Why Does Tech Bro Culture Matter? (2024)

I decided to take a seminar called Silicon Valley Uncovered as part of my last semester as a student in the Media Studies Department at the University of San Francisco. In the seminar, we have talked about inequalities and problems regarding the current technological center of the world — Silicon Valley. “While there is no standard definition of the “tech bro,” the group is generally spoken of with a negative tinge. Working in the technology sector alone does not make one a tech bro; it’s about the attitude, not so much the profession” (Robertson, SFGate). The class’s critique of Tech Bro culture troubled me at first because I have been taught that criticizing and generalizing could also be a flaw, growing up in the country (Kazakhstan), where misogyny and patriarchy are a systemic part of daily life. Women learn how to find their way around patriarchal hierarchies or grasp some stability and power within the system that they live in. The USA — in the eyes of many nations around the world — is presented as a safe, better space for opportunities, meritocracy, and equality for all. Perhaps learning that it is untrue made me uncomfortable? Learning that the most powerful information center of the world, Silicon Valley, is not always but has a flaw of being very monolithic in its preference in gender and the type of people it wants to attract is rather troubling. According to a software platform, Carta, study: “…women in Silicon Valley not only earn less than their male counterparts but are awarded far less equity as well. Carta analyzed more than 6,000 companies, 180,000 employees and 15,000 founders, and found that overall, men own 91 percent of employee and founder equity in Silicon Valley, leaving women a scant 9 percent. The average female founder owns just 39 cents in equity for every $1 a male founder owns” (Thomas, CNBC).

Silicon Valley tech giants have changed how we communicate, how we eat, how we shop, stretching it all the way to even how we find our romantic match. The influence is not absolute, but it touches the lives of most people around the world. With all the power these tech companies hold and all these innovations rushing down upon us, there are many problematic moments. The one that strikes and intrigues me the most is the psychosocial atmosphere and social structures that have formed over not so many years of the existence of these companies. So-called Tech Bro culture is not new; bro culture exists everywhere. One might even argue we live in one huge bubble of bro culture or patriarchy. It may vary and be called oil industry bro culture, banking bros, entrepreneurial bros, and many other types of “bros” because all that it saying is that the framework of any structure and any job in the current society is designed for men to be led by men. In my research for this seminar, I am analyzing Tech Bro culture, specifically, and the scholarly and popular works of people who are invested in shining a light upon this problem. I want to see what the problems are within a culture where women have limited power and to find out what the alternative outcomes are: what can be done to change it? I am analyzing various cases of tech world discrimination against women. For example, I read Emily Chang’s book Brotopia as part of my research analysis. “For women in tech, Silicon Valley is not a fantasy land of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops, where millions of dollars grow on trees. It’s a “Brotopia,” where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties. In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don’t Be Evil! Connect the World!) — and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao’s high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they “won’t lower their standards” just to hire women… Chang shows how women such as former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, entrepreneur Niniane Wang, and game developer Brianna Wu, have risked their careers and sometimes their lives to pave a way for other women. Silicon Valley’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It’s time to break up the boys’ club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture — to bring down Brotopia, once and for all” (Official book description).

I want to contribute, even if it is on a very small scale, to the topic of the Tech Bro culture as being problematic because I want to believe that there will be a day when being born a certain gender or certain race won’t stop you from pursuing your goals and aspirations. I have recently started interning for a tech company. (This is very ironic considering I took the Silicon Valley Uncovered class). Although the company I work for is full of women, which might be because it is not an American company or because I work in the marketing department, which is known to be more open to hiring women, I couldn’t help but notice that the building and the space we are located in, which is shared among many other tech companies, is full of people who are extremely similar. They are mostly young white men in their 20s and early 30s. I want to investigate the problems of the Bro culture because it does matter and it is something worth paying attention to. At the end of the day, Silicon Valley shapes how we all interact, shop, and relate to one another. Discrimination within the space that has so much power is not only a concern of the tech world but of the society as a whole. Because if there is very little hope and path of entry to success for women here in Silicon Valley, what kind of message does it send for the rest of the women all over the world?