mother's college roommate (Marilyn)
studied Math and Physics in undergrad in the late '50s/early '60s. She went on
to do a Masters at MIT and worked on the Apollo project there, which by that
time was being run by another woman: Margaret Hamilton.

If I remember the story correctly, Marilyn started a PhD, but never finished
due to marriage and kids. She went on to have a very happy career at NASA and
retired from there eventually, around 1995.

She worked in code for almost all of her career. She worked on the Apollo
Guidance Computer for at least a couple of years.

Her telling of how things were is that there were a lot of women working in
what would eventually become the field of computer science. It was a flipped
version of what we think of now but with some similarities.

It was flipped because women were the higher percentage of the work force in
the early '60s and on into the '70s and even '80s. But this was also the same
as today because the field itself was really not well-defined, and after
people went from punch cards (which is what she started programming with),
they went to typing. And for the average Joe, typing was a job for women: it
was secretary work.

So this seems to me--with the caveat that I'm remembering some conversations
I've had with this women from maybe 10 years ago when I first got interested
in software and started having jobs that involved it--that there was a brief
opening window at the early stages of the field when there were a lot of women
practitioners.

As the field became more mainstream and more codified and promised rewards and
opportunities, it appears that the guys noticed and came in rather slowly. And
then pretty suddenly when it became clear that you could make a quick buck
without a crapton of advanced knowledge, the brogrammers showed up and pretty
much took over.

That's obviously only one interpretation, but it's an interesting one to me
because Marilyn retired before things seem to have got really bad. She retired
when the women were still wearing dresses to work, and the men were wearing
suits, and things were mostly professional. There were probably glass
ceilings, but she didn't feel one in her work because NASA has an
institutional history of women doing big, important things.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Another anecdote. This one much shorter. A second field that seems to be to
being opened up by bro-ish types (and with the incompetence and general lack
of knowledge and laziness I associate with that type) is healthcare--
specifically Nursing.

When I was studying Statistics at the University of North Dakota, I was living
in a house with 6 other guys. Two of whom were Nursing students. They would
have frat-style parties several times a week. Parties where 35-40 of their
nursing school guy friends would come over, play Nickelback all night long and
drink shitty beer. Basically the opposite of what I would expect from Nursing
students.

I found this pretty unexpected and asked once WTF was going on here.

The answer was pretty consistent: there's a dearth of Nurses. People will pay
a lot for them. The barrier to entry is pretty low. Essentially, it's quick
easy money.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

All this makes me wonder how much of the shift in industry demographics is
really driven by institutional sexism and how much it is just that the lowest
common denominator will always try to make easy, lazy money. And then the more
competent people move elsewhere, or just leave the industry entirely and go do
something else.

Of course, once you reach a critical mass of bro-ism, the institutional bias
_does_ become real. But I wonder if we have a situation in business or IT
management that is somewhat akin to the problems we have in U.S. Politics: the
only people interested in managing are, by definition, not fit for the job. So
smart people give up and walk away to something else.

The other thing that it makes me wonder is this: how many other industries are
there that started out with one traditional mix of demographics because
"that's a job for x type of person. Not _someone like me_. And was then co-
opted by the someones-like-me.

Anyway, sorry for a long musing. Just trying to put some puzzle pieces
together here to see if there's a larger idea to digest.

~~~
dikdik
Are we attempting to wash away history? It seems like this article and a lot
of comments are insinuating women's rights have only decreased in the last 40
years. WHAT.

My mother, born in 1955, was told by her father there was no reason for her to
take algebra or any type of math in high school because she wouldn't need it.

Maybe the upper class women of yesterday are just lamenting the death of
chivalry. I don't know.

I often wonder why bro-ish types are chastised for being who they want to be.
I get why it's bad when it becomes overbearing and crowds out diversity. Yet
it seems bro = stupid, terrible, provide no value, and a bigot. I know some
great, intelligent guys that are pretty bro-y.

It gets old when we have to constantly champion weakness, meekness, and
discourage confidence. While a complete bro culture can be toxic, I've worked
in majority-woman departments where the gossiping and backstabbing is just as
toxic.

~~~
ianamartin
I'm not in any way trying to wash away history, and I am not trying to imply
that women's rights have only decreased since the 50s.

I'm suggesting that there is a larger pattern operating here that is
potentially more complicated than "things used to suck; now they are getting
better, but not fast enough in STEM."

I agree with you that women are discouraged from entering certain fields. My
mother (b. 1941) wanted to be a doctor, and her father didn't see the point.
She ended up meeting my father in a German class and falling for him (he was
the prof) and she ended up going the route of a German professor.

Of course we know that women are still discouraged from entering certain
fields. I'm not arguing that they are not. I'm wondering if there are
background signals in play here that drive women out of the fields that they
_are_ encouraged to get into.

 __ __ __ __ __ __

As for bro culture, it gets chastised because it 's toxic by definition, in my
experience. Bro culture--to me--is quite a lot more than what you are
describing it as. I'm not meek, week, and I'm not lacking in confidence. You
can be all those things and still be very far from bro.

It's the stupid, terrible, provide no value, racist, sexist, bigot kind of
people who walk around fist bumping and saying things like, "Dude, did we
totally rape that bitch into submission, or what?!" when talking about
"solving" a "hard" problem that are toxic.

It's the kind of people who think that ping pong tables and free beer make up
for an utterly shitty working environment. It's the kind of people who are
completely and totally unable to think that some people would want something
other than what they want out of a job.

In other words, bro culture is marked by all the things you say it is
"chastised" for, but not for those things in themselves. After all, we are all
human and exhibit certain elements of all those things in ourselves. Bro
culture celebrates stupidity, terrible-ness, sexism, and bigotry--and bro
culture is entirely lacking empathy for anyone who is not a part of it.

I'm not saying anything about you or anyone you know. If the shoe doesn't fit,
don't wear it. I'm describing the characteristics that people deride when
talking about it.

*

I have no input about majority-women departments. I can certainly see how
gossiping and backstabbing is toxic. I'll leave the criticism of those things
to people who are in a position to do something about it.

I'm a mid-30s white male technologist. I can do something about bro culture.
Not so much I can do about women gossiping and backstabbing.

------
hackaflocka
Really insightful essay.

For men (speaking as a man myself), threatened by competition, criticism is
often a competitive sport.

This essay made me think of my own blind spots, and I hope I'm better for
having read it.

------
Pxtl
...seriously, buddy, take a deep breath and back away from the men's rights
blogosphere. That level of persecution complex is not a healthy way to think
about life.

~~~
twic
It would be more helpful to me as a reader if your response pointed out the
errors in what he'd written, than critiqued the attitude behind it.

~~~
bjornstjerne
> than critiqued the attitude behind it.

That response was more contempt than critique.

