The OP seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about drinking. About half of what the OP said was him putting words in people's mouths (see: "Y U NO DRINK" for an example). This is coming from someone who is also a non-drinker, and who is from a culture in which drinking is almost the only social activity (I'm from Ireland).
That actually puts him in the same company as the brogrammers, who think that drinking is somehow makes their group special. The OP looks at drunken antics and thinks "those idiots" (emphasis on "those"), while they think "we're so cool" (emphasis on "we").
Compare to how I perceive most drinkers: people who want to have a conversation, and use alcohol to provide both the venue and a small social lubricant. Having been to a few github meetups in SF, they're largely sober affairs - I haven't observed much alcoholism or drunkenness. Conferences are a bit worse, but that's because people start drinking earlier.
It's not hard to enjoy these conferences, even as a non-drinker. Geeks chatting to geeks about geekery. Yes it happens in the pub; yes most people are drinking; yes some people have an unhealthy attitude to drinking - but that's life. I would suggest the OP tries again: roll your eyes at those bragging about drinking, ignore the guys slurring their words, and have good geeky conversation with the other 90% (a number which obviously diminishes the longer the event goes on).
I don't know about the OP, but I have a chip on my shoulder about professionalism in the industry, of which the alcohol and brogrammer culture is just a part.
We're on a long, slow slide away from CS and towards hacking out yet-another poorly designed programming language/web framework/whatever, patting ourselves on the back for re-inventing the wheel, and then grabbing some beers.
I'm studiously unimpressed with the quality of candidates, technology, and culture that I've been seeing in recent years.
When I go to tech meetups in Dublin, the chatting bit tends to happen in a pub afterwards.
Just curious, as a non-drinker do you enjoy attending events like PubStandards? I generally can't maintain a good geeky conversation in those environments from the noise, and leave with a sore throat from raising my voice.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately for you, lots of people drink. It's not just a programmer thing. It's one of the most prominent ways people socialize. Not programmers, people.
I'm sorry that you feel uncomfortable going to conferences because of the drinking, but unfortunately, it's something you should probably learn to accept. You can move cities, change careers, do whatever you want, but unfortunately, you're going to find that people socialize via drinking just about everywhere.
Exactly, it's not a programmer thing, it's a culture thing.
Non-development oriented conferences I've been to end up in the bar too.
It's not just conferences, plenty of non developer activities I've been to end up with most people congregating in a pub/bar afterwards, all of them with a mix of age ranges and healthy ratio of women/men. Mountain biking trips, rock climbing weekends, skiing trips, beer festivals - actually scratch that last one.
It might be more pronounced in tech companies and conferences than in some other areas because the age range is probably skewed a bit more to the lower end (baseless assumption) than in other fields?
I don't think guy has problem with drinking...Its about focus. And he is right, people go to these conference just 4 drinking and partying hard. Actual talks just get over shadowed with these booze parties. Its not "necessary" to make them part of culture...It should be optional. Come-on, most part of a 650$ conf ticket is for booze ...isn't it.. ? I think it should be like paid (and discounted..) "buy extra coupon" if u want to booze...
> It's one of the most prominent ways people socialize. Not programmers, people.
So if you don't drink you're not a person? Alcohol is generally prohibited in Islam. Are you going to tell me that there are entire nations inhabited by human non-people?
I feel the same way at conferences, and I actually do drink, though I never binge drink.
But, that's not why I came to the conference. I can drink at home.
I think you're fighting a losing battle, though, because the demographic that is generally involved in programming is essentially the same (with a slight tendency to nerdy and aspie) as the demographic of bros, and going to a conference is like a paid vacation for people who like programming (and aren't too intensely on call) - hence party time. Think state college spring break.
I think social awkwardness has an effect, too. I'd venture to say that the computer obsessed tend to more socially awkward, and alcohol offers a crutch when attempting to consciously network.
I think the tech bloggers need to harden the fuck up. The whining is too much to bear.
A note from Hitchens:
“Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that's an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—as are the grape and the grain—to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.”
Its sad when someone introduces you to a new community, telling you how much they love to drink. Then when you reply that you don't drink, said person tells you .. you know actually I don't drink either.
