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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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The "tech bros" who have become an acceptable target for MSM derision are the young men going into software engineering because it promises the most legible route into the upper-middle-class for a smart, hard-working young man from a middle-class background. The same kind of men went into finance in the 1980's and corporate middle management in the 1960's (a period mostly referred to by cultural commentators as "the Fifties"). Some of these guys get lucky and end up as founders, a lot of them end up as Seniors at FAANG grinding out an upper-middle class income in order to enjoy a quite ordinary middle-class lifestyle in a HCOL city.

There is nothing inverse about the snobbery people failing out of a class express against the people trying to rise into it. And given what has happened to media business models since the rise of the internet, pursuing a career as a journalist is one of the easiest ways to fail out of the upper-middle-class.

The Fifties corporate man (note that the ad agents of Mad Men did not work in corporate middle management - their clients did. The Mad Men are the trailblazers the yuppies would follow), the 80's yuppie, and the 00's techbro are all hated by the same kind of people for the same reason - they are chasing money and status at the expense of self-actualisation, and doing so in the way that was boring and conventional at the time.

The people who end up as senior software engineers at a FAANG (a position I have held) are generally not bros of any sort. There's a few; they don't remain in the role; bros are generally climbers, and if they can't climb within the company they'll head somewhere else. Mostly it's geeks, as you'd expect. And the bros still DO go into finance, at least in NYC.

pursuing a career as a journalist is one of the easiest ways to fail out of the upper-middle-class.

Can confirm, have sadly seen it happen to someone with enough talent to get their foot in the door but not quiiiite able to prise the door open under strong headwinds.