[PeterStuer]

If you don't mind a sidequestion:

I have worked with and met with probably close to 100 start/scale-up companies in the software domain. I have not yet met a 'brogammer' shop. Some hipster dens, and yes, when the founder is a twenty something you will be hard pressed to find anyone over 30.

So is this 'brogrammer frathouse' a regional thing? Or is it maybe a B2C thing as I mostly work with B2B companies?

[crtlaltdel]

every startup i’ve been involved with that is compromised of mostly first-time employees (either little work experience in general or no previous startup experience) has exhibited similar tendencies:

1. emphasis on drinking: “gotta have happy hour/get a keg”

2. off-site team building exercises that eat into personal/family time

3. disparaging competition, especially incumbents, often based on superficial things like the dated look of their UI or branding

4. periodic episodes where potential investors or current board members are brought to the office and the staff is expected to all be on-site and “look productive”

for context, i’ve been in large enterprises and a number of startups. the startups where the core staff had been through the process before lacked what often gets pegged as the “brogrammer fratdev shop” vibe.

also, almost every shop that got a keggerator or pingpong table ended up using those items to store things...

[note: edited for formatting]

[C1sc0cat]

Just a Keg Light weights - I recall our small core network team got through £400 of sake at a Christmas do and that was in the mid 80's

[lonelappde]

#2 #3 #4 are common at big companies that employ all genders.

[asdf21]

If I can't play some ping pong during my interview, I'm not interested.

[dominicr]

I'm no expert and I've mostly been in Europe with marginal time in the US, so I don't know the frequency of occurrence.

I think what's slightly more common is homogenous teams within companies that form an overwhelming culture, rather than entire company cultures. Teams do form their own ways of working and their own cultures, and this is fine: it's human and it can be positive. Healthy teams adapt to new members and vice versa.

But I have occasionally seen teams develop an impenetrable culture and reject anyone that wasn't a perfect fit for their existing culture. They also tend to reject any company-wide initiatives for change & improvement, not even engaging with the process or contributing to the discussion. Typically the way to solve such a team is to rebuild it by removing at least half of the members, after which everyone usually goes back to working normally.

[PeterStuer]

So is "frat house full of brogrammers" just a meme then? I have always wondered since I first heard the term, as it seems so remote from the reality I experience.

And yet, it gets punted around so much you wouldn't think that it would be hard to find a brogrammer shop. On the contrary, going by the 'reputation' you'd think they would be so numerous as to almost be hard to avoid.

[caseysoftware]

Yes, it's a meme. It's a quick and easy way to dismiss a of predominantly/exclusively white male team in a way that will get most people to say "Ugh, yuck!" without having any substantive criticism.

After 10 years hopping between Austin and San Francisco, hipsters with impressive beards and flannel seem at least 100x more common than brogrammers.

[asdf21]

It's socially acceptable to hate / slander fraternity members (see the rolling stone rape case,) but it's not socially acceptable to hate hipsters, only to casually poke fun at them.

[otakucode]

Just an observation, frat houses do focus very heavily on mob mentality, while hipsters are just a trend group. No one is going to get lectured by their fellow hipsters about being insufficiently loyal to the hipster brotherhood. Hipsters don't organize and intentionally seek to forge mob mentality and loyalty obsession. That is a significant difference just considering human psychology.

[dominicr]

I agree that this isn't common and the use of a memified word was not useful. I think the mental image of "brogrammers" is often literally coding jocks, which is inaccurate. It is often badly used to equate to a homogenous and closed culture within a team, often young and male. However same can indeed happen with other group of people. The example of alpha-maleness I can think of is Paypal: https://twitter.com/SaddestRobots/status/1184885797419401216

A better way of describing the problem from the original article is that infleixible & homogenous teams make it harder for people who don't fit a personality type to contribute to the work & work culture.

