March 22, 20178 yr This is the norm at almost every tech startup in San Francisco, and it works (the proof is in the VC rounds and market valuations). I got to thinking, maybe Fortune 500 companies have it all wrong? Maybe old blue chippers like P&G are tired and out of touch with millennials. Maybe Ford Motor Company should go back to hiring frat bros from UM to head global sales and marketing. Maybe Coca-Cola is too concerned with HR rules. Maybe rules and regulations demotivate the workforce. Maybe telling people not to sleep with coworkers is crazy since that's human nature. San Francisco has the strongest economy in the history of the world, and its corporate culture is that of a fraternity/sorority social. Maybe a never-ending sorority social is the right culture for companies that want to succeed in the modern economy. Airbnb is valued at over $30 billion and could go on to be bigger than any hotel chain. Every year, people say it's the year that SF tech declines. It just isn't happening in big numbers yet. The strong companies are still hiring six-figure salary entry-level workers with equity like nobody's business. And for every startup that goes under, ten more take its place. They're all staffed by the same fraternity brothers and sorority sisters that work at all the other offices in San Francisco. The SF marketing machine has a never-ending pipeline of Greek Life talent. Could the college fraternity and sorority system be imparting someone unique on kids that leads to business success in the real world? Greek Life is competitive, more competitive than almost any other college clubs. But it's also team oriented. The team orientation of Greek Life may be the secret to San Francisco's success. There also tends to be an entrepreneurial sprit in Greek Life. I wouldn't be surprised if big companies start studying fraternity and sorority culture more to figure out ways to grow. *Or maybe San Francisco is in a giant bubble.... Well, in order to survive, companies, like people, need to grow up. A lot of innovative stuff is coming out of startups but they are going to collapse if they don't get their business in order and put an end to the sexual harassment and other frat behavior. Of course a lot of companies that end up like the Ford or Coca-Cola in your example and can't innovate because they have so many processes in place. They develop a mindset of "this is how we do things around here" which causes them to reject any new ways of thinking. I guess the trick would be to stay somewhere in the middle of that evolution permanently. I think that's why you see so many startups being acquired by bigger companies but operated as a separate entity, so they can keep their startup feel but gain the advantages (like good HR policies) that come along with being part of an enterprise. One successful example that comes to mind is the way Zappos was acquired by Amazon but run as a separate business.
March 22, 20178 yr People in fraternities and sororities tend to have a robust support network that makes them far more confident than ordinary people. They have usually not suffered any significant set-backs. They are used to getting what they want and throw a fit until they get what they want. They are used to being able to make the sort of huge mistakes with zero repercussions that would snowball and sink anyone else. They have a sense for the emotional force of words, body language, advertising, etc. They don't speak or move or engage in outside interests that insinuate weakness or uncertainty. They can do this because they know that if they blow a lot of money or lose their job or run into legal problems their parents will always front the money to get them right back on their feet and continue on their upward-bound trajectory. It's not like that at all if you're not from money and don't have a support network. If you go into student loan debt for a field that is eliminated by technology, you're totally screwed. If your business venture fails, your life is probably over. If you have legal trouble, you settle because you don't have the $2,500 to take the matter to trial.
March 22, 20178 yr Some males I went to high school with also fit that description but they didn't go to college (or attended minimally before quitting). When they would get in legal trouble their folks would get them out of it. Without a college education or a marketable skill there wasn't any real need for them in the work world though. Of course they're smooth so there are always women around, but they drag their permanent unemployable/crappy job status into their women's and children's lives. They will be supported by their harried S/Os and hard-working parents until their parents' deaths.
March 22, 20178 yr ^^There is a pretty huge divide right now in SF that frequently gets overlooked. There are two types or bros dominating tech companies- middle class frat bros/Marina Girls from Midwestern and Southern public schools (typically sales and marketing roles), and then the ultra-wealthy old money bros/Marina Girls from Stanford, UC schools, and Ivy League type of places (typically founders, executives, or VCs). It's tough to tell them apart because the fashion is the same, but you can quickly gauge someone's background when talking about their housing situation and how many countries they have visited. If they live with roommates and "went to Mexico and Canada once," they're likely middle class background. If they've been to every country in Western Europe and East Asia, and have done volunteer work in Africa, they likely come from big money (unless their parents worked in the airline industry). The Greeks Mecklenborg describes above mostly come from the elite schools. Their parents are filthy rich and many times are the first angel investors in tech startups. They literally run everything in San Francisco today. They own most of the housing too. When it comes to money, the "real America" bros and Marina Girls from public universities aren't even remotely wealthy by Bay Area standards. The coastal elite bros/broettes from private schools are the wealthiest people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley (and America and the world). The trust fund hipsters and burners in Oakland are the second wealthiest people in the Bay. The bros/broettes from real cities in real America who went to public universities are barely third place in the Bay, if that. Many of the working