VALLEY OF THE DUDES

FOR NEARLY FIVE YEARS, ANNA WIENER HAD A FRONT-ROW SEAT TO SAN FRANCISCO’S technology start-up revolution – WHERE PLACATING THE MALE EGO BECAME HER NEW M.O.

At the age of 25, I moved to San Francisco to work for a data analytics start-up. The company had 20 employees, four of whom were women – a decent ratio, in 2013. My job was in customer support, and meant my days were full of men: programmers and data scientists, analysts and marketers. When the software didn’t behave as expected, the men wrote in to me. I would explain how to fix their problems, and find ways to take responsibility. I apologised, over and over, for mistakes that they had made. Does that make sense? I’d ask every few minutes, as gently as a tutor, giving them space to shift the blame back to me.

Being the only woman on a non-technical team, providing customer support to software developers, was like immersion therapy for internalised misogyny. I liked men – I had a boyfriend. I had a brother. But men were everywhere: the customers, my teammates, my boss, his boss. I was always fixing things for them, tiptoeing around their vanities, cheering them up. Affirming, dodging, confiding, collaborating. Advocating for their career advancement; ordering them pizza. My job had placed me, a self-identified feminist, in a position of ceaseless, professionalised deference to the male ego.