from Hacker News

Who You Calling a Techie?

by michaelschade on 7/7/14, 12:25 AM with 2 comments

  • by dictum on 7/7/14, 12:44 AM

    > When I tell pretty much anyone outside the tech industry I work at a start-up, there’s usually a pause. I can watch her compose her face, waiting to hear the worst. If I’m lucky, I’ll field questions about foie gras burgers, daily massages, or what it’s like to work with a bunch of clueless bros.

    I'm still reading the article, but I'd like to write this while my mind is still fresh on this sentence. I'd started writing a longer pondered comment, but ultimately reduced my thoughts to this:

    If your interlocutor can't see anything past the wacky aspects of your job or interest, perhaps the problem is on them. Sometimes a display of ignorance masquerades as cynical, truth-to-power rebelliousness.

    I almost want to visit SF just to see if there are as many bros as some people have led me to believe. I want to be stripped of my illusion that SF is not a college fraternity, just a place with socially awkward young people who don't quite see the output of contemporary cultural studies and sociology as gospel or particularly insightful, most of them incidentally male.

    My penchant for reducing serious issues to pithy conclusions is maddening, but I wonder me if a quarter of the people complaining about the techies would be willing to give up the stuff those techies are making.

  • by sportanova on 7/7/14, 11:28 AM

    I can imagine how fantastic this article makes Leah feel. Self righteousness is one hell of a drug