[finnthehuman]

>The example of alpha-maleness I can think of is Paypal: https://twitter.com/SaddestRobots/status/1184885797419401216

The linked post literally accuses PayPal employees of being too big of nerds to talk to (and therefore hire) women. And that's supposed to be an example of alpha-maleness? Maybe it's just bad writing, but if they "could and would" wrestle over disagreements, it sounds more like doing it on a lark rather than "alpha-manly" escalation of disagreements into physical violence. I don't practice combat sports, but - as I understand it - two people sparring for the hell of it is fun. Might as well have said they solve disagreements with a round of Rocket League.

[dominicr]

That text is all over the place. They go from not hiring someone because they play basketball, to having wrestling as a meditation tool. I'm not going to make assumptions about their wrestling motivations but he openly admits they were gate-keeping based on an internal concept of male "alpha male nerd" culture. This doesn't fit the view of a healthy workplace for those who think diversity brings resiliance & strength to a company.

[pluma]

It's performative hypermasculinity.

In the 80s and 90s (and to a slightly lesser degree now still) nerds were generally portrayed as effeminate and unmanly. However they would still retain similar toxic ideas about manliness while dismissing "jocks" or anyone too popular or outside their culture. Basically the "while you were busy partying and having sex I studied the way of the sword" meme but played straight.

This means that e.g. "girly" hobbies might be fine and only earn you some mild mockery but being openly gay or seriously empathising with women could easily render you an outcast because you're disrupting the peace unless you "keep your head down".

The idea of solving disagreements through competition is an example of this. Instead of trying to get to the root of the disagreement and resolve a conflict through mutual understanding and dialogue, it determines a "winner" who comes out on top and the "loser" has to roll over and be humiliated for even daring to speak up.

A "play fight" or a round of Rocket League may not result in physical injury but it's still an aggressive display of dominance rather than a cooperative exchange. It's easy to see how this fits in with other ideas of "bros being bros" (or "boys being boys").

Of course nothing in this has anything to do with manhood. You can be a woman and utterly "destroy" someone at Rocket League or wrestle a man into submission. But not only is this behavior "male coded" (i.e. we're socialised to look at it as masculine rather than feminine) but a woman behaving this way would still stick out simply by being a woman and even more so if she doesn't fully commit to performing masculinity in every other way too (i.e. if she ever isn't playing along as "one of the guys", she'll stick out as an outsider again).

TL;DR: being male doesn't mean you think solving disputes through silly competitions is a good problem solving skill but doing so can be comforting if you feel insecure about your peers judging your masculinity, even if you're all nerds.

[finnthehuman]

>A "play fight" or a round of Rocket League may not result in physical injury but it's still an aggressive display of dominance rather than a cooperative exchange.

Spoken like someone who was taught a “lens” to read everything in the world. We can just as easily invent the opposite meaning: that they were both insecure about looking bad at their job, and punted on the question of which design is better and settled the question of which design was used with competition neither of them would mind losing. Armchair phsycoanalysis that assumes all men are still 16 year old boys is lazy and insulting.

[matwood]

A couple notes I wanted to point out. First, the competitions do not have to be physical. Most commonly I see intellectual sparing. Attempting to be so quick intellectually that the aggressor pushes their idea through by not giving anyone else time to think is a very common tactic.

Second, play fighting is one of the quickest ways to learn how to check your ego and gain humility. I've met plenty of very smart people with egos so big it got in the way of finding the best solutions.

[marksweston]

Name a thing and you summon it into existence.

'Brogrammer' started as a witticism and has become a social phenomenon that people discuss as though it was based on rigorous observation and not just a joke.

[sam0x17]

In college I knew a number of "brogrammers" (frat boys, who did fratty things, and banged their head against coding as best they could). None of them are programming today.

[sam0x17]

Many are in banking, finance, etc., though.

[C1sc0cat]

It originally started as a Joke as far as I remember, it's now being used as short hand for certain aspects of SV life that are negative or are perceived as negative.

I would bet that 90% of developers are not the classic "jock" member of a frat (which is specific to America Univerities) - we are the ones that got bullied by those types at high school.

