I used to think like this. After years and years of refining my own behavior, a non-work, non-"tech" friend let it slip that my fiends though I had turned into a non-confrontational, lawyer-sounding, people-pleaser. He wasn't wrong, I had gotten in the habit of always walking on eggshells, navigating every conversation like a minefield and letting myself be treated like a doormat. I did. After all, if I hadn't, I'd be one of those "bros" that only people who have never met a bro say are filling up the engineering departments.
The very next day I got chided about not being empathetic enough or whatever the buzzword was at the time. Maybe I could have kept up the facade if I was simply guilty by association. But it was specifically my behavior that was "toxic." That was it. And I'm out. I'm done.
The never-docile-enough nature of "tech" is what's toxic. I hadn't been able to feel comfortable in my own skin for years out of fear of being off-putting to anyone else. The people who's behavior is worth changing aren't listening anyway, so I'm done letting it be my fault, and I'm never over-correcting to make up for it again.
edit: Want to complain about something in "tech"? Why don't you (not you, specifically, parent poster) start with the ethics of your employer's products/practices.
The idea that tech employees are docile compared to the accounts receivable group at a major US insurance company seems pretty hard to support with evidence.
The two are somewhat correlated; kind people are often nice. But it's easy enough to be nice without being kind at all, and sometimes being kind requires being visibly not nice. As an example, if you see a coworker being abused, confronting the abuser is a kind thing to do, but you probably can't be nice doing it.
As someone who has worked through a lot of social anxiety, I definitely encourage you to throw off the yoke of your fears about not being nice enough. But that doesn't entitle you to be unkind.
But if nobody likes you and wants to hang out with you, you have a problem. And if the people who like what you're doing are people that you yourself don't really like, you're probably not being true to yourself. You want to be in a situation where there's a core group of people you like and respect who also like and respect you. If you've got that, who cares what other people think?
So maybe step 0 is: find people who know about them, before you can do the talking and reading. The New Yorker is my general go-to for measured introductions to new domains: the authors biases are fairly simple to spot when relevant (leftish-intellectual-in-US-terms) and the level of detail is usually high.
Sadly, I don't have a ton more at hand, other than one rule that I'd highly recommend to use as a filter: if you get the feeling the person is trying to make you angry, find something else. Polemics are rarely the best way to be introduced to a topic.
but, worked with, not at, but generally about equal in raw numbers - it really depends where the docility comes out - in fortune 500's being weird in general is strongly discouraged, but the penalties for stepping out of line are small usually, the big benefit is, cultural norms are clearly established, and generally followed - in a SV company, being weird is strongly encouraged, cultural values are somewhat more nebulous, and the penalties for stepping out of line are often much more harsh.
Reading posts here often feels like I'm in bizzaro world where I've never actually worked in "tech". Yes, my current job is more laid back when I'm not on site at a multinational client's office, but it's not that much. It's still a desk job in software. The scale I use to judge workplaces extends into back into my time in restaurants, retail, admin, music, and mechanics' shops. Now, if you want to talk culture, I could tell some stories about those places (and pardon that expression, I could obviously never tell those stories here).
To explain further - in F500 Culture, only a narrow band of self expression is possible - but what is and isnt is clearly defined - in SV Culture, a much wider band is acceptable - but the unacceptable is much less clearly defined.
I meant more like, Uber is one particular example (of which there are many) of tech companies or startups where the behavior of their employees is clearly not "docile."
I suppose you could use, perhaps, Google or Github (I'm making some assumptions about what you mean so forgive me) as examples of "docile" tech employees.
Possibly. However, when it comes to companies what they claim is that they want "kind" when what they actually demand is "nice".
If you're saying that some people with power use that to demand conformance to social codes, sure, I agree. But I disagree that always prevents us being kind.