Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley

by Emily Chang Narrated by Emily Chang

Overview

Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.

For women in tech, Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops, where millions of dollars grow on trees. It's a "Brotopia," where men hold all the cards and make all the rules. Vastly outnumbered, women face toxic workplaces rife with discrimination and sexual harassment, where investors take meetings in hot tubs and network at sex parties.

In this powerful exposé, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures despite decades of companies claiming the moral high ground (Don't Be Evil! Connect the World!)—and how women are finally starting to speak out and fight 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. Interviews with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer—who got their start at Google, where just one in five engineers is a woman—reveal just how hard it is to crack the Silicon Ceiling. And Chang shows how women such as former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, entrepreneur Niniane Wang, and game developer Brianna Wu, have risked their careers and sometimes their lives to pave a way for other women.

Silicon Valley's aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. It's time to break up the boys' club. Emily Chang shows us how to fix this toxic culture—to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2018 - AudioFile

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

The New York Times Book Review - Jessica Bennett

Brotopia is a well-researched history of how Silicon Valley became a glorified frat house…

The New York Times - Jennifer Szalai

This is more than a work force issue, and Brotopia is more than a business book…[Chang] is clearly engaged with and often incensed by her subject, and the best parts of Brotopia are those moments when she actively resists the "it's all good" ethos of the Bay Area and cuts down chauvinism with the disdain it deserves.

From the Publisher

"[Chang] is clearly engaged with and often incensed by her subject, and the best parts of Brotopia are those moments when she actively resists the 'it's all good' ethos of the Bay Area and cuts down chauvinism with the disdain it deserves." —New York Times

"Brotopia goes far beyond the salacious to offer an important examination of why the technology industry is so dominated by men—and how women are pushing back." —Financial Times

"When reading Brotopia, it's easy to envision it as a film…. Women who have triumphed in tech despite the odds…could be the film's heroines, and so would the young girls learning how to code despite it all." —The Verge

"…Chang's scrutiny breaks open a wide doorway, allowing fresh ideas about a tainted industry to circulate and spark discussions." —Kirkus Review 

MAY 2018 - AudioFile

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

Kirkus Reviews

2018-02-07
An in-depth analysis of the tech-industry brotherhood. Why aren't there more women working in Silicon Valley? According to Bloomberg TV journalist Chang, "women hold a mere quarter of computing jobs in the United States, down from 36 percent in 1991." In her first book, the author takes a deep dive into this frat-boy-like society of engineers and designers, an environment that has "become toxic for women." Beginning with a brief history of the invention of the first computers and the roles women played in developing software for them (think Hidden Figures), Chang shows how personality tests helped force women out of this burgeoning industry. "If you select for an antisocial nerd stereotype," writes the author, "you will hire more men and fewer women; that's what the research tells us." Companies flourished in this male-dominant world, and Chang describes the excessive partying that commonly takes place on the weekends at work-sponsored events. Networking sometimes takes place while sitting in hot tubs, joining in "cuddle puddles," and/or going to a strip club. The women who do manage to find positions in the industry are constantly subjected to sexual harassment and advances, made to feel inferior; many have even been threatened with rape and/or death. While conducting research, Chang interviewed countless women in the industry, including engineers, video game designers, and those who have scaled to the top—e.g., Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. The women who persevere endure these daily stresses in order to work in a field they love. As the #metoo movement accelerates, this unveiling of the sordid world behind some of the most valuable companies in the world comes as no surprise, but Chang's scrutiny breaks open a wide doorway, allowing fresh ideas about a tainted industry to circulate and spark discussions.A thorough, important examination of the often sleazy, male-dominated world of Silicon Valley.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172225369
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION  
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Brotopia"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Emily Chang.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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