Yup, you can hate Silicon Valley now
When I read Susan Fowler's post last year, I was shocked. I couldn't believe a company of that size would tolerate such behavior - especially in Silicon Valley, where I thought people were supposed to be nicer! These were supposed to be my people. I knew most of them were increasingly not like me, but still...
We discussed the post that week in my team meeting at work, and I brought it up in all my 1:1s the next week. What shocked me even more was the reaction of the women in my team - they didn't seem surprised that something like this could happen, or that it was crazy that the behavior was tolerated. While I know that men find ways to treat women terribly in all sort of different ways and places in society, I thought modern workplaces at least were safe.
Over the next year, as revelation on revelation mounted and my own awareness grew - of the discrimination, the systematic preying on women, and the cover-ups that seemed the come from these companies, it was pretty clear to me that as an industry and culture, we're really, really broken. There's a culture emerging (or rather has been around for a while, but is just being uncovered) that's toxic and disgusting.
I haven't read either Brotopia or Reset yet, but I did read the excerpts that were out and a lot of the commentary about the books, as well as heard a couple of interviews of both the authors. The stories from Ellen Pao's Reset in particular simply left me shocked and tearing up. The Brotopia excerpts just seem to suggest this behavior seems so, so normalized and widespread.
An industry is never defined by the majority of people that work in it. I still think that a majority (even if it's not as large as majority as I thought) of people that work in Silicon Valley - most men in Silicon Valley even - aren't terrible people. They're trying to get stuff done, and live their lives. They know they're lucky to have jobs that don't suck and pay well, and they appreciate that.
But here's the thing: it doesn't matter.
An industry or culture is not defined by how most people act. It's defined by how it's leaders act, what they permit, and how it's most vocal actors behave. It's important not just because that's how most people outside the industry perceive the industry, it also signals to the majority of people within the industry that the behavior is ok.
Oh, Travis breaks laws and behaves badly to help his company win. Why shouldn't I? Maybe that's what I should've been doing all along. Did you hear what happened at that offsite? I guess that sort of stuff is ok here.
I remember about how I thought about Wall Street at different points in my life, particularly when I was young. Without knowing a lot of people there, I just assumed most people there were greedy, and exhibited terrible behavior towards women and minorities. That's what the movies seemed to say, and some of leaders I read about seemed awful and corrupt. But like people here, I now actually think most of the people in the industry were probably ok people. It was their most vocal bits and leaders that were the problem and that influenced everyone else and public perception.
And that's where Silicon Valley is now - too many of it's leaders behave badly, people seem out of touch with others, and there's a toxic culture in a lot of sub-pockets. There's still a lot of good people. Some of them genuinely think they're making the world a better place (which is silly - but that's a different post); most really at least don't want to make it worse for others, but that just doesn't matter.
The damage is done, and it's not clear it can ever be mitigated until the industry itself is less relevant or eclipsed.
This has already seeped into popular culture - tech billionaires in the movies and in other fiction, have already been seen as evil enough to try to take over the world and kill people. Now they'll prey on women, break laws more flagrantly and hate poor people as well. The young scriptwriter that used the make her villain a Wall Street banker is going to (rightly) make him a tech CEO.
Tech has that place in people's psyche's now - full of people that are greedy, evil and willing to bend the laws of both the land and of decency to satisfy themselves.
As an industry, we deserve to be the thought of that way too.
So it's sad, but I think ok to hate us now.
We discussed the post that week in my team meeting at work, and I brought it up in all my 1:1s the next week. What shocked me even more was the reaction of the women in my team - they didn't seem surprised that something like this could happen, or that it was crazy that the behavior was tolerated. While I know that men find ways to treat women terribly in all sort of different ways and places in society, I thought modern workplaces at least were safe.
Over the next year, as revelation on revelation mounted and my own awareness grew - of the discrimination, the systematic preying on women, and the cover-ups that seemed the come from these companies, it was pretty clear to me that as an industry and culture, we're really, really broken. There's a culture emerging (or rather has been around for a while, but is just being uncovered) that's toxic and disgusting.
I haven't read either Brotopia or Reset yet, but I did read the excerpts that were out and a lot of the commentary about the books, as well as heard a couple of interviews of both the authors. The stories from Ellen Pao's Reset in particular simply left me shocked and tearing up. The Brotopia excerpts just seem to suggest this behavior seems so, so normalized and widespread.
An industry is never defined by the majority of people that work in it. I still think that a majority (even if it's not as large as majority as I thought) of people that work in Silicon Valley - most men in Silicon Valley even - aren't terrible people. They're trying to get stuff done, and live their lives. They know they're lucky to have jobs that don't suck and pay well, and they appreciate that.
But here's the thing: it doesn't matter.
An industry or culture is not defined by how most people act. It's defined by how it's leaders act, what they permit, and how it's most vocal actors behave. It's important not just because that's how most people outside the industry perceive the industry, it also signals to the majority of people within the industry that the behavior is ok.
Oh, Travis breaks laws and behaves badly to help his company win. Why shouldn't I? Maybe that's what I should've been doing all along. Did you hear what happened at that offsite? I guess that sort of stuff is ok here.
I remember about how I thought about Wall Street at different points in my life, particularly when I was young. Without knowing a lot of people there, I just assumed most people there were greedy, and exhibited terrible behavior towards women and minorities. That's what the movies seemed to say, and some of leaders I read about seemed awful and corrupt. But like people here, I now actually think most of the people in the industry were probably ok people. It was their most vocal bits and leaders that were the problem and that influenced everyone else and public perception.
And that's where Silicon Valley is now - too many of it's leaders behave badly, people seem out of touch with others, and there's a toxic culture in a lot of sub-pockets. There's still a lot of good people. Some of them genuinely think they're making the world a better place (which is silly - but that's a different post); most really at least don't want to make it worse for others, but that just doesn't matter.
The damage is done, and it's not clear it can ever be mitigated until the industry itself is less relevant or eclipsed.
This has already seeped into popular culture - tech billionaires in the movies and in other fiction, have already been seen as evil enough to try to take over the world and kill people. Now they'll prey on women, break laws more flagrantly and hate poor people as well. The young scriptwriter that used the make her villain a Wall Street banker is going to (rightly) make him a tech CEO.
Tech has that place in people's psyche's now - full of people that are greedy, evil and willing to bend the laws of both the land and of decency to satisfy themselves.
As an industry, we deserve to be the thought of that way too.
So it's sad, but I think ok to hate us now.
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