First up, very few of these parties are advertised as a place to taste alcohol. They are advertised as get wasted as much as possible cause its cool. And its pretty much every conference I go to.
But at any rate, I think the "original" purpose was the same as why people drink when they are back at home: To reduce anxiety and to make it easier for people to get to know each other. I think that is a worthy goal since to me the main purpose of conferences are to network, the talks come second.
But I know the same deal from sports tournaments where its also play hard on saturday, get drunk on saturday evening, play hard on sunday. I just sick around as long as there is someone not drunk to talk to, or the DJ doesn't suck so that I can dance. So it goes.
I also recently wrote on my Facebook page, that this is yet another form of excluding people. Especially if the only non alcoholic drink is water and pineapple juice. But yeah the difference is that nobody has seriously (well jokingly they have) implied that I am a worse programmer because I don't drink, where as it appears to happen still way too often that women are assumed to be booth babes or n00bs.
But getting smashed also has the tendency that people do stupid things and when a bunch of guys feel like they totally own a place in numbers while being totally drunk they might also start thinking they can "own" that female geek hacker. So yeah maybe there is where we get back to the sexism debate.
What's next, "I feel excluded because I'm a naturist"? The author seems to be uncomfortable with drinking and seems to be projecting his discomfort on the people at these conferences. I go to social functions all the time where other people are drinking and I'm not — sometimes it's awkward, sometimes it's great fun anyway (honestly, that's true of dry events too). If that's not his bag, cool, but it's hard to find an actionable suggestion in this post beyond "I think everyone should be like me and not drink." This is not really comparable to creating a hostile environment where women feel objectified or looked down upon.
My actionable suggestions are to distance the event itself from the open bar that occurs afterwards. I definitely don't think people shouldn't drink in general.
I also don't think I was comparing it to creating a hostile environment where women feel objectified - I was saying it contributes to a hostile environment for lots of people.
Excellent points all around Ryan. Thanks for bringing this up. The binge drinking that is almost mandatory at most conferences I attend these days is exclusive and annoying.
I don't, however, think that you need to stop attending conferences because of it. Rest assured there will always be someone else there like you that will have interesting things to talk about and will be sober.
Now that you have let others know that you definitely won't be drinking, you may actually be inviting others who feel the same way to seek you out at conferences because it's more fun to hang with like-minded people.
Alcohol is not the main problem. The lack of professionalism that the attendees have is. You can have a drink or two and still have meaningful conversations, but getting sloshed is just stupid. If you want to get trashed, why waste the money on a conference ticket?
I have been thinking the same thing while reading the article and comments. I haven't been to any of the larger conferences, so I thought I'd keep my mouth shut in case I'm simply missing something. There are a couple monthly tech meetings in Indy that either are at a bar, or go to a bar afterward. I don't recall having seen a single intoxicated person at one of the local events, let alone a majority of the attendees.
Even those of us who are almost professional conference goers get tired of this stuff eventually. I know I far prefer having a couple of awesome programmers over my house for a great conversation. Just did that this morning, actually, when the folks behind FluidInfo came over. No beers were consumed.
What Ryan should do is focus on hackathons and other, smaller, places where code actually gets written, shared, and discussed. There are plenty of those every week. At least there are in places like San Francisco. Every week or so there's a Node.js hackathon in our office at Rackspace. Generally folks have a choice of whether to stick around for beers after a long day, and even when the beers came out, at about 6 p.m. during dinner, it wasn't anything like a SXSW drinking fest.
Some other feedback:
1. Conferences are awful places to have real, deep, conversations. Why? There's an opportunity cost to spending any time with any specific person. Heck, you can be talking to someone very interesting, like Bram Cohen, who wrote Bittorrent and then Eric Ries walks by and you lose interest in Bram all of a sudden. It's far better to see if you can get Bram together at your house, or in a hackathon, where there's only 40 other programmers than hang out at some party with 200 other cool people you want to meet.
2. When you're in a noisy situation, like at a party (even one without alcohol, they do happen, but rarely) it's just not a great place to have a conversation. I remember being at one Techcrunch party and I couldn't even talk to the developers there. Why? I couldn't hear them and they were two feet away. So, I started drinking and smiling. Horrid for actually discussing anything important. I stopped going to those too, my time is better spent sitting down with someone in a quiet place and actually learning something.
