Why No One Wants to Date Tech Bros

Once seen as a groundbreaking leader in sustainability and a quirky futurist, Musk—recently crowned the world’s first trillionaire—is better known these days for his record-breaking donation to Trump’s 2024 campaign, being the brain behind DOGE, the dismantling of Twitter, an apparent Nazi salute, frequent ketamine use, racist tweets, and something of a breeding kink.

Long gone is the cliché of the optimistic tech guy in flip-flops and a ratty old hoodie. The tech industry is now seen as the locus of unchecked power. Meta created an environment where Russian bots could influence elections and designed features that foster social media addiction among teens. Amazon, which has been widely accused of unfair labor practices and of generating a staggering amount of waste, has aided in the collapse of small, independent businesses, while a glowed-up Jeff Bezos has become a poster child for extreme wealth inequality. More recently, the AI industry is being widely maligned over claims that it’s exacerbating job loss, pollution, and a critical-thinking crisis.

Amy Laurent, the founder of a high-end matchmaking company, has a front-row seat to the way Big Tech’s moral failings are causing problems for single, rank-and-file tech bros. Turns out their cushy paychecks often aren’t enough of an upside anymore.

“I think 10 years ago, saying you worked in tech was more about innovation, ambition, intelligence,” says Laurent. Now, many people charge Big Tech with “causing the breakdown of society,” whether they’re worried about “AI, job displacement, wealth inequality, privacy and surveillance, content moderation, or political influence.”

Laurent says that when she pitches her tech-employed male clients to women, she acknowledges their hesitation right off the bat: “Listen, I have a great guy to tell you about. He’s such a good match for you. Now hear me out: He’s in tech.” The justifications are a new feature of her work.

Jessica Engle, a family and marriage therapist, has noticed that men in tech worry about being perceived as red pilled. Recently, one of her clients expressed concern about having his Apple Watch visible in his dating profile photos. He wondered whether the gadget “would make him look like a tech bro” and whether it might signal a “very particular kind of toxic masculinity that we’re seeing more and more in the news.”

Engle’s client wasn’t wrong to worry. Mira, a 29-year-old Bay Area resident, says she perceives a career in tech as a possible “right-wing flag” or a sign that someone might be “manosphere-coded” or libertarian.

When 28-year-old Helen was an undergraduate at Stanford from 2016 to 2020, she viewed men in tech as guys who “stay up late and maybe have bad hygiene.” But her feelings toward them have gotten even worse over time as she’s questioned the industry’s overall impact.

Helen’s family is from the Tigray region of Ethiopia, whose population, beginning in 2020, was subjected to a prolonged period of human rights abuses. “When I started thinking about questions around genocide and the technology that kills or tracks or excludes,” Helen says, “I realized that the things these people are building are secretly, or under the surface, really nefarious, and I could not personally be with someone who is a puzzle piece in that tapestry.”

Helen herself has worked in tech. Soon after graduating from college, she accepted a job at Grammarly. But after about a year, she went to work for a mutual-aid platform and now is employed at an impact investing firm funding technology for underserved communities. Similarly, Sasha, a 31-year-old Oakland resident, had a brief stint working in AI before heading to a sustainability-focused tech company, where she is now chief of staff. In dating, when she meets someone who works or wants to work in AI, she wonders, “Does that mean that we have the same values in terms of climate and sustainability and thinking about human rights?”