Code - Gotham Gal

I love how this gets at the cultural stereotypes, which are ultimately truths, and how they affect the system.Not only does brogrammer culture and the myth of the nerd genius make it so that people who don’t identify with those personas end up avoiding learning how to code because they’re not interested in being like those people, but it also wreaks havoc on the very brogrammers and nerd geniuses themselves. As long as they perpetuate an insular world where everyone should aspire to be like them, then they will shun all the good things outside of that world, too, because they start to seem irrelevant.For example, culturally, a lot of developers equate performance only with tangible output, not a person’s overall contribution to the team or environment, so the idea of a performance review or how to give one escapes many tech-driven founders and companies. Developers tend to not work in groups, so brainstorming skills are drastically lacking. Developers tend to celebrate autonomy over authority, and yet we wonder why so many are missing basic leadership skills.It baffles me when I think of all the common business practice things that ultimately are status quo because they’re helpful, that many tech founders and companies don’t adopt because they’re so disconnected from how everyone else works. It’s not good for the women and minorities who are cut out, but its also ultimately not good for those founders, companies, their investors or their products, either.

Comments (Archived):

Susan Jan 21, 2015

“I can wear lipstick and code as good as you.” This should be on a t-shirt.
Brandon Burns Jan 21, 2015

I love how this gets at the cultural stereotypes, which are ultimately truths, and how they affect the system.Not only does brogrammer culture and the myth of the nerd genius make it so that people who don’t identify with those personas end up avoiding learning how to code because they’re not interested in being like those people, but it also wreaks havoc on the very brogrammers and nerd geniuses themselves. As long as they perpetuate an insular world where everyone should aspire to be like them, then they will shun all the good things outside of that world, too, because they start to seem irrelevant.For example, culturally, a lot of developers equate performance only with tangible output, not a person’s overall contribution to the team or environment, so the idea of a performance review or how to give one escapes many tech-driven founders and companies. Developers tend to not work in groups, so brainstorming skills are drastically lacking. Developers tend to celebrate autonomy over authority, and yet we wonder why so many are missing basic leadership skills.It baffles me when I think of all the common business practice things that ultimately are status quo because they’re helpful, that many tech founders and companies don’t adopt because they’re so disconnected from how everyone else works. It’s not good for the women and minorities who are cut out, but its also ultimately not good for those founders, companies, their investors or their products, either.
1. Gotham Gal Jan 21, 2015
  
  great comments. cultural stereotypes do exist
JAJones Jan 21, 2015

I’ll definitely check this out. On a related note this a16z podcast ‘Coding As Literacy’ features Tracy Chou from Pinterest. Check it out. https://soundcloud.com/a16z…