this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Two wrongs don't make a right.
This thread is using "techbro" to refer to workers way too much, there's an upvoted post on here about how to take away the average working class tech worker's job. You guys really think OpenAI is going to outsource to the gig economy? Uber for tech is only going to punish the least well paid devs, the generic webdevs just making websites for a small business. OpenAI isn't going to let randos fuck around in their codebase.
A lot of software devs and tech workers are marginalised, neurodivergent or otherwise socially disadvantaged. Too many people in this thread are completely ignoring any kind of intersectionality just because they're men.
Elon Musk isn't a tech worker, he's a tech CEO. Sam Altman isn't a tech work, he's a tech CEO. Sundar Pichai, Susan Wojcicki, Jen-Hsun Huang. All CEOs not tech workers.
The real "techbros" are all business people in an actual position of power, not the introverted QA tester just trying to get through the day. It's disheartening to see so much class division, when your local tech worker is more likely to be an ally than a "techbro".
In fact Software Devs are overwhelmingly Democrat (83.9%), it's up there with Artists (85.9%) and Scientists (88.4%) https://www.zippia.com/advice/democratic-vs-republican-jobs/
edit: Leaving this up because some of the below replies are really helpful. I've completely misread the tone/meaning of the post, and I apologise for how hostile/combative this post comes across. I've got some learning to do
If the QA tester goes home and checks his Raspberry Pi dogecoin mining rig, and is saving up for a Cybertruck, he's probably a tech bro, if only a larval one.
Are you talking about mine? The point of the post was that techbros and tech industry workers are not the same thing, and that actually the tech workers whose valor those CEOs are stealing are vulnerable to the same tactics techbro startups have used to fuck over workers in other sectors.
A lot of people in every industry are marginalized, neurodivergent or otherwise socially disadvantaged.
I am a queer, neurodivergent, left wing tech worker myself. Most of the regulars here are probably at least two or three of those things as well. I know lots of tech workers who are in no way techbros, but I've also met some of the least class conscious, most obliviously racist and misogynist opportunist motherfuckers who would lick the boots of every billionaire on earth for a chance to join their ranks. This is about the latter.
Fair enough, as I've said elsewhere, I've been given a lot to think about and apologise for being so combative. I'm just a bit confused and need to re-evaluate
that's great and not in any way what this is about, not to mention that you're the one identifying the people you speak of with the horrible techbros in the OP. but thanks for your driveby
intersectionality is when you carry water for paul fucking graham and get pissed when the name techbro applies just as well to your shitheaded engineering coworker who HR can’t seem to fire as it does to your failson of a CEO who claims to be an expert programmer and has personally caused a significant amount of production downtime in his attempts to prove it
this kind of cognitive dissonance only happens when you’re on the verge of realizing that you are, in fact, the shitheaded techbro, and you have to do what it takes to pretend the label only applies to billionaires
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Daihatsu Kissmate
Think you slightly misinterpreted the tone here and missed that people are mostly agreeing with you re what the term tech bros means. (A tech bro can still be a worker of course, workers can also be bad people. Anyway there are various different groups all sides muddle together (see how the OP tweet muddles 'people who rule tech' with nerds with tech bros with tech workers and finance people etc.
And you are imho doing the same here, with the 'real techbros are' part, as that is imho the 'the nerds who have taken over the world' part. While in this thread the tendency is to use techbro as a term for toxic masculine man who works for a tech company/related company who makes the environment harder for minorities/women/ND people. That most of people in tech are democrats (which is quite useless as an indicator as our local sneerclub posting shows (see how many people defended SSC Scott by calling him a democrat), both parties in the USA allow for a lot of rightwingers and shitty people) is not that relevant. Anyway, if the old reddit sneerclub regulars who now also post in techtakes are any indication this place is a little bit further left than you thought.
Which isn't to say I disagree with the idea of your post that we should be careful not to shoot too broadly, but I don't think that is really happening here, a post basically agreeing with you is at almost 60 upvotes right now (which for techtakes is quite a high amount). So yeah I think your heart is in the right place but you have seemed to have misread the tone of this place a bit.
Oh 100% I'm tempted to delete my post, but I'm hoping other people learn from comments like yours. I might put an edit in
I get what you're saying.
I might have made the same mistake as the guy you're replying to, but fortunately for me, several years ago someone gave me a very similar explanation for a very similar situation.
I'm not sure I remember the details. But basically it was this word used to describe criminal murderous anti-intellectual misogynists. I mean these were REALLY bad people. But it was specific to a certain type of community.
A few in that community agreed with the use of that word in this way but not many. Most would complain that it seemed to paint everyone in the community with the same brush or "color" so to speak.
But the guy I spoke to reassured me that they just didn't understand the history of the word and that many of them are only complaining because they just want to keep doing the criminal murderous anti-intellectual misogynist thing.
What was the word again? Oh yeah, it was N****r
Strangely it didn't catch on fortunately many other words have caught on like:
incel, modern women, manosphere, manspreading, manterrupting, mansplaining, toxic masculinity, tech bro (that's a new one for me).
And probably many more.
I spend most of my time on left leaning spaces so I don't know many of the new words to refer to "bad women".
I guess this mean left leaning people just don't want to help women address the bad behaviors within women's communities.
Because people who use these kinds of words are only trying to make the world a better place by trying to better understand the ways different behaviors cause harm to society and this never EVER has anything to do with painting a whole group of people with the large brush of bigotry.
/s obviously this is sarcasm
My point is, tech bro is at least a little misandrist. And it's only the latest in a long list of misandrist terminology promoted by the left.
And then leftists are shocked that young men are flocking to the right...