Stereotypes, gender, and humor in representations of coders in Silicon Valley. Review of TV series Silicon Valley (HBO 2014–2019)

Abstract

As I scroll through my Twitter feed, I notice a link to an article. ‘20Ways HBO’s SiliconValley Is Just Like theReal Thing’ (Waugh, 2020), it reads. I pause. Is this a fun, observational listicle? Or a thorough take-down of how real tech culture is based on the same toxic attitudes and problematic characters we see in the show? It turns out to be the former, but it got me thinking about why I was so alarmed at the idea that Silicon Valley might represent current reality. Silicon Valley (Altschuler et al., 2014-2019) follows a team of male coders in present-day Silicon Valley as they launch and develop a startup company called Pied Piper. Pied Piper is a company based on a single algorithm developed by Richard Hendricks, the show’s protagonist, that allows for astonishingly efficient file compression without losing any data quality. The show follows the Pied Piper team over six seasons as they rise, fall and reinvent themselves to tackle the challenges that the tech industry throws at them. The show represents tech culture as a toxic, capitalist, predominantly male-dominated world with someutterly reprehensible characters frequently expressingmisogynistic attitudes that are outdated for themid to late 2010s timeperiod it is set in.At times, the show successfully illustrates the issues and hostilitywomen facewithin the tech industry through to the present day, though always with its tongue firmly in its cheek. In the series 2 episode The Lady, for instance, some of the Pied Piper team recommend hiring a coder named Carla Walton: a brash, punky woman with a leather jacket, blue-highlighted hair and heavy eyeliner. Jared, Pied Piper’s COO, remarks ‘There’s a distinct over-representation of men in this