It’s stereotypical male behavior: sparking a competition to determine who in the room is the Affluent Alpha. Every generation has their own version of the pissing match. Bros in the ’60s tried to have the biggest white picket fence; the ’70s were all about the thickest ’staches and chest hair; and the turn of the millennium brought pimped-out cars to the fight.
Today, it’s clear that—at least in the Bay Area—comparing over-the-top tech benefits have become the new dick-measuring contest.
As a writer whose entry-level career is based on publishing tweets, not developing code, I’ve got the teeniest dick by default.
It’s a scene you’ve likely witnessed, a competitive sport taken up by techies moving into newly renovated high-rises near you. Whenever they happen to congregate in a social setting, it rolls around like clockwork—shamelessly unleashing financial stats and company perks like a couple of teenagers waging wang wars behind the gymnasium. And it seems overwhelmingly to be matches between immature males. I haven’t witnessed women engage in the same benefit-bragging nearly as much as their male counterparts.
The repetitive competition, which may occur at any sudden moment, requires participants to whip out their employment packages to discover whose net worth extends centimeters farther than the rest. Only those with the highest salaries, bonuses and outlandish work perks will prevail. And I may as well throw in the towel — or put one on.
As a writer whose entry-level career is based on publishing tweets, not developing code, I’ve got the teeniest dick by default.
The mention of the haircut truck was met with a chorus of gasps. It was clear who won that little duel.
Recently, I found myself caught in the middle of one of these battles when I went to a bar to catch up with acquaintances from college. It didn’t take long for us to reach the subject of the post-grad job life and begin diving into deeply personal financial questions and comparisons. I quickly found myself outsized by the gang of gigantic wallets and inflated egos surrounding me.
The men pretended to ease into the discussion with a small study of one another’s general office perks, beginning with seemingly innocent lines like “At Dropbox, we get five-star meals every day!” which was then countered with “Well, at Google, we have a haircut truck that stops by to give us free trims.”
The mention of the haircut truck was met with a chorus of gasps. It was clear who won that little duel.
Oh, it was on.
“Amazon offered to completely pay for my company housing or give me a $6,000 stipend if I chose to live elsewhere. Ugh, it was such a tough decision!” one engineer said, apparently echoing the shared experiences of the majority of the others.
“Same thing happened with my Apple offer, except my relocation stipend was, like, $8,000, I think. But yeah, still so hard to choose!” another replied, subtly one-upping the former.
Burn.
“Your fleece may be soft, but talking about it clearly makes you hard,” I internally replied.
“Wow, I can’t imagine how difficult that situation must have been for both of you,” I chimed in, smiling with so much force that my teeth nearly fell out of my mouth and into my mojito.
Then came transportation allotments, gym reimbursements and Patagonia swag — oh my!
“Feel my fleece from Lyft. Isn’t it just so soft?” the man grinned as everyone petted his sleeve.
“Your fleece may be soft, but talking about it clearly makes you hard,” I internally replied.
Things were quickly getting more intense. Naturally, everything came to a head when the group started heatedly comparing each other’s bases.
“I got a $110,000 base salary and a $20K signing bonus just for accepting my offer.”
While the contest ensued, I sat in silence, stunned by the fact that one person’s mere bonus equated to a huge chunk of my earning potential.
People who weren’t even in the room became targets of the superficial conversation. “Oh, Jerry works for Facebook too! I think he’s making around $120K. Can someone calculate how much that is per hour? Don’t forget to include his bonus too!”
With the introduction of each new perk, investment and financial figure, the coders began adding additional inches to their metaphorical members, effectively asserting their dominance over the rest of the pack. Meanwhile, the software engineers were busy trying to find out whose employer gives better hot-stone massages and dollar-bill face masks.
While the contest ensued, I sat in silence, stunned by the fact that one person’s mere bonus equated to a huge chunk of my earning potential. Yeah, it wasn’t a great feeling, especially when I’d been talked into going to one of those trendy bars where one cocktail cost an absurd $16. Of course, they were too busy revelling in their riches to notice the soulless smiles and half-baked replies that masked my ensuing existential crisis.
This was just one of many dick debacles I’ve witnessed, in which earlytwentysomethings in the tech industry expose their newfound wealth and disregard the varying circumstances of peers sharing the room. It’s almost as if their perks supplant their personalities, morphing them into bots programmed to repeatedly project their societal metrics like a cluster of broken records.
To some extent, I get it. It must be difficult to transition from shelling out thousands on tuition and smuggling crusty dining-hall food to suddenly making six figures and enjoying fancy meals prepared by Michelin-star icons. But believe it or not, there are other things you can talk about instead of how much money, benefits and privilege everyone has, such as TV shows (ahem, Silicon Valley doesn’t count), the news (plenty of fucked-up material to pull from), how cute I look (I know you’re thinking it) or literally anything else. Please, God, just stop.
So if you’re a tech bro reading this, the next time you have the urge to advertise that you’re well endowed, we commoners would appreciate if you could just keep your wallet in your pants and let us enjoy our cocktails in peace.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Alexia Tsotsis, former co-editor of TechCrunch. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