Parties, to me, are only about one thing now: collecting business cards and making plans for meeting later on. That's what I did at SXSW. I had breakfast with the guy who runs Al Jazeera and it was magical. That's what made the parties worth it.
Hi Robert, thanks for your comments! I think you're right that most conferences just aren't the place for me. Fortunately I can often watch the talks afterwards, so I should probably just focus on doing other things. It's a shame, though, because other than the focus on alcohol and parties I actually do really enjoy the conference atmosphere.
Interesting article, thanks. I live in France, where it is forbidden to have alcoholic beverages at work, so I'm a bit surprised reading your description of the situation in the US. Same thing for the events I've attended (Linux Expo, RMLL, XP Days, EuroPython...), where it certainly was possible to get a beer (generally not for free), but no drinking parties were organized (or I was not aware of them). So maybe you should consider moving on the other side of the Atlantic where you could possibly feel more at ease :-)
That surprises me that France prohibits drinks at work. Granted, most hip US based companies that I've seen that have a bar do not have people drinking at 1pm. Usually it's a post-5pm happy hour thing, not a license to get hammered with your colleagues.
I have a vision of Europe, and probably France in particular, as being far more liberal about alcohol (but more conservative about abuse / overindulgence in alcohol).
You make a good point, but as others have noted, it's not right to single out programmers. You are falling victim to a logical fallacy for lack of sufficient data.
Casual, uninformed attitudes towards over-drinking, and over-indulgence in general, are a problem for society and individuals, but it's a subtle problem. One which, I'm afraid, your blunt instrument will not help much in addressing. I fear you've only succeeded in alienating a lot of people who will not be able to apply the proper filters to your arguments, or your approach.
Cultural and social behaviors are complex. Take the human brain, already astoundlingly sophisticated, and then mix it up with 10^(3|6|9)'s of others in a multi-dimensional loosely coupled, feedback-rich system. How do you influence such a system? Short answer: you don't, at least not unilaterally or deterministically.
A better approach to condemning something you don't like is to offer an alternative that you do, and attract like-minded people. This is how the world changes. Leave others to continue their destructive and habitual behaviors; it's their right/privilege.
I guarantee that their are thousands of of programmers who would happily take a break from inebriated venting sessions to participate in something more productive or inspirational. But on the other hand, most good programmers already spend all day doing that.
The challenge is to combine mental stimulation with something non-intellectual, something which creates a relaxing, atmospher, as opposed to something tense and stressful. Generally, alcohol or other depressants are the most time-efficient technique for relaxing, hence it's popularity. But also, booze is designed to be tasty, and bars are designed to be relaxing and fun. The fact that people over-indulge is just a classic example of another logical phallacy: if A is good, more of A is always better. But the concept of proper proportions is abstract and subtle
Most young men under twenty-five have incompletely developed brains. Since they drive the industry in many ways, they simply can't act on the insights you're trying to share, even if they understand them abstractly. The power of socialization instincts and hormones are too powerful.
So my advice to you is to find a select group of more astute and self-aware programmers who know what you're about, and go drinking with them, since they will be more restrained and more interested in intellectual exploration, and less in trying to prove their ability to hold their liquor.
Not sure if I'd paint it so black and white, I think in general I have been in many of these things as well.
On both ends – I guess more on the 'I'm getting a drink' one because I agree that after a while there is no reason to stay sober anymore, because everyone else is on their way already. It's either that or go home, which I do frequently as well. But it very much depends on the kind of people I am with – in many cases it's not just colleagues or people I find interesting in terms of technological background: they are my actual friends (not Facebook-friends).
And despite getting smashed I've still had a lot of interesting conversations and discussions with people in the same setting. I don't want to call anyone out which is why I won't name names, but I think all (three) conferences I attended last year had an "open bar" at some point and it was still worth while.
One was an amazing weekend of great talks, conversations, food and drinks.
