Communications of the ACM
President of Harvey Mudd College Criticizes Silicon Valley's 'bro Culture'
Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe has called out the "bro culture" in some of Silicon Valley's tech companies.
Credit: Microsoft
The President of Harvey Mudd College, Maria Klawe, has criticized the culture in some of Silicon Valley's tech companies.
Klawe's eleven-year tenure as president of the Southern California University has seen great strides in gender equality, with 55% of of 2016 undergraduate computer-science majors at the college being women, compared to the 2015 national average of 16%.
Despite this success, Klawe has expressed reluctance in recommending that female graduates of the college seek out venture-backed companies, citing the presence of "bro culture" as well as a lack of human resources.
Klawe, who has sat on the boards of Microsoft and Broadcom, said to CNBC:
For ages, we've been talking to students about whether they want to go to start-ups or not because they tend to have virtually no HR...if something goes wrong, it's a matter of luck whether you have management that cares about these issues
Sexism in the tech industry is not a new subject; in a recent high-profile example, Uber's work environment was condemned as sexist and hostile by a former employee, Susan Fowler, earlier this year. Klawe cited Fowler as having "empowered" people to report such cultures in the workplace.
From Neowin
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