This is a toxic side-effect of a healthy thing: the rise in status of programming work.
In the dotcom boom, douchebags didn't program, they did MBAs and took for granted that as "business guys" they would have the lion's share of wealth and status just for being who they were. That many of them now feel compelled to join the profession their forebears saw as underlings and learn to actually do real work, while many of the rest are pleading for technical cofounders, are signs of a major shift.
Remember that video that did the rounds on HN a year or two ago about the Valley in the 70s? A typical technical cofounder would end up with 2% ownership and zero control. Compare that to Mark Zuckerberg retaining control of Facebook and extolling "the hacker way" in an SEC filing. It's a massive change in the right direction, and most of it has happened in the last 15 years and it's still accelerating. It will be interesting to see the social consequences. Annoying epiphenomena like "brogrammers" are inevitable, but deeper changes are the ones to watch for.
In the dotcom boom, douchebags didn't program, they did MBAs and took for granted that as "business guys" they would have the lion's share of wealth and status just for being who they were. That many of them now feel compelled to join the profession their forebears saw as underlings and learn to actually do real work, while many of the rest are pleading for technical cofounders, are signs of a major shift.
Remember that video that did the rounds on HN a year or two ago about the Valley in the 70s? A typical technical cofounder would end up with 2% ownership and zero control. Compare that to Mark Zuckerberg retaining control of Facebook and extolling "the hacker way" in an SEC filing. It's a massive change in the right direction, and most of it has happened in the last 15 years and it's still accelerating. It will be interesting to see the social consequences. Annoying epiphenomena like "brogrammers" are inevitable, but deeper changes are the ones to watch for.