I love the fantasy that this is in any way unique to tech. Tech's problem is that they are less adept at hiding it -- partially because they eschew normal corporate bureaucracy which does a fantastic job masking these issues. The underlying reality is this is behavior that is seen when you have people with large amounts of wealth and power (and guess what, it happens to people of every gender!).
It's not even that it's unique to tech, it's mostly unique to a specific subset of tech. There's a reason that 'Silicon Valley' is also a comedy, and it's not a compliment. Yes, you can find this behavior elsewhere, in the same way that you can find gold in most rivers and streams. If you want to mine for big fat nuggets though, go to Silicon Valley.
It makes sense though. I'm sure Wall Street is as bad or worse. The thing is, everyone already hates wall st.. SV and startups have become part of pop culture. It's "cool" to have a startup. People are eschewing Wall Street, Madison Ave, and big 4 consulting jobs to work at startups or VC firms.
It's only natural that journalists and media outlets will look to expose the flaws in what's popular. A similar story about stock traders would not raise eyebrows. Actually I think it's a good thing.
> The underlying reality is this is behavior that is seen when you have people with large amounts of wealth and power (and guess what, it happens to people of every gender!).
It happens to the 25% of employees in leadership positions that are women and the 75% that are men. How equitable!
I quite disagree. Yes these kind of things exists outside of tech. but if you dump tens of millions of dollars on any fresh faced person that shows up at your door, this is what you get.
The bro culture is not unique to tech. Companies and funds willing to put billions into tech startups with such culture is unique though. For most other kinds of startups they would want seats on the board and accounting of every dime. Investors let tech startups get away with too much stuff.
I agree with the pretext behind the article of inexperienced, reckless CEOs creating toxic culture but it is incredibly poor journalism and I'm laughing that this made it past NYT editorial board. What came to mind is the scene from Idiocracy "Wanted: for being a dick". There have been much better pieces on excoriating these companies individually and using them as a vehicle to discuss systemic problems. This one is just a bandwagon hack job.
Also "none of the 15 biggest American tech companies valued over $1 billion has a female chief executive." er, what about the most successful tech company of all time, IBM?
>"but it is incredibly poor journalism and I'm laughing that this made it past NYT editorial board."
Its an "Opinion" piece and clearly marked as such on the page, and it does not express nor is it intended to express the opinion of the publication's editorial board but rather solely of the author. I think almost every newspaper of record has an editorial/opinion section, its been a staple for almost a hundred years.
That is completely orthogonal. Journalism includes developing and editing articles to meet expected standards, and you can evaluate that independent of agreeing or disagreeing with the message. Being factually incorrect in the case of the top 15 CEOs is not excusable just because it's an opinion piece. I tend to think of NYT as a high quality paper and was surprised to see this filler.
Look at Uber, the ride-hailing start-up. It’s the biggest tech unicorn in the world, with a valuation of $69 billion. Not long ago Uber seemed invincible. Now it’s in free fall, and top executives have fled. The company’s woes spring entirely from its toxic bro culture, created by its chief executive, Travis Kalanick.
This is a big assertion. There are multiple forces at play regarding Uber's erosion. The culture is a significant aspect of it, but not the entire reason. Other forces include regulation, Uber's floundering self-driving play, and Uber's inability to continue paying drivers the same rates without running out of money.
1. Their optimistic / misguided (or is it? Can we be sure yet?) foray into self-driving cars was a result of arrogance stemming from their toxic bro culture
2. Their problem with subsidizing rides and losing money is due to a win-at-all-costs competitive attitude that demands they run Lyft into the ground, stemming from toxic bro culture.
3. Increasing regulation is due to their arrogant tendency to flout local taxi laws and run Uber anyway (this I might agree with, though I'll note that Uber is often wildly popular when it disrupts a local taxi market, and they have been able to get their way in part due to asking Uber riders and drivers to actively support regulation change in their area)
But, no, I agree with you. The idea that everything Uber's struggling with is directly the fault of the toxic bro culture that Kalanick has (seemingly single-handedly?) created is absurd.
The win-at-all-costs culture is not "bro exclusive". For example, look at how Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are copying stuff from each other in the hope that users do not leave the walled garden.
"despite many studies showing that women run companies better than men" and "none of the 15 biggest American tech companies valued over $1 billion has a female chief executive"
The first seems to suggest I could find studies saying the opposite, or that perhaps increased diversity is the best option and who is CEO isn't as important. Would love to see the source they used for this. For the second I thought HP and Yahoo were both run by women CEO's and as CEO why are they being ignored? Or is it just referring to unicorn startups? On spotty connection so hard to check.
Edit I previously mentioned AMD and IBM having female CEO's but edited out as I was getting downvoted. Not trying to push any agenda just pointing out the statements seemed wrong.
also worth noting that these are exceptional companies with TONS of companies that aren't unicorns that are highly valuable and well run. Whether women run unicorns better perhaps was not what the stat was about and instead was probably about whether in general women run companies better. Since there aren't that many unicorns that popup annually, wouldn't be surprised if there aren't statistically significant sample sizes to determine which gender runs a company better, assuming you subscribe to gender binaries and agreed upon 'better' conditions of course...
This is an article about nothing. People used to fall for articles like this, not anymore.
Lets deconstruct it.
(a) Select for examples where white men (who the tech media has generally decided are evil and always are a problem) have failed in business
(b) Now we will identify these people with a codeword (tech bro) because we can't actually say "aggressive white men" without being overtly racist
(c) Now lets generalize and blame all the problems of the entire industry on these evil white privileged males who the media has decided to demonize
(d) Conclusion: White men aka tech bros are the root of all problems in Silicon Valley and must be controlled and stopped because they are bad human beings, all of them!
Once you see through the superficial dressing the underlying logic is hilarious.