And I don't regret going to any of these either. For starters, I can stop whenever I want and go back to my hotel or go home. I can still stay around and not drink anything and chat with others all night if I want to. Or do the opposite and have a drink with them.
I personally caught myself pondering about how you keep a level of professionalism – e.g. when you see your work mates (and/or superiors) drunk all the time, how do you keep the respect around?
We hired a lot of people in the last two years and while it's good to be friends with everyone you work with, I think there is a gray area of how far you want to go. There is work and after-work and in the end, some people manage it and others do not. For myself, I just decided to not shift into last gear when I go out with them and that means I can still have a good time and even have a drink if I want to. Got that much self-control (or maybe just fear of the next day).
I'm not sure I agree on a ban for alcohol from conferences. I can see where you're coming from and I'd like to think people should consume within reason, but I'm sure that doesn't really work out at all. At least for the majority. In the end it's always freedom of choice.
I give you that though: Maybe drinks should not be free so people don't get wasted right on. Whoever sponsors them could also sponsor something else, or something more worth while.
There is this old-fashioned idea called "professionalism", which seems to have been inadvertently discarded along with dress codes, and of which they were once emblematic. Work is not home, is not friends (wholly), and is most certainly not college (unless it is).
I kid myself that if there was a better age, sex and cultural mix in software companies, these kinds of extremes would be tempered. It would be a start. Is programming the new advertising? Or is it just a side-effect of success?
I don't think that drinking has anything to do with the brogrammer trend. Drinking was around before the brogrammer trend and it's going to be around after. The author states that drinking might be the cause of the brogrammer trend but the offers nothing to support that claim and does not elaborate further.
Nobody is discussing drinking as a cause of this because it's not.
You're right. The drinking was always epic at OSCON in the early 2000s -- a conf that has historically been full of the purest OSS nerds, least brogrammer types. And let's not even get started on PERL events. Free as in beer, you know.
It's hard to argue with the points of the author's article. It's very easy, however, to argue with a simplistic misunderstanding of the author's article. Basically, if you think this is about not liking drinking, you are wrong (in my opinion). If, on the other hand, you think this is about exclusion, and tailoring fora for a particular demographic, and then failing to acknowledge that tailoring, then you are correct (in my opinion). The author goes to great lengths to illustrate his point, and then somehow that escapes many of these commentators. That's unfortunate, because that failure detracts from the more fruitful dialogue that could be occurring. Will more reading help? No idea. Will more comments help? I have no idea. Maybe the author's article will resonate with enough people who can make a difference that things will improve.
Hi there, you definitely hit the nail on the head - at least as far as what I was trying to say. My post was hyperbolic and ranty - mostly on purpose - and I think for some people that didn't help get across my point as they latched onto the literal parts of what I said... Such is life. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the subject since, and that's good enough for me.
The comparison to sexism is pretty offensive to me (even though you try to minimize it early in the article, yet bring it up again via a link at the end). You're privileged to have the option to just not go to the party after the conference - women don't get to just "not be women".
Hi, I'm sorry you got that from the article. I knew it was going to be an issue (which is where the disclaimer came from) and it definitely felt like a losing battle in a way, and that people were going to see me drawing a comparison no matter what in the last few sections. Do you think I should remove the last link?
He needs to lighten up! All day long I stare at screens solving problems. A beer often serves as a great way to relax and de-stress. His abhorrence of alcohol is perfectly within his rights, but he shouldn't act self righteous and judge others. The post reads almost like a temperance movement column from 1917 and is equally ridiculous.
There's also a big difference between a beer in the company fridge (like Pivotal, ZocDoc, iCouch, DPL, etc,) and doing keg stands next to the pairing stations. The absolutism of the blog was my biggest complaint. Moderation has a place between the extreme of binge lunacy and strict teetotaling.
Hi. I have to say, I am all about moderation. It's absolutely not my intention to say "no alcohol, ever." I just think it should be distanced from the official material/tone of conferences. The article was meant to get people talking, and it has, and I felt like I had to be a bit dramatic and abrasive to get people to listen.
I've met a bunch of people who don't drink, but are perfectly able to socialize in those situations. It seems to me you're bothered by those few who can't handle liquor, and making a huge generalization about people who drink. No worries, it seems to be a common mistake in those rants. But I have to disagree with the title of your post: You're not being excluded by people who drink. You're excluding yourself.
