this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Techbro was originally used to describe the type of men who made it difficult for women in tech, then somewhere along the line the general public realized the same dudes were also making it difficult for lots if people in lots of places.
If tech folks never actually acted like frat bros, the bro appellation never would have happened. I've worked in offices with Kegs cor crissakes.
I’ve worked in offices with booze, ping pong, and arcade games!
but not for us. it’s used as a hiring incentive and plonked into the middle of the office, but any use of those things at work will quickly result in a PIP. the booze, ping pong, and arcade games are for techbros only — the founders and their nepotism hires, specifically. any engineer caught using any of those things clearly isn’t working hard enough, because they haven’t converted their entire body and mind into a machine for writing shit code for shit capitalists.
Who could’ve possibly seen that coming? Oh right, literally any woman in the field.
I don’t want alcohol and work to mix. At best I’m drinking with coworkers at work which is just sad, and the sort of people who want alcohol at work much less a level of booze infrastructure needed to have it on tap aren’t the sort of person I want to be drunk with.
That’s a great point. I hadn’t even considered the alcoholics who are in recovery or attempting to abstain.
Like, I don’t think anyone but active alcoholics or people with serious work life balance issues would want booze on tap at work. As someone who works to have a healthy relationship with alcohol I generally don’t drink at all on work nights (maybe a low or medium abv beer or a glass of wine, but I’m not opening a bottle of wine on a work night for sure).
Like yeah, college sure was fun getting drunk on a Tuesday night, but I couldn’t afford to get that drunk, I was drinking with friends, and I was 21 and didn’t get hangovers unless I was dangerously drunk. I’m a grown ass woman with a wife and career now and my body doesn’t handle booze the way it used to. If my job gave me booze I’d want something like a bottle or 6-pack of something decent to enjoy with my wife on a Friday evening, but even then I wouldn’t want alcoholics to feel tempted or left out. In general the less time I spend with coworkers instead of my wife the happier I am.
But these concerns must just mean I hate men and fun
By the beer standard the most tech-bro-y place I've worked was Swiss Bank Corp / O'Connor in Chicago, a software focused trading shop. In 1994. NeXT machines and Symbolics LISP machines on the private trading floor kind of place, with refrigerators kept stocked with free sodas and beer. Beer was for after 5, except on St Patrick's day, when coolers of beer came out at about noon. Also, Nerf guns on the trading floor.
And yet, at least for the people I know best from there, they didn't turn out to be tech bros. Perhaps there's a generational aspect.