Lets be honest CS students are going to get invited to join the skull and bones (Harvard) or the Bullingdon club (Oxford)

[extra88]

> skull and bones (Harvard)

Skull and Bones is a secret society at Yale, not Harvard.

[C1sc0cat]

Oops my bad apologies to any Harvard Amumni

[silveroriole]

Did you mean are or aren’t? Bullingdon is for rich future Conservatives reading PPE, not for CS students.

[C1sc0cat]

Sorry aren't - that's the point nerds don't get invited to those sort of elite clubs we would get oil on the furniture don't you know

[pluma]

It's meant as a cultural shorthand for the kind of companies like early PayPal. They wouldn't hire classic "jock" people of course but they were very much about what nerds thought was cool.

The "bro" label is more about performative hypermasculinity than athletics.

What seems to surprise most about nerd culture is that for many nerds the problem with bullying wasn't that bullying was bad but that they were on the receiving end of it, resulting in a revenge fantasy (both against the actual bullies as well as outsiders in general) rather than simply a desire for equality. This is also reflected in the kinds of jokes you used to hear on IRC and later 4chan as well as gaming (even before it became "so mainstream").

For context: I say this as a recovering nerd myself.

[senderista]

whiteboard swirlies

[mywittyname]

I've worked at a few and what they had in common was that they were sales-driven and the technology portion of their products tended to be on the simple side.

[matwood]

I think it's just a shorthand way to criticize companies that turn people down for whatever reason. As I mentioned in another comment, a shop does not have to be a brogrammer shop for someone to fail the culture fit test.

To your point, there may be brogrammer only shops out there, but I've never seen one. And, as someone who has always played sports, power lifted, and now trains BJJ, I wouldn't want to work for a non-professional brogrammer type shop if I ever came across one. I've wondered before if I didn't fit a culture because I'm not the stereotypical software person.

[cr0sh]

> I've wondered before if I didn't fit a culture because I'm not the stereotypical software person.

Note the following isn't directed toward you specifically, but because you mentioned that you think you're not the "stereotypical software person" I wanted to write why I think that it is more likely - today - that you are...I think part of what we're seeing is the software development "culture" filtering out into "regular culture"? Those aren't probably the right words, but...

What I mean is that - when I started "programming", it was right in the middle of the "home microcomputer" era - mid-1980s. I was 10-11 years old, and I had my own home computer in my bedroom hooked up to my TV. I had always been "science inclined" - but that was where I really became a "nerd".

I didn't really like sports or anything like that, I didn't like much of what was considered "popular stuff" - except arcade games; couldn't get enough quarters. But all I really wanted to do was program.

That's where I started - and that's where a lot of people started (both older and younger than me at the time) - on home computers, typing in junk from magazines and books - and some of the older ones went on to turn that in a career in short order. But they all were "nerds" in their own manner.

Prior to the home computer, you either had to be an engineer or something working at a company with it's own computer or system(s) - or work for one of the computer companies of the era - to even come close to "touching" a computer in any manner. Or maybe have been lucky enough to teach or attend or otherwise finagle access to a university's system(s). There were also a few other very limited ways too (public terminals connected to dialup shared systems that you paid to use and other similar means). But really, only the really hard-core geeks and nerds were in that camp, and they tended to be few.

Prior to that - mathematicians and engineers, mostly.

But soon after when I started - in the early 1990s - computers started to become a tool (and entertainment) for everyone. It was no longer seen as nerdy to have a computer in the home. And then very soon after that - the internet was opened for the public to use (before, access was restricted to certain commercial entities for research, and to educational institutions, and the government - with little allowance for consumer access, and almost no allowance for commercial exploitation - with the exception of research, mostly).

That brought in people of all stripes - also, there was this change; difficult to pin down - but it seems that kids no longer (or far fewer of them) have an interest - or develop the interest - or have the means to develop the interest in front of them - for "software engineering".