class background locals still surviving in the Bay actually have higher net worth since they likely have advantageous rent control situations or inherited housing from local family members. The bros and Marina Girls from real America are really struggling with the housing situation in SF. Many of them are 4-6 deep in frat/sorority annexes. And this is becoming a recruitment problem since bros from NYC/LA/CHI/DC/BOS don't want to move to SF anymore. The middle class fraternties and sororities from real America do most of the legwork in tech and are what make companies successful. Many of them have chips on their shoulders, and want to upshow the rich elites from Stanford and Ivy League schools. Beating out the trust fund kids in your company can be motivation in itself. Many of the engineers and software developers come from these public school Midwestern frats too. The MBA types are coming from Wharton, Stanford, etc. *This is why people in SF are starting to care about what college you went to. It didn't used to be this way, but you can only go on so many League dates with Wharton grads before you start recognizing some patterns. **I date on the League, and it's loaded with Stanford, Wharton, Cambridge, NYU, and Oxford grads. They're usually terrible (though Stanford has more exceptions to the rule of elite schools), and I've learned to stick to dating grads from middle class public universities. My last Wharton/Cambridge date was such an elitist, stuck-up monster, I was ready to bail within five minutes! I think she liked me, but I wasn't even trying on this date. She was reasonably cute, but her worldview was just SF and Europe. Telling her about America scared her...she clearly had never met someone from the working class before, and it showed. Everything I told her about the Rust Belt shocked her. Some of my favorite first date quotes when dating Wharton grads are below. I could write a book about Wharton's MBA program lol "Ewwww, Ohio?! Isn't that Trump country?" "Ohio University? Isn't that a big party school? If you were smart, you would have gone to Stanford." "I don't concern myself with anything between San Francisco and New York." "Toledo? Ewww, isn't that by Detroit?" "Ohio? Oh God, that's flyover country!" "I can't believe you don't work in tech! What is wrong with you? It's where all the money is at!" "I can't believe you live in Oakland! It's such an ugly hipster nightmare!" (truth) "You're too cute for Oakland" (compliment...but still kind of an insult) "I would never date someone from across the bridge." (didn't know I lived in Oakland) "Bridge and tunnelers have ruined San Francisco!" (said by a transplant who didn't know I was B&T) "I can't believe you're from the Midwest. Does that mean you own guns and want to get married?" "The Midwest? Doesn't everyone get married and have kids there?" "I can't even begin to imagine what Ohio University is like. I bet there's a lot of white trash and vomit."
March 22, 20178 yr Don't a lot of former SF Chinatown Chinese own a ton of the rental houses in San Francisco proper and on the Pacific Coast side? There have to be several thousand native San Franciscans who were willed one or two mediocre houses, have lived in a paid-off house for decades, and are sitting around absolutely raking it in. Some males I went to high school with also fit that description but they didn't go to college (or attended minimally before quitting). When they would get in legal trouble their folks would get them out of it. Without a college education or a marketable skill there wasn't any real need for them in the work world though. Of course they're smooth so there are always women around, but they drag their permanent unemployable/crappy job status into their women's and children's lives. They will be supported by their harried S/Os and hard-working parents until their parents' deaths. Yeah sometimes those guys totally crash and burn. But usually they are completely absorbed into the alpha male world. i was friends (for some unknown reason, honestly) with one of those guys growing up, and his dad was a lawyer and unbelievably rude to the mom. As a family they were flashy and lied and exaggerated a lot. The dad yelled racist stuff all the time and commented on every woman on TV, with the mom right there. Nobody in the family was into music or art or reading books. Now the kid I was friends with is a high-powered lawyer, so is his brother, and they both married plastic-looking women who they probably yell at a bunch.
March 22, 20178 yr Don't a lot of former SF Chinatown Chinese own a ton of the rental houses in San Francisco proper and on the Pacific Coast side? There have to be several thousand native San Franciscans who were willed one or two mediocre houses, have lived in a paid-off house for decades, and are sitting around absolutely raking it in. Yes, but many of those families are cashing out now. Chinatown is still a stronghold for old money SF families, but the Richmond and Sunset have seen a lot of sales and property flipping. White people have broken into the housing market with force in the west and south sides of SF. A lot of the old school Chinatown investors have bought up rental properties in Oakland and focus more on the East Bay property since it's where the biggest gains have been at. There's also the weird issue that a lot of Chinatown kids have moved out of SF recently and end up not inheriting the housing. Sometimes parents sell since their kids move to cheaper, cooler, more down to earth cities like NYC. And believe it or not, there are also a lot of landlords who sell their property after a long eviction case with a rent-controlled tenant. Even if they win, the experience sometimes makes them want to sell and get out of the rental business. At this point, anyone owning a multi-unit property can sell and retire anywhere in the world besides San Francisco. *The Wharton types are getting a ton of help from their parents in the housing market. It's typical in SF for an all-cash bid on a condo to be paid by parents. Oakland's all-cash bids seem to be coming from local families and Chinese investors more often now than in SF. **Middle class bros and Marina girls don't have a chance in hell in the housing market. They are renters with roommates and it will take them 20+ years to save up a 50% down payment to buy a 1-bedroom condo. And they make too much money in tech for first-time homebuyer loans.
