One of Tim’s co-workers is leaving the company to take a new job in Switzerland and there was a send-off at Brennan’s, so after work I drove straight there. We spent a lot of time at the table talking about the alarming exodus of old employees. I heard a lot of complaints about a new manager there who apparently went to a couple of software engineers and told them to make a purposely arcane and confusing presentation for a female engineer who lacks a computer science degree and needed to be “put in her place.” I think I heard that story about six times.

Classic Silicon Valley sexism. So many of those white, male, newly-rich nerds were eager to replicate the mindset of the high school jocks who bullied them when they were teenagers. They saw themselves as part of an exclusive club. I remember how much some software engineers hated Macs because they made computers accessible to people who couldn’t write code.