Tech Bros are Still a Thing, Apparently
In the year 2000, I was working as an editor at a dotcom that has long since bitten the dust. My manager was a big, loud guy I’ll call Steve who, when shaking your hand, said “Lemme get my whole hand in there.” He exuded confidence, spoke up in meetings, rode his motorcycle to work, and made his coworkers laugh. A guy’s guy.
One morning, Steve was walking toward me down a hallway as a female colleague of ours was heading in the opposite direction. As he passed her, Steve stole a look at her backside, scrunched up his face like he’d just bitten into a lemon wedge, and shot me the sort of universally understood wince meant to acknowledge female pulchritude.
“Am I right?” Steve said.
In an instant, the codes of bonding over our shared possession of Y chromosomes played out. My boss was inviting me to partake in his appreciation of our coworker’s body, as if to say, do you agree that Stephanie is someone we both would enjoy having sex with?
“Whatever, dude,” I replied.
Later, a woman on my team approached me in private and asked, “I’m just curious. Has Steve ever invited you to take a ride with him on his motorcycle?”
No, actually. Steve had neglected to offer me the opportunity to partake in that super fun activity with him. Huh. Strange.
There are a lot of guys like Steve still out there. Wouldn’t you know it, one of them is even governor of New York. And apparently there are a ton of them still wolf whistling their way through the game industry, as the recent grossness at Activision Blizzard demonstrates.
Whenever the noxious frat boy behavior of grown men working in tech comes to light, it can seem like the bizarre tribal rites of a band of Vikings. The shocking stories of rape jokes and revenge porn — not to mention the systemic inequalities that pay women less and offer fewer opportunities for advancement — seem too weird to be true. That very perception, I recognize, is one of the luxuries I enjoy as a white guy.
I’ve never been a guy’s guy and couldn’t fake enthusiasm for the championship potential of the Seattle Seahawks if I tried. I can think of three jobs that I’ve enjoyed the most — camp counselor, bookstore clerk, and faculty on a Masters-level creative writing program. The one common thread linking all three was that I was in the gender minority. I never found an exercise routine that stuck until I started going to yoga classes taught by women, and on many occasions found myself the lone man in the studio. My proudest accomplishment — and I’m 100% not kidding — is that I was a stay-at-home dad.
But on occasion, like that moment in the hallway with Steve, I’ve been invited to partake in the guy’s guy club. When we hear about sexism in workplaces like Activision Blizzard ((and before that Ubisoft) and before that Riot Games), these reports are delivered as a series of singular episodes. There’s no shortage of anecdotes about handsy bosses and their subordinates. What’s harder to convey is that these stories are symptoms of larger cultures, an accumulation of sexist remarks deployed in breakrooms, the prostitution joke delivered in a conference room in which the lone female in attendance is expected to grin and chuckle along with the bros. While a noxious remark or straight-up assault is shocking, it’s the conduct that sweeps in right afterward to normalize this behavior (“Am I right?”) that enables these incidents to continue.
As I launch my own startup that’s seeking a place within the games industry that still suffers from frat bro woes, I’ve been leaning on the advice and talent of women who know a lot more than me about organizational development, fundraising, and technology. I’ve decided to hold myself to a rule that I’ll never have a higher salary than the highest-paid woman in my company. Which just means I need to hire women into senior leadership positions.
Part of me, I admit, is sort of patting myself on the back here for being such a great feminist ally, blah blah blah, but ultimately, striving to not be a sexist a-hole just means getting to enjoy the competitive advantage of collaborating with brilliant people.
Working with talented, admirable women who know more than me about x,y, and z? Dudes, it totally pays off.