I share his observations. At one company, I gave up on trying to have any meaningful conversations with anybody on Fridays, because everyone was too fucked up to speak intelligently. This was not a little startup, either.
I've noticed the prevalence of alcohol in the tech workplace has increased in the last few decades. In the 80s, in Silicon Valley, a Friday beer bash was not unusual, but it wasn't every Friday, and alcohol wasn't offered at other times. Back then, for me as a young person, that seemed very cool and generous. It was definitely not routine among employers generally.
Lately, I've been to lots of meetups at tech companies in SF, and beer on tap seems to be freely available at all times at every location I've visited. In some cases, the tap is right smack in the middle of the main work area.
I have no problem at all with people who use alcohol or other drugs responsibly, but it's hard to see how providing alcohol in the workplace is skillful or wise. Possibly you're promoting camaraderie, but at what cost to clarity and wholesome connection and the long term of health of employees?
It would be interesting to do a study and determine whether freely available alcohol increases productivity or other measures of employee or customer well-being, and whether it and has any health effects. I'm thinking it has to be a net negative, but I'd like to see real data.
Times have changed on campus too. At nearly all colloquia I attend, there are snacks and beverages. I don't remember that ever being offered when I was a student in the 70s - no free food then.
So, we seem to be living in an increasingly generous world. People naturally want to give and that impulse is finding new expression. Food and drink are routinely offered. I expect free housing will be soon be offered in some places. Open source software is readily available. Knowledge on the web is freely offered. This is great! It's changing everything! The pitfall is that we're also being generous in ways that may work to undermine our collective well being.
The only requirement I have for these things is that the after event drinks are held at a place where you don't have to raise your voice to have a conversation. Most pubs are satisfactory for that purpose.
I've never seen anyone get completely hammered at these things, but I don't stay until the wee hours either. I think the fact that your networking at an event in your profession should temper you a bit, and from what I've seen, it does for most people. You don't want to make yourself out to be an ass that can't hold it together. That, in my mind, is the difference between having nice conversation over a few drinks and "binge drinking." Binge drinkers are there to get blackout drunk as fast as possible, not to meet new folks and have interesting conversation.
Having said that, I don't think I've ever actually witnessed binge drinking at a tech event.
As a rule, I try to keep things to one drink an hour. Any more than that and I start getting buzzed and quality of conversation falls off a bit.
I remember at a meeting with BSI and the head of the IS9000 project told us about when he was younger working as a salesman for ICL in Russia - people would pass out in restaurants and the bouncers would pic them up and throw them outside into a snowbank in the middle of a Moscow winter. Now thats binge drinking.
I don't have a good time/don't get as much as I could out of some conferences because of this issue. Due to a medical condition I have a sensitivity to chemicals. Just smelling alcohol (or cigarette smoke, detergents, cleaning products, ...) makes me ill. It's not something that I--as some of the commenters here have advised--can learn to accept.
[+] [-] pbiggar|14 years ago|reply
That actually puts him in the same company as the brogrammers, who think that drinking is somehow makes their group special. The OP looks at drunken antics and thinks "those idiots" (emphasis on "those"), while they think "we're so cool" (emphasis on "we").
Compare to how I perceive most drinkers: people who want to have a conversation, and use alcohol to provide both the venue and a small social lubricant. Having been to a few github meetups in SF, they're largely sober affairs - I haven't observed much alcoholism or drunkenness. Conferences are a bit worse, but that's because people start drinking earlier.
It's not hard to enjoy these conferences, even as a non-drinker. Geeks chatting to geeks about geekery. Yes it happens in the pub; yes most people are drinking; yes some people have an unhealthy attitude to drinking - but that's life. I would suggest the OP tries again: roll your eyes at those bragging about drinking, ignore the guys slurring their words, and have good geeky conversation with the other 90% (a number which obviously diminishes the longer the event goes on).
[+] [-] nupark2|14 years ago|reply
We're on a long, slow slide away from CS and towards hacking out yet-another poorly designed programming language/web framework/whatever, patting ourselves on the back for re-inventing the wheel, and then grabbing some beers.
