First they came for the brogrammers

First they came for the brogrammers

I admit to being a bit bemused about all the kerfuffle over brogrammers and whether drinking at tech events might be excluding people who don’t drink. My first reaction was along the lines of “pish posh, they’re just over-reacting”. However, I thought a bit further in the topic, and realised that I may have been a victim of my own perspective (or lack thereof).

Allow me to give an example. I happened to run into one of my employer’s partners in France, and asked after one of his employees whom I had trained. I was surprised to hear that my trainee had gone though two customers and was now at a third site, which finally seemed to be working out for him. I expressed surprise, as he had been an exemplary student. The partner looked at me a bit oddly, as if I were being slow, and said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world: “yes, but he’s black!”.

This floored me. It had not escaped me that the guy was black; it’s not the sort of thing you can miss, as he is extremely black (the ace of spades comes to mind), but his French is un-accented and his technical skills are well above average. The colour of his skin was to me a convenient way to point him out to someone in a crowded room; I might say “the black dude” much as I would say “the blonde girl” and think about as much of it.

In the same way, my feminist mother was the one who pointed out to me that I was working for a woman. Once again, it had not escaped me that my boss is female, but I had not made the association that I was working for A Woman and that this was out of the ordinary. She’s a cool person who gave me a job when I asked her for one, and that’s about it. All this started me wondering whether I might just be living in a happy bubble. Sure, I might not be racist/sexist/bro-ist, but my track record also tends to indicate that I’d be the last to know if it were going on around me.

There is also my suspicion that a certain proportion of the heat and noise around these issues is manufactured outside the core audience. During a previous foray into blogging, I asked my flat-mate at the time, who was black (and indeed still is, not having pulled a Michael Jackson in the meantime) whether I should write black or Black. His response was that only white (or White?) people would worry about something like that.

All that said, racism and sexism have their use as a signal flare indicating IDIOT HERE. Most other opinions, bone-headed as they may be, might have some sort of justification, but there’s a line, and I’ve never yet gone wrong by writing off people who cross it.

My personal recipe is that everyone should chill out. Interesting and worthwhile people are few enough on this fallen world, without limiting the pool by how much sun-lotion they need, whether they sit to pee, or whether they might enjoy a social drink (or ten).

Thoughts?