Is anyone else bored by hoodie culture? I used to work at a startup like that when I was young, and I enjoyed it then, but there can be so much more to companies.
Where I work now, engineering is roughly a quarter of the company. The rest is made up of legal, compliance, business development, people ops and some other miscellaneous.
You know what? It's great. There are more extroverts in the office, people who go out to parties and invite me to things. Our happy hours are more lively. We play more beer pong instead of Halo. There are more women in the office. There is more laughter.
Bring in the enterprise. The company will make more money and grow and succeed, and the people will have a wider, more enjoyable variety of experiences.
And if people really don't like the mingling, they can choose to sit at the far side of the office in the dark by themselves, being passively sarcastic at others in IRC. They'll eventually leave and be replaced by happier people.
I work at a company where the dress can be anywhere from hoodies to jeans and collared shirts.
We have sales people who are really awesome and extroverted, yet they come in wearing hoodies, or hawaiian shirts on hawaiian shirt day, but also know how to dress more formally when necessary.
>You must have worked in a shitty place if your weren't with any programmers that laughed or drank beer.
Indeed. If anything, the beer culture has penetrated deeply in the startup world. I'd even say that it seems almost contrived at this stage, as if there's something amiss if there isn't beer in the fridge. Maybe the cargo cult extends to beer: "Everyone else is doing it, so we have to do it to."
Mind you, I have no problem with beer being made available in the office. But I wonder, at times, about why it happens.
This is an extreme interpretation of what I said. I had a good time, they were my friends, but absolutely everyone was male and introverted. I could elaborate, but do I need to or do you see how that could get stale?
[shrug] It sounds like you're simply an extrovert, in a field dominated by introverts. Who keeps referencing gender, to subtly imply being less bigoted. Rather than simply an extrovert.
I've spent time in small startups and large enterprises myself. An introvert, who chose to work in a sales-oriented Fortune 500 environment, could often write a very similar rant in reverse. Not only referencing plenty of sexism, but adding in a lot more racism and homophobia hints to boot.
Sorry your last gig wasn't a fit. Glad your new one is. Don't paint with too broad a brush.
Where I work now, engineering is roughly a quarter of the company. The rest is made up of legal, compliance, business development, people ops and some other miscellaneous.
You know what? It's great. There are more extroverts in the office, people who go out to parties and invite me to things. Our happy hours are more lively. We play more beer pong instead of Halo. There are more women in the office. There is more laughter.
Bring in the enterprise. The company will make more money and grow and succeed, and the people will have a wider, more enjoyable variety of experiences.
And if people really don't like the mingling, they can choose to sit at the far side of the office in the dark by themselves, being passively sarcastic at others in IRC. They'll eventually leave and be replaced by happier people.