I'm studiously unimpressed with the quality of candidates, technology, and culture that I've been seeing in recent years.
[+] [-] mwm|14 years ago|reply
Just curious, as a non-drinker do you enjoy attending events like PubStandards? I generally can't maintain a good geeky conversation in those environments from the noise, and leave with a sore throat from raising my voice.
[+] [-] ctide|14 years ago|reply
I'm sorry that you feel uncomfortable going to conferences because of the drinking, but unfortunately, it's something you should probably learn to accept. You can move cities, change careers, do whatever you want, but unfortunately, you're going to find that people socialize via drinking just about everywhere.
[+] [-] rlivsey|14 years ago|reply
Non-development oriented conferences I've been to end up in the bar too.
It's not just conferences, plenty of non developer activities I've been to end up with most people congregating in a pub/bar afterwards, all of them with a mix of age ranges and healthy ratio of women/men. Mountain biking trips, rock climbing weekends, skiing trips, beer festivals - actually scratch that last one.
It might be more pronounced in tech companies and conferences than in some other areas because the age range is probably skewed a bit more to the lower end (baseless assumption) than in other fields?
[+] [-] jigarashah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcfox|14 years ago|reply
So if you don't drink you're not a person? Alcohol is generally prohibited in Islam. Are you going to tell me that there are entire nations inhabited by human non-people?
[+] [-] pessimizer|14 years ago|reply
But, that's not why I came to the conference. I can drink at home.
I think you're fighting a losing battle, though, because the demographic that is generally involved in programming is essentially the same (with a slight tendency to nerdy and aspie) as the demographic of bros, and going to a conference is like a paid vacation for people who like programming (and aren't too intensely on call) - hence party time. Think state college spring break.
I think social awkwardness has an effect, too. I'd venture to say that the computer obsessed tend to more socially awkward, and alcohol offers a crutch when attempting to consciously network.
[+] [-] base698|14 years ago|reply
A note from Hitchens:
“Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that's an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—as are the grape and the grain—to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.”
[+] [-] lsmith77|14 years ago|reply
First up, very few of these parties are advertised as a place to taste alcohol. They are advertised as get wasted as much as possible cause its cool. And its pretty much every conference I go to.
But at any rate, I think the "original" purpose was the same as why people drink when they are back at home: To reduce anxiety and to make it easier for people to get to know each other. I think that is a worthy goal since to me the main purpose of conferences are to network, the talks come second.
But I know the same deal from sports tournaments where its also play hard on saturday, get drunk on saturday evening, play hard on sunday. I just sick around as long as there is someone not drunk to talk to, or the DJ doesn't suck so that I can dance. So it goes.
I also recently wrote on my Facebook page, that this is yet another form of excluding people. Especially if the only non alcoholic drink is water and pineapple juice. But yeah the difference is that nobody has seriously (well jokingly they have) implied that I am a worse programmer because I don't drink, where as it appears to happen still way too often that women are assumed to be booth babes or n00bs.
But getting smashed also has the tendency that people do stupid things and when a bunch of guys feel like they totally own a place in numbers while being totally drunk they might also start thinking they can "own" that female geek hacker. So yeah maybe there is where we get back to the sexism debate.
[+] [-] chc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenduks|14 years ago|reply
I also don't think I was comparing it to creating a hostile environment where women feel objectified - I was saying it contributes to a hostile environment for lots of people.
[+] [-] mjackson|14 years ago|reply
I don't, however, think that you need to stop attending conferences because of it. Rest assured there will always be someone else there like you that will have interesting things to talk about and will be sober.
Now that you have let others know that you definitely won't be drinking, you may actually be inviting others who feel the same way to seek you out at conferences because it's more fun to hang with like-minded people.
[+] [-] spyderman4g63|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mileszs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scobleizer|14 years ago|reply
What Ryan should do is focus on hackathons and other, smaller, places where code actually gets written, shared, and discussed. There are plenty of those every week. At least there are in places like San Francisco. Every week or so there's a Node.js hackathon in our office at Rackspace. Generally folks have a choice of whether to stick around for beers after a long day, and even when the beers came out, at about 6 p.m. during dinner, it wasn't anything like a SXSW drinking fest.
