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Brotopia
Brotopia
Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley
by Emily Chang
Instant National Bestseller
A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick
"Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle
Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.
It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley’s toxic culture—to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.
Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it’s a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world.
Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the “pipeline” problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale.
A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick
"Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle
Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.
It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley’s toxic culture—to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.
Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it’s a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world.
Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the “pipeline” problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale.
Instant National Bestseller
A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick
"Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle
Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.
It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley’s toxic culture—to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.
Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it’s a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world.
Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the “pipeline” problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale.
A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick
"Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle
Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.
It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley’s toxic culture—to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.
Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it’s a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world.
Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the “pipeline” problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale.
Reviews-
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With the confidence of a news anchor, Emily Chang delivers the unsurprising news that Silicon Valley is built upon a sexist "frat boy" culture. She carefully details the boorishness (the venture capitalist who insists that entrepreneurs make their pitches in a hot tub), cluelessness (eschewing child care, companies offer the freezing of fertile eggs), and misogyny (the frightening trolling of "gamergate") experienced by females in tech. Much of this behavior is subtly institutionalized, as witnessed by a male-to-female transsexual engineer who was surprised to find that as a woman her presentations were constantly interrupted by men. Chang is prepared, positive, and patient when dealing with the "brilliant jerks" who carry out this behavior and offers solutions ranging from top-down choices to bottom-up corporate policy. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
