In war for talent, 'brogrammers' will be losers

It's sad to read the comments on the article and here on HN from people who don't get it. It's not just about the brogrammer joke or bro stereotype. Gina is embracing it to highlight the problems we have with gender discrimination in the industry.

My feeling is that much of it is unintentional from men who haven't thought very deeply about the impact their actions have on women. The negative comments highlight the cognitive dissonance people go through when they're presented with facts that conflict with their beliefs or actions.

This isn't a trend of fluff pieces, and i think it's rather demeaning to attempt to dismiss it as such. Even if there aren't any folks that actually exemplify the brogrammer, developers are being catered to, regardless of how tongue in cheek, as brogrammers.

And that's pernicious for a whole pile of reasons.

Check this out:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brogrammer

> "Do brogrammers really exist"

My take was that the 'brogrammer' joke was supposed to be a humorous way to conflate sexist geek boys-club culture with sexist frat boys-club culture. Relying on the stereotypical geek instinctive dislike of stereotypical bros to make them feel shame for being sexist jerks.

In that sense, 'brogrammers' don't really exist, but the undesirable behaviors absolutely do and absolutely are a problem.

I think the problem is that the joke was really immature and stirred up a lot of the "us vs them" social nonsense that isn't true and wasn't really necessary.

Plenty of geeks work out and do physical activities. Plenty of geeks were in fraternities. Plenty of geeks enjoy the socializing that gets lampooned as stereotypical frat-boy-stuff. And they may well not be 'brogrammers' in the sense of being discriminatory dicks - but we're on our way to making them an out-group and excusing stereotype reinforcement.

I think I'm reaching the end of my tolerance for the word "brogrammer"

I don't tolerate sexism, racism, or bigotry. Period. Whether it has a catchy name or not.

I have noticed that many of the attributes associated to "brogrammer" are attributes I associate with immature males.

Here's the thing: I do not believe that shaming immature males is going to make them more mature. In fact, I think it's going to drive the entire subculture underground and make it much, much worse. The stories we read about "brogrammers" in 10-years time will truly be horrific, instead of just frat-house idiocy.

I have no problem at all with making workplaces more women-friendly, or in having a zero-tolerance policy. I also expect employees to have natural personality flaws, like most humans. As long as I don't see it in the workplace I think accepting people for who they are is a much better life strategy than giving them labels and sticking them in little boxes for us to assault en masse. And don't even get me started in the "business of outrage" where a new syndrome is kicked up and dozens of writers generate millions of pageviews all clamoring over each other to tell us how bad it is.

To put this in a direct business context, I desperately want diversity in tech teams. That's diversity in thinking, not in external attributes. That means the more eccentric the wordviews of those present, as long as they can get along? It's better for everybody. I'd take violent anarchists, Buddhists, and Nazis in a team if I could make it work. Just keep the bad behavior offsite. I do not want to live in your homogenized world.