Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There is a trend lately for young male programmers to act like fraternity pledges. This is just the last in a long line of dysfunction in computer science.

The percentage of female computer science graduates and professional programmers is declining. It has been in decline for several decades. There is much speculation about the causes, but one recently cited cause is the “brogrammers.” These are young male programmers who act like fraternity pledges. They don’t act like drunken college boys, they act like want-to-be drunken college boys.

And sometimes we wonder why women don’t flock to this.

Where can we start? Let’s start with the programmers themselves. Perhaps they didn’t have the advantage of the parents that I had. I had two brothers and no sisters. My only regular interaction with females was with my mother. If I didn’t behave well, I got a knot on my head courtesy of my father’s knuckles. After leaving home, the idea of treating a woman poorly never entered my mind.

Now let’s move to the persons who supervise young, male programmers. These are sometimes known as supervisors and sometimes as managers. Young, male programmers do what their managers allow them to do. The managers are supposed to be a little more mature than the persons they manager. It seems that this no longer holds.

<rant>I am disgusted when I hear about brogrammers and the like. Such should not be tolerated.</rant>