November 17, 20177 yr Ohio State suspends all Greek activities: http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/us/ohio-state-suspends-fraternity-activities/index.html
November 17, 20177 yr ^ I had read a report once that colleges that do away with fraternal organization have fewer reported sexual assault instances. I'm not sure where I read it but it does seem that when large groups of men are together it often gets toxic.
November 17, 20177 yr Oh yeah, no matter the situation congregated males = powder keg. Military, pirate ships, prison, mostly-male workplaces. Nerd stuff is usually easier to deal with since they have a lower aggression level.
November 19, 20177 yr Ohio State suspends all Greek activities: http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/us/ohio-state-suspends-fraternity-activities/index.html This really amazed me from a historical perspective. 90% of what they call "hazing" would be considered mild by early 80s standards, and at that time fraternities were expected to have kegs at on campus parties. Hell, we had them at academic department events. I suspect it's tied to an antipathy for fraternities because they are by definition exclusive. I've seen "anti-bullying" propaganda go as far as say that forming cliques is "bullying" and that's something that probably goes back to cave kids. The whole idea of being proud to be as thin skinned and offense prone as possible is dangerous. The idea that various Amerind tribes (see above posts) can reach that far for offense and bully "offenders" (note they went for people unlikely to fight back and tell them to go eff themselves), allowed to be unchallenged, means people like radical Muslims and evangelical Christians can do the same thing. I see Trump's election, as distasteful as it was, as a warning shot in this direction.
November 21, 20177 yr 1) the greek system is so entrenched in the US college system that I wouldn't doubt that this is a temporary moratorium and you'll see them slowly come back in a few years. The greeks have too much invested, in time, history and capital, to just walk away from this. They'll rally the network, and lobby / sue the school to ultimately let them come back, albeit in a toned down form. 2) alternatively, I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing 'clubs' not affiliated with the greeks or the school to start forming, essentially doing the same thing, but without school supervision. 3) if 1 & 2 don't come to pass, the housing is easily converted to rental units for students, given the layout of the houses and the kitchens, proximity to the school, etc. If they don't operate as frats, they'll just pull the off campus demand into these houses, which will suck students away from the outlier off campus housing.
November 21, 20177 yr I think that we'll see them back in less than a few years. The Greek alumni at OSU, at least, are powerful and organized. I was never in any of the Greek organizations, but alumni from many of those organizations have fairly distinguished careers at some point (and yes, I saw some of them more than a little tipsy at parties in undergrad, and guess what, that doesn't appear to have derailed their career tracks). In the meantime, absolutely, there will be clubs and other ways of working around the ban. Unless the ban has genuine buy-in from the students, which I'm almost positive it doesn't (having done zero research beyond remembering my own undergrad days), it will be circumvented or ignored anywhere that the school isn't spending time and energy actively enforcing it. My guess is there are still incoming freshmen very much intent on being recruited and upperclassmen very interested in recruiting.
October 10, 20186 yr I wonder if that kid's name really is Chad Kroeger. I'd be less likely to believe it if the other guy went by Barry Manilow or something.
July 11, 20195 yr Property Bro under the weather: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/property-brothers-sibling-jd-scott-reveals-hes-been-battling-a-debilitating-illness-for-a-year/ar-AAEbuzy?ocid=spartandhp
July 11, 20195 yr 17 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said: Property Bro under the weather: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/property-brothers-sibling-jd-scott-reveals-hes-been-battling-a-debilitating-illness-for-a-year/ar-AAEbuzy?ocid=spartandhp Yikes. Sad and scary. Now I actually feel bad for cursing at him every time he tears up a perfectly good hardwood floor.
July 24, 20195 yr "What? Bro... are you on a bird scooter on the highway? BRO! What are you doing? BRO! What are you doing? BRO! What are you doing? haha oh my gosh," said driver Josh Weatherl in the footage. He shared the video with FOX4 of his strange encounter. http://www.fox4news.com/news/dash-camera-captures-lime-scooter-rider-on-i-35-in-downtown-dallas-during-rush-hour
August 20, 20195 yr 4 hours ago, jmecklenborg said: Is this Nashville? It's apparently a big destination for bachelorette parties too, which can be far crazier than bachelor parties. Though "my divorce is final parties" (almost always by women).....just damn.
August 20, 20195 yr I've been to Nashville for a bachelor party twice, both times our security deposit got taken ? Also, I feel personally victimized by the name of this thread.
August 20, 20195 yr Shut it, Yabro. "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
August 20, 20195 yr 59 minutes ago, YABO713 said: I've been to Nashville for a bachelor party twice, both times our security deposit got taken ? Also, I feel personally victimized by the name of this thread. I'm 100% a bro. Can't deny it. We're not all bad. I've had multiple good friends admit that they never thought they would be friends with someone who "looks like" me. They meant they never thought they'd be friends with someone who wears tank tops, salmon shorts, and boat shoes.
September 11, 20195 yr On 8/20/2019 at 8:54 AM, YABO713 said: Nashville bachelor party Speaking of Nashville Bros, Bros is on the market: https://www.nashvillepost.com/business/development/commercial-real-estate/article/21085386/cajun-eatery-site-eyed-for-residential-project Bros: Bro's living next to Bro's, with more Bro's to come if they are able to redevelop Bro's.
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