this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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I worked in tech (past tense, doing marketing) for quite a number of years. I didn't do the technical stuff, but I did interact with the techies and I also spoke with the women techies.
My experience is that most techies are "my folk". (I like geeks because geeks show passion in the things they do, without regard for lame and pathetic things like accruing afterlife points—some call these "money"—and strutting around like peacocks. With "pea" serving double duty there.) Some are socially awkward and need guidance, but most are OK.
But there's always the really bad ones. The ones who got into the field because of the money and purported prestige. The ones we call "techbros" nowadays. Those are a completely different bag and you need to draw lines quickly and vehemently with them. And then redraw them constantly because those assholes do not take "no" for an answer and have no clue what "consent" actually means. (Summoning another post that you'll recognize: they're the "Hans" types.)
Managers in tech are almost all male and almost all absolute shit as managers, however, because they tend to be elevated techbros who think that the technical skills they have make them smart enough to do any job without formal study or training – and they're wrong. They perform really stupid basic management errors (like thinking everybody is motivated by cash) and wind up turning places into Hell holes. It's why I quit my marketing career in tech: not because of the socially clumsy nerds but because of the horrific predatory and incompetent techbros.
I was about to post but then I read the comments and this is just exactly what I would've posted. I moved around a bit in STEM and this is my exact experience in any male dominated STEM field. Some STEM fields that are more 50/50 operate so well that it makes the tech portion stand out even more. I think part of it is that tech as we see it today is still relatively new and so fast paced that people don't even know what makes a good employee much less manager.
90% of the men I worked with were fantastic and friendly but most of those 90% were unable or unwilling to step up when there were issues with the other 10%. I worked somewhere with almost daily harassment from a techbro guy and although others were willing to admit it was a problem behind closed doors it was all just blank stares from them when I said anything to him.
Elon Musk is my go to when I have to explain it. Basically no one that actually works in tech is like him but somehow he's still at the top. He knows nothing about the day to day but does just enough to ruin things. People still work for him though and look the other way when he does terrible things because he is the boss. If guys like him didn't exist tech would be a fine industry.