Why Silicon Valley Needed the #MeToo Movement Just As Much as Hollywood
What happens when men have too good a time in any industry
More than 25 years of working in IT have taught me that there is a fine line between fun and being a jerk. The line tends to get very blurry when alcohol and money are involved.
Most of us learned early on not to cross that line. We experimented with alcohol at university, learned how to interact with the opposite sex, and learned what is acceptable behavior in public and what isn’t.
Some didn’t. Instead of partying and testing their limits, they studied hard and later founded or worked in tech start-ups. For them, the party didn’t start until much later. But they certainly made up for lost time.
Silicon Valley became a “bro” club where discrimination and sexual harassment were so pervasive that they discouraged women from working in the tech industry.
In the late nineties — that magical time when the Internet opened new business opportunities, before the dot.com bubble burst — the first tech empires were built. All the “nerds” who were ignored or made fun of in school, experienced what it was like to be the center of attention.
