"Sexism, racism and bullying are driving people out of tech, US study finds"

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. My girlfriend has been in this world since the early 90s

The "cultural issue" she perceives is that over about the last fifteen years tech has begun to attract people who in times past would have gone to Wall Street, Big Law or Big Accounting. Opportunities in those fields have dried up so these people, the Tech Bros and, uhh..."female equivalent" been showing up looking to make their fortune while having little or no technical skills and a wildly different mentality. A lot of people don't want anything to do with this cohort male or female and when those being ostracized are female well the optics are bad and when frat bros behave like frat bros the optics are bad.

She perceives that the Tech Bros and "female equivalent" to mostly congregate in San Francisco while the older Silicon Valley culture is mostly static in good ways and bad. She rolls her eyes at the diversity issue because all the big name companies bombard women, herself included and other visible minorities with high-profile opportunities. But she is an engineer, she isn't interested in being demoted to executive booth babe just so Apple or Microsoft or random startup can roll her out at press events a couple times a year and look diverse.

She is generally of the opinion that pre-Tech Bro technically inclined women and men are basically the same and the shaped by the same interests and life experiences. She believes the force that pushes women away is a fear of being ostracized by other girls for being uncool when they're early adolescents. She just didn't happen to care at the time, she was a lot for interested in outdoor activities and her nerdy projects, notably cable descramblers, than talking about boys at the mean girl lunch table.