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by david927·2y ago·view on hn ↗
On one (1%) hand you have loud, prominently-displayed efforts to push back on this; on the other (99%) hand you have the deep morass of horrible behaviors which don't seem to budge.

This, in an industry which women played an enormous role in founding. Sickening.

1 comments
Bros are bros. The children are raised and meme'd into it. Culture in the large is super hard to change. And scolding doesn't do it.
That sounds way too close to, "Boys will be boys."

Culture in companies is set top-down. Setting what's tolerated at a top level is a huge step towards compliance below. Shrugging shoulders isn't a good enough response.

Then I made a mistake in phrasing, I'll own that. I wasn't phrasing that to indicate "oh that's how it should be" but "that's how they will stay once formed". "Boys will be boys" mainly because of bad influences and toleration of their BS as well.

In tech companies, the top level in many cases is the bro. Nothing in that article is clear about whether the tech co is FAANG, IBM, Tata/Wipro/etc, or the many many smaller and startup companies, gaming companies, etc. By count of company, most of them will be smaller. And the conpanies founded and run by bros won't change their culture easily. (Data point question: how much has Uber culture changed?) The VCs that fund them may talk the talk but look at their funding decisions, they believe in female founders quite a bit less than males.

I will repeat, tell me if you disagree: bros won't change their attitude just because they get scolded.

I'm not sure why you're using the term 'scolded' -- who is doing the scolding? who is being scolded?

When you say that ~ scolding won't do it ~ (particularly in this context) you're telling people that they shouldn't even mention that there is a problem, because that's just scolding people and it's apparently pointless.

I wanted to point this out because you (correctly) identified tolerance of bad behaviour (in boys, men) as a contributing factor to the sorry state we're in. I agree that the negative attitudes and bad behaviours perpetually on display by men are pretty deeply set by the time they are adults. I don't agree that telling people (particularly boys) that they're doing something wrong is pointless.

If you don't stop it, it won't stop.