Some other feedback:
1. Conferences are awful places to have real, deep, conversations. Why? There's an opportunity cost to spending any time with any specific person. Heck, you can be talking to someone very interesting, like Bram Cohen, who wrote Bittorrent and then Eric Ries walks by and you lose interest in Bram all of a sudden. It's far better to see if you can get Bram together at your house, or in a hackathon, where there's only 40 other programmers than hang out at some party with 200 other cool people you want to meet.
2. When you're in a noisy situation, like at a party (even one without alcohol, they do happen, but rarely) it's just not a great place to have a conversation. I remember being at one Techcrunch party and I couldn't even talk to the developers there. Why? I couldn't hear them and they were two feet away. So, I started drinking and smiling. Horrid for actually discussing anything important. I stopped going to those too, my time is better spent sitting down with someone in a quiet place and actually learning something.
Parties, to me, are only about one thing now: collecting business cards and making plans for meeting later on. That's what I did at SXSW. I had breakfast with the guy who runs Al Jazeera and it was magical. That's what made the parties worth it.
[+] [-] thenduks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gurney_alex|14 years ago|reply
-- Gurney (https://twitter.com/#!/gurneyalex)
[+] [-] theorique|14 years ago|reply
I have a vision of Europe, and probably France in particular, as being far more liberal about alcohol (but more conservative about abuse / overindulgence in alcohol).
[+] [-] dbourguignon|14 years ago|reply
Binge drinking is not particularly popular here.
[+] [-] mjwalshe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BoredAstronaut|14 years ago|reply
You make a good point, but as others have noted, it's not right to single out programmers. You are falling victim to a logical fallacy for lack of sufficient data.
Casual, uninformed attitudes towards over-drinking, and over-indulgence in general, are a problem for society and individuals, but it's a subtle problem. One which, I'm afraid, your blunt instrument will not help much in addressing. I fear you've only succeeded in alienating a lot of people who will not be able to apply the proper filters to your arguments, or your approach.
Cultural and social behaviors are complex. Take the human brain, already astoundlingly sophisticated, and then mix it up with 10^(3|6|9)'s of others in a multi-dimensional loosely coupled, feedback-rich system. How do you influence such a system? Short answer: you don't, at least not unilaterally or deterministically.
A better approach to condemning something you don't like is to offer an alternative that you do, and attract like-minded people. This is how the world changes. Leave others to continue their destructive and habitual behaviors; it's their right/privilege.
I guarantee that their are thousands of of programmers who would happily take a break from inebriated venting sessions to participate in something more productive or inspirational. But on the other hand, most good programmers already spend all day doing that.
The challenge is to combine mental stimulation with something non-intellectual, something which creates a relaxing, atmospher, as opposed to something tense and stressful. Generally, alcohol or other depressants are the most time-efficient technique for relaxing, hence it's popularity. But also, booze is designed to be tasty, and bars are designed to be relaxing and fun. The fact that people over-indulge is just a classic example of another logical phallacy: if A is good, more of A is always better. But the concept of proper proportions is abstract and subtle
Most young men under twenty-five have incompletely developed brains. Since they drive the industry in many ways, they simply can't act on the insights you're trying to share, even if they understand them abstractly. The power of socialization instincts and hormones are too powerful.
So my advice to you is to find a select group of more astute and self-aware programmers who know what you're about, and go drinking with them, since they will be more restrained and more interested in intellectual exploration, and less in trying to prove their ability to hold their liquor.
[+] [-] tillk|14 years ago|reply
On both ends – I guess more on the 'I'm getting a drink' one because I agree that after a while there is no reason to stay sober anymore, because everyone else is on their way already. It's either that or go home, which I do frequently as well. But it very much depends on the kind of people I am with – in many cases it's not just colleagues or people I find interesting in terms of technological background: they are my actual friends (not Facebook-friends).
And despite getting smashed I've still had a lot of interesting conversations and discussions with people in the same setting. I don't want to call anyone out which is why I won't name names, but I think all (three) conferences I attended last year had an "open bar" at some point and it was still worth while.
