This is really interesting to me, the idea that the valley is infested with typical alpha male pursuits. The popular concept is a skinny jean wearing hipster tapping away at a coffee shop. They may get hammered on craft beer but I have never heard that associated with proving masculinity.

Maybe that was true in some distant past, but in my time in the startup world (about 16 years) it's never really been true. It's actually the thing I think Mike Judge has really nailed in "Silicone Valley" on HBO. He tells the story from the perspective of a bunch of nerds being thrust into the broader culture of the Valley. The culture of "drink ups" and beer on tap in the office.

The reality of the Valley has much more in common with my fraternity house in college than anything else really. That's not to say that the hardworking hacker doesn't exist. They absolutely do! They are the ones everyone else in the Valley is taking advantage of.

This is the second time I've heard someone use the noun-phrase "drink up" on Hacker News, and it puzzles me; it's not something anyone says up here in the PNW. What does it mean? Clearly there is drinking involved, but what is the context?

Or founding WhatsApp...

I've noticed that some 'nerds' can actually overdo alpha male things when opportunity arises. Perhaps this is analogous to a closeted gay person trying really hard to come across as straight (I know a few personally, and sometimes it pains me to watch this behavior), or the pick-up artist 'community'. I've been like that myself when I was younger.

(I'm not saying it's a bad thing; just something I've noticed)

> "Real men" are supposed to eat red meat, be promiscuous (until 30 or so), and be experienced with liquor.

You forgot watching sports.

It's not the watching of sports that's manly; it's expressing the sentiment that you think the professionals can do better and if you're actually mature enough not to do that, being able to provide some kind of sophisticated analysis of the action.

Note that in every case, it's actually a subtle matter of one-upsmanship. Eating redder or more meat. Sleeping with more or better-looking women. Drinking harder or larger quantities of liquor.

Writing more lines of code in a more obscure language.

I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas, but I'd venture to guess that you don't actually believe in the things you're attributing to other people.

You could find plenty of guys willing to defend sports on their own terms. I don't think, if you let them talk for a day, they'd come out with anything like what you're putting in their mouths. I do think the things they'd tell you about sports are plausible enough as the "real reasons" they're fans. In my (admittedly not deep) experience, analysis of the action is a big thing. Criticizing the performance might rise to the level of a minor phenomenon. People are perfectly happy enthusing over great things that their heroes have done.

Just because people use sports as a vector for expressing manliness doesn't mean they don't enjoy it. Drinking beer because it helps you fit in doesn't mean you don't enjoy drinking beer. You can always have more than one reason to do something.

A man might enjoy throwing around a football because of the visceral experience of a solid catch, the nostalgic recollection of doing it with his dad, the anticipation of doing it with his son in the future, the vicarious simulation of a quarterback he looks up to, the amorphous pleasure of exercising, and because he can throw it further than his buddy.

Actually, I agree with all of what you just listed. But no one watches sports because they can throw the television farther than their friends, no one watched chariot races then or watches NASCAR now because they drive better than their friends, and no one watched gladiators because they routinely trounced their friends in battles to the death. Sports aren't there to satisfy the urge to show that you're better within your group than the rest of the group. They're there to satisfy the urge to tribalism, to show that your group is better than other groups.

Not really. We're talking about two different motivations.

Yes. People from San Francisco want the 49ers to win, because they're representatives of a kind. But there's nothing particularly manhood-affirming in this experience. People don't want their team to win in order to feel more masculine; as you said, it's a tribalism thing. That's why sports-watching is accompanied by other activities, like exclusion, beer-drinking, steak-grilling, and so on.

The reason you watch sports to affirm your manhood is because you feel you know better. You could, in their shoes, stomp the other team into the ground. You could tell your team what to do and they'd do it and they'd win. This isn't tribalism; such people would happily switch sides in order to prove they could win from there, too.

Listen to the content of the conversation. A bunch of guys, sitting around, agreeing with each other on what they would have done instead. If their team loses, the tribally motivated will say, "Better luck next time." Those who are motivated by masculinity say, "Should have done it better." It's indistinct if their team wins; they have nothing to prove because they backed the right horse.

People usually don't watch sports to affirm their manhood. Activities for doing that tend to be active. But when they do, it's not about tribalism.

Nothing you've said relates to anything I've said, though. The complaint is over the judgment of sports-watching men that if you're not interested in sports (for the usual reasons), you're not a real man. That has nothing to do with whether, if you want to be reassured that you're macho enough, you go watch sports.

You're right that people give professional favor based on personal affinity, what I'm not sure you're right about is that it's so wrong to do so. If I don't like you, then it's likely that your direct reports will feel the same way, as will potential clients or partners, which is a risk to the business, so I'm not likely to choose you for a position that puts you in a position to interact with many people. Most high senior positions require a ton of soft skills, so you're probably going to hit a ceiling unless you prove that you have them. Making your manager and peers like and trust you is step 1; the best people go far beyond that very quickly.

Nobody ever promised that career progression would be based on coding chops, especially when each jump up the ladder means less time coding and more time people-hacking.

Likeability is neither transitive nor uniform across a population. It's quite common for someone to be well-liked by some people and disliked by others for quite arbitrary reasons; it's also common for two people that you both like to dislike each other. Actually, highly successful people seem more likely to show this polarization, where they are liked by some and hated by others, simply because they are less shy about putting their personal opinions out there and people will have a wide variety of reactions to those opinions.