When I was growing up with my computer - and this was most computers of the time - you turned it on, and on the screen (which was usually a television) you would get a short "message" of what version of BASIC was running, and a prompt blinking maybe - where you could type. If you wanted software, you had a few choices, in descending order of cost:

1. Purchase the software - on cartridge, tape, or floppy

2. Type the software in from a book or magazine

3. Write the software yourself - usually in BASIC

Many, many people turned to number 3 - usually with help from a manual included with their computer. Many also went the route of number 2 in conjunction with number 3. Some found they could sell the software from number 3 to magazines and books - or to publishers (number 1). That isn't to say nobody bought commercial software - tons of people did (but there was a lot of piracy back then, too). It was a large mixture, but mostly as a kid, you relied on number 3, and maybe number 2 if you had understanding parents who could afford to buy you the books and magazines.

But later - especially with the internet - those programming sources dried up - and today's computers (and phones and tablets, etc) don't start up to BASIC; you get an entire magical operating system, and any means to code software is fairly hidden away.

Even in the early 90s this was evident; Microsoft DOS used to come with at least some form of BASIC, but gradually this has fell away - today, out-of-the-box coding is limited to shell interpreters, javascript and such in the browser, and maybe other scripting interpreters built into some applications - plus maybe .NET stuff on Windows, but I'm not as sure on that last one.

Ultimately, the tools for some kind of "software engineering" - when they are included with a machine (operating system), they are kept fairly "hidden away" - there's nothing there to even entice a kid to "program"...

...hence the rise of "sandbox" style games, that allow a similar kind of "open ended" play. But this is stuff that has to be bought - it's just not "there" for kids like it was when I started.

And so you have a lot of kids who don't experience computing in the same manner, who don't get an "early bite" by the programming "bug" - and who (something else I have noticed) typically are forced in some manner into playing sports via organized team things parents shuttle their kids around too (I often wonder if there are parents out there who realize how lucky they are to have a "geek child" who has figured out the system to get a programming environment going on their machines - and doesn't go for such organized activities?)...

So they kinda grow up with sports or similar activities as "the thing to do" (and I understand why this kind of thing grew up - but I don't think it was completely organic, either - I think some parents became (overly?) concerned about "predators", and moved their kids into these supervised programs, and fewer are left in the neighborhood for other kids to play with, so to "play" kids had to join those teams and activities, etc - and the circle was complete). That is the "normal" thing - sitting at home programming on the computer isn't "normal" - or even really thought about at all.

...until university/college - and so you have a bunch of people, who have interests in things "non geeky" who find out later that they are good at programming, and that they like it. But they also like "normal things" - things that people like me, having been nerds and geeks from an earlier time - maybe don't enjoy as much, or at all?

I'm not saying anything of this is bad - I just think this is how things have turned out, and probably this is a better thing? Also, there is the growing thing of "STEM" and "STEAM" stuff going on in school (coupled with FRC/FIRST) - which helps to introduce kids earlier to these concepts, but it doesn't seem to extend as far back as grade school (or maybe it does?).

I think it's just all part of a balance; in my day as a kid, it was tilted way far in one direction - toward "nerds" - and today it is tilted past the middle point toward "non-nerds" - but ultimately it is shifting back toward the middle?

Well - that's my ramble - take it however...

[matwood]

Sounds like we're about the same age. I did #2 and #3 and was science inclined, etc... But, I also did sports and was outdoorsy. A single TV in my house meant no computer time if my dad was home, so I had to do other things.

I started undergrad as pre-med, and programming was just a fun hobby. I remember one night while studying for some insane biology test from an equally insane teacher that while I was interested in being a doctor, I loved programming/computers/technology. I pushed through that semester and switched majors.

Even today, I feel not nerdy enough in some situations though my wife would disagree (she thinks I'm very nerdy).

[PeterStuer]

"Home" computers in those days used to be creation devices by default for nerds. To turn them into something that provided consumer entertainment took real work and in-depth knowledge.

Personal computers today are entertainment consumption devices for the masses. You can still use most for creating, but only a tiny, tiny fraction will ever go there.