Slog commenter raku knows the score:

"Tech dude culture is obscene.

These people have been told their entire lives that they're smarter and more valuable than anyone else. In grade school, they were cared about more because of what they looked like. In college, they were praised for fitting in with engineering culture and denigrated everyone else and other fields that they weren't good at. In the job force, they get paid ridiculous amounts because the people who hand out money are older versions of themselves. Socially, they live in echo chambers in their workplaces, tech websites that they look at obsessively for positive feedback, and whole online communities like Reddit where they literally get little 'praise' buttons for thinking like everyone else in that harmful culture.

It's terrible and toxic. It's hurting society. It limits who can participate in tech fields by being hostile to different types of people. It increases income inequality by devaluing work by women, immigrants, and men who don't follow their culture. The tech industry is becoming even more unethical because ethics and morality and equality and even anti-cruelty are devalued as something people outside the culture ('stupid people') care about. Entire cities and neighborhoods (like Capitol Hill) are being torn down to become their playgrounds.

It's so important to call these people out on their nonsense and not play along with them. They are not more valuable, more intelligent, and not contributing to society more than anyone else. In many cases, they're actively damaging society.

However, they do have more money and more influence than most everyone else, so it's important to actively fight back against them."
- posted by cjb @ 11:00 PM