If you read a lot of media you start to see the patterns. Over and over again the urge is to blame the nearest convenient white male CEO for whatever problem just happened. Donald Trump got elected? Lets blame Zuckerberg for fake news. Then lets blame Peter Thiel and then Sam Altman. Note: All white men in positions of power.
In reality:
People get rich frequently in Silicon Valley by being assholes, taking other people's property, customers, business, employees. We call this system "capitalism."
YouTube grew enormous on the back of pirated content. Alibaba and Amazon profit tremendously from counterfeit products. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spent their careers suing, back-stabbing and stealing ideas form one another and those around them.
"People get rich frequently in Silicon Valley by being assholes, taking other people's property, customers, business, employees. We call this system 'capitalism.'.... Capitalism is not really nice, get over it."
The name of this fallacy is "The Naturalistic Fallacy".
No I don't think that's an accurate statement. This is an Ed-Op piece and as such they are editorializing. That's the nature of this format. Note the word "Opinion" at the top.
I also don't like bro culture, but I don't think VCs are going to push it out. Venture capitalists are bros. Finance has a bro culture. This is a pervasive problem, not just a tech problem. Zenefits' downturn was because of fraud, not the bro culture. Despite all the recent bad press, I don't think Uber is close to going up in flames.
End of the day, this stuff happens because people prefer do business with their friends, and those friends tend to come from college, so the friend funnel looks like the college recruitment funnel.
That probably also accounts for the dearth of women.
"...they’re boorish jerks who don’t know how to run companies."
Theranos.
Congress.
Office of American Innovation.
We're celebrating an era when skills like "manipulation" and "rhetoric" are more important for success than a passion for doing things exceptionally well.
Readit News
Deleted Comment
It's only natural that journalists and media outlets will look to expose the flaws in what's popular. A similar story about stock traders would not raise eyebrows. Actually I think it's a good thing.
It happens to the 25% of employees in leadership positions that are women and the 75% that are men. How equitable!
Unless that fresh faced person is Mark Zuckerberg, or Larry Page or Bill Gates or any of the fresh faced persons who were actually the real deal.
Also "none of the 15 biggest American tech companies valued over $1 billion has a female chief executive." er, what about the most successful tech company of all time, IBM?
Its an "Opinion" piece and clearly marked as such on the page, and it does not express nor is it intended to express the opinion of the publication's editorial board but rather solely of the author. I think almost every newspaper of record has an editorial/opinion section, its been a staple for almost a hundred years.
APA guidelines for writing Ed-Op pieces.
http://blog.apaonline.org/2016/05/23/ten-rules-of-thumb-for-...
This is a big assertion. There are multiple forces at play regarding Uber's erosion. The culture is a significant aspect of it, but not the entire reason. Other forces include regulation, Uber's floundering self-driving play, and Uber's inability to continue paying drivers the same rates without running out of money.
1. Their optimistic / misguided (or is it? Can we be sure yet?) foray into self-driving cars was a result of arrogance stemming from their toxic bro culture
2. Their problem with subsidizing rides and losing money is due to a win-at-all-costs competitive attitude that demands they run Lyft into the ground, stemming from toxic bro culture.
3. Increasing regulation is due to their arrogant tendency to flout local taxi laws and run Uber anyway (this I might agree with, though I'll note that Uber is often wildly popular when it disrupts a local taxi market, and they have been able to get their way in part due to asking Uber riders and drivers to actively support regulation change in their area)
But, no, I agree with you. The idea that everything Uber's struggling with is directly the fault of the toxic bro culture that Kalanick has (seemingly single-handedly?) created is absurd.
Or what Google did with gmail and now AMP.
"despite many studies showing that women run companies better than men" and "none of the 15 biggest American tech companies valued over $1 billion has a female chief executive"
The first seems to suggest I could find studies saying the opposite, or that perhaps increased diversity is the best option and who is CEO isn't as important. Would love to see the source they used for this. For the second I thought HP and Yahoo were both run by women CEO's and as CEO why are they being ignored? Or is it just referring to unicorn startups? On spotty connection so hard to check.
Edit I previously mentioned AMD and IBM having female CEO's but edited out as I was getting downvoted. Not trying to push any agenda just pointing out the statements seemed wrong.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Lets deconstruct it.
(a) Select for examples where white men (who the tech media has generally decided are evil and always are a problem) have failed in business (b) Now we will identify these people with a codeword (tech bro) because we can't actually say "aggressive white men" without being overtly racist (c) Now lets generalize and blame all the problems of the entire industry on these evil white privileged males who the media has decided to demonize (d) Conclusion: White men aka tech bros are the root of all problems in Silicon Valley and must be controlled and stopped because they are bad human beings, all of them!
Once you see through the superficial dressing the underlying logic is hilarious.
If you read a lot of media you start to see the patterns. Over and over again the urge is to blame the nearest convenient white male CEO for whatever problem just happened. Donald Trump got elected? Lets blame Zuckerberg for fake news. Then lets blame Peter Thiel and then Sam Altman. Note: All white men in positions of power.
In reality:
People get rich frequently in Silicon Valley by being assholes, taking other people's property, customers, business, employees. We call this system "capitalism."
YouTube grew enormous on the back of pirated content. Alibaba and Amazon profit tremendously from counterfeit products. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spent their careers suing, back-stabbing and stealing ideas form one another and those around them.
Don't even get me started about Larry Ellison.
Capitalism is not really nice, get over it.
The name of this fallacy is "The Naturalistic Fallacy".
Just because you are offended by it doesn't make it untrue.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
That probably also accounts for the dearth of women.
Theranos.
Congress.
Office of American Innovation.
We're celebrating an era when skills like "manipulation" and "rhetoric" are more important for success than a passion for doing things exceptionally well.