Brotopia, Emily Chang
Brotopia, Emily Chang
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Brotopia
Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley

Author: Emily Chang

Narrator: Emily Chang

Unabridged: 9 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/06/2018


Synopsis

Instant National Bestseller

A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick

"Excellent." —San Francisco Chronicle

Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world. Unless you're a woman.

It's time to break up the boys' club. Incisive, powerful, and a fierce rallying cry, Emily Chang shows us how to fix Silicon Valley’s toxic culture--to bring down Brotopia, once and for all.

Silicon Valley is not a fantasyland of unicorns, virtual reality rainbows, and 3D-printed lollipops for women in tech. Instead, it’s a "Brotopia," where men hold the cards and make the rules. While millions of dollars may seem to grow on trees in this land of innovation, tech’s aggressive, misogynistic, work-at-all costs culture has shut women out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world.

Brotopia reveals how Silicon Valley got so sexist despite its utopian ideals, why bro culture endures even as its companies claim the moral high ground, and how women are speaking out and fighting back. Drawing on her deep network of Silicon Valley insiders, Chang opens the boardroom doors of male-dominated venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, the subject of Ellen Pao's high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit, and Sequoia, where a partner once famously said they "won't lower their standards" just to hire women. Exposing the flawed logic in common excuses for why tech has long suffered the “pipeline” problem and invests in the delusion of meritocracy, Brotopia also shows how bias coded into AI, internet troll culture, and the reliance on pattern recognition harms not just women in tech but us all, and at unprecedented scale.

About The Author

Emily Chang is the anchor and executive producer of Bloomberg Technology, a daily TV show focused on global technology and Bloomberg Studio 1.0, where she regularly speaks to top tech executives, investors, and entrepreneurs. She was previously a CNN correspondent based in Beijing and London, and has won five regional Emmy awards for her reporting. She is a graduate of Harvard University and lives in San Francisco with her husband and three children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dr. Appu on November 20, 2023

This book shows us the unknown side of silicon valley, where men hold most of the crucial positions and deal with women in a toxic manner. The author tells us about the sexual harassment happening in the MNCs. She also reveals what all things are happening behind the scenes in the networking par......more

Goodreads review by Kimberly on March 09, 2018

I couldn't get enough of this book. You don't need to be someone who works in Silicon Valley or identify as female to appreciate this book. As someone who works on the fringe of this world and with many of these companies (and the women & men of Silicon Valley) I found the history lesson incredibly......more

Goodreads review by Dian on March 26, 2018

I REALLY wanted to like this book. This is a topic I care a lot about. I called out the CEO of my company at all hands for not having enough women on the leadership team. I read in my neighborhood blog that Emily Chang is a neighbor. She seems rad. I want to be friends with her. But even still... I h......more


Quotes

"[Chang] is clearly engaged with and often incensed by her subject, and the best parts of Brotopia are those moments when she actively resists the 'it's all good' ethos of the Bay Area and cuts down chauvinism with the disdain it deserves." New York Times

"Brotopia goes far beyond the salacious to offer an important examination of why the technology industry is so dominated by men—and how women are pushing back." Financial Times

"When reading Brotopia, it's easy to envision it as a film…. Women who have triumphed in tech despite the odds…could be the film's heroines, and so would the young girls learning how to code despite it all." The Verge

"…Chang's scrutiny breaks open a wide doorway, allowing fresh ideas about a tainted industry to circulate and spark discussions." Kirkus Review