Brotopia
by Emily Chang · first published 2018
17mentions
5recommended by
15HN commenters
2018–2025first – last mentioned
33% recommend47% neutral20% critical
Reveals how male-dominated Silicon Valley became sexist despite its utopian ideals and decades of companies claiming the moral high ground, and how women are finally starting to fight back against toxic workplaces and sexual harrassment.
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…creates gender stereotyping and legitimizes the systemic sexism in our industry. If you're interested in understanding more about the true root causes of our gender disparity, a good initial read is "Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley", by the amazing Emily Chang [4]. No pseudo-science required. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Demography_of_the... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...…
on “Some Facebook Employees Unite to Challenge Its ‘Intolerant’ Liberal Culture” ↗…issues, before we start to see a better balance. But the first step is to recognize we have a problem. If you're interested, there's many books and serious research in this area, but one I really liked is Brotopia, by Emily Chang. When you know what to look for, it's hard to unsee. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Brotopia-Breaking-Boys-Silicon-Valley...
on “Ask HN: Are men systemically ecluding women in tech?” ↗…misconduct. Where did you get this idea? There's countless data and evidence showing instutionalozed sexual discrimination from men against women. If you want an enlighting read as it pertains to tech, read Brotopia. Or read about how Uber only bought leather jackets for it's men SREs and explicitly chose to not buy the same jacket for their women SREs. Or simply ask any woman about an instance where a man pressured…
…'boys summer camp' like startups are run, with frequent stories of drinking at the workplace and stories that sound more like out of a fraternity than an actual job. Emily Chang wrote a good book about, 'Brotopia' https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-val...
on “Women equal men in computing skill, but are less confident” ↗This is all real. I’ve been to some of the parties she mentioned. I hope that people read Brotopia and see that what Emily Chang is deriding isn’t Burning Man, renegades, or the like. It’s how a predatory part of the startup population exploits these kinds of environments to use and hurt people. I’ve…
on “Silicon Valley's Secretive, Orgiastic Side” ↗Some randoms I remember : ) - Thinking in Systems - by Donella Meadows - Dead Aid - Dambisa Moyo - Day of Empire - Amy Chua - Mistakes Were Made (not by me) - Caroll Tavris - Brotopia - Emily Chang
on “You can just read 25 books” ↗I was at a talk by Emily Chang about her new book Brotopia, and she raised a really good question: why frame it in terms of culture fit, as if culture is something pristine to be preserved? Why not think of it as culture addition, that is, in terms of trying…
on “What Companies Mean by Culture Fit” ↗I just finished reading "Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley" which has a whole section on the PayPal Mafia. I never realized how influential that group was to startup culture.
on “PayPal Mafia” ↗The author of Brotopia made the claim of a toxic environment without evidence. The burden or proof lies on the person making the claim. The author of the piece questions the claim with a single data source. Attacking his source…
on “Brotopia: Analysis and Review” ↗The book is literally titled Brotopia, which is an ad hominem slur against our industry. Chang set the level of discourse.
on “Brotopia: Analysis and Review” ↗…address all your points since as I said, these discussions tend to go nowhere, so I'll only reply to some specifics about motivation and appropriateness of the author's review: > If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article? Clearly because the viewpoint presented is not going away and is taken quite seriously. > Since…
on “Brotopia: Analysis and Review” ↗…you don't want to put in the effort and learn from other's perspectives, then you're part of the problem. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/10/06/34... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Brotopia-Emily-Chang-audiobook/dp/B07... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilk...
on “Ask HN: Are men systemically ecluding women in tech?” ↗…actually the case in the book. Things like "colourful mud-slinging on the basis of anecdotes" and "can be dismissed as lurid gossip" is certainly just that and present in the article. If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article? > The article actually points out the book's main bias, "Chang does not consider any alternative…
on “Brotopia: Analysis and Review” ↗> In this exclusive excerpt from her new book, Brotopia, which comes out today They've been spoon-feeding these excerpts for some time, in order to hype the book. Since it's actually out now, it would be better to just have post for a review of it, rather…
on “'You Get Sexual Advances 24/7': What It's Really Like to Be a Female Engineer” ↗Since it's founding, we've seen Gamergate, the rise of Brogrammers (https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.ht...), and Changs book on Brotopia. I could see it if stakeholders feel they are engaged in a quiotic endeavor... As a father of 3 daughters, I still see a push for women in stem, but anecdotally my youngest is often the only girl in…
on “Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years” ↗