One was an amazing weekend of great talks, conversations, food and drinks.
And I don't regret going to any of these either. For starters, I can stop whenever I want and go back to my hotel or go home. I can still stay around and not drink anything and chat with others all night if I want to. Or do the opposite and have a drink with them.
I personally caught myself pondering about how you keep a level of professionalism – e.g. when you see your work mates (and/or superiors) drunk all the time, how do you keep the respect around?
We hired a lot of people in the last two years and while it's good to be friends with everyone you work with, I think there is a gray area of how far you want to go. There is work and after-work and in the end, some people manage it and others do not. For myself, I just decided to not shift into last gear when I go out with them and that means I can still have a good time and even have a drink if I want to. Got that much self-control (or maybe just fear of the next day).
I'm not sure I agree on a ban for alcohol from conferences. I can see where you're coming from and I'd like to think people should consume within reason, but I'm sure that doesn't really work out at all. At least for the majority. In the end it's always freedom of choice.
I give you that though: Maybe drinks should not be free so people don't get wasted right on. Whoever sponsors them could also sponsor something else, or something more worth while.
[+] [-] BoredAstronaut|14 years ago|reply
I kid myself that if there was a better age, sex and cultural mix in software companies, these kinds of extremes would be tempered. It would be a start. Is programming the new advertising? Or is it just a side-effect of success?
[+] [-] jessed|14 years ago|reply
I don't think that drinking has anything to do with the brogrammer trend. Drinking was around before the brogrammer trend and it's going to be around after. The author states that drinking might be the cause of the brogrammer trend but the offers nothing to support that claim and does not elaborate further.
Nobody is discussing drinking as a cause of this because it's not.
[+] [-] ahoyhere|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrillBitterMan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenduks|14 years ago|reply
Thanks!
[+] [-] look_lookatme|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xpaulbettsx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenduks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahoyhere|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] briandear|14 years ago|reply
There's also a big difference between a beer in the company fridge (like Pivotal, ZocDoc, iCouch, DPL, etc,) and doing keg stands next to the pairing stations. The absolutism of the blog was my biggest complaint. Moderation has a place between the extreme of binge lunacy and strict teetotaling.
[+] [-] thenduks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abernardes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nknight|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] getpost|14 years ago|reply
Lately, I've been to lots of meetups at tech companies in SF, and beer on tap seems to be freely available at all times at every location I've visited. In some cases, the tap is right smack in the middle of the main work area.
I have no problem at all with people who use alcohol or other drugs responsibly, but it's hard to see how providing alcohol in the workplace is skillful or wise. Possibly you're promoting camaraderie, but at what cost to clarity and wholesome connection and the long term of health of employees?
It would be interesting to do a study and determine whether freely available alcohol increases productivity or other measures of employee or customer well-being, and whether it and has any health effects. I'm thinking it has to be a net negative, but I'd like to see real data.
Times have changed on campus too. At nearly all colloquia I attend, there are snacks and beverages. I don't remember that ever being offered when I was a student in the 70s - no free food then.
So, we seem to be living in an increasingly generous world. People naturally want to give and that impulse is finding new expression. Food and drink are routinely offered. I expect free housing will be soon be offered in some places. Open source software is readily available. Knowledge on the web is freely offered. This is great! It's changing everything! The pitfall is that we're also being generous in ways that may work to undermine our collective well being.
[+] [-] dlf|14 years ago|reply
I've never seen anyone get completely hammered at these things, but I don't stay until the wee hours either. I think the fact that your networking at an event in your profession should temper you a bit, and from what I've seen, it does for most people. You don't want to make yourself out to be an ass that can't hold it together. That, in my mind, is the difference between having nice conversation over a few drinks and "binge drinking." Binge drinkers are there to get blackout drunk as fast as possible, not to meet new folks and have interesting conversation.
Having said that, I don't think I've ever actually witnessed binge drinking at a tech event.
As a rule, I try to keep things to one drink an hour. Any more than that and I start getting buzzed and quality of conversation falls off a bit.
[+] [-] mjwalshe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericography|14 years ago|reply