Dictionary

tech bro en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈtɛk.bɹoʊ̯/ (US)
• /ˈtɛkbɹow/ (General-American, Multicultural-London-English)
• (Southern-England) audio
• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈtɛkbɹəw/ (British, Southern, Standard)

Etymology

From tech + bro (“a frat boy or someone that espouses the fraternity bro culture”). Attested from the 2010s (see quotations below).

Meanings

1. (derogatory, informal, neologism, sometimes) A hypermasculine man employed in the tech industry and stereotypically located in Silicon Valley.
   • Are Tech Bros, as one Redditor claimed, members of a “hyper technocratic, libertarian…boys club”? 2019 October, James Ross Gardner, “Who will mourn the tech bro?”, in Seattle Met:
   • Fort Mason, a renovated military post on the bay, has been nicknamed “Frat Mason” for the 20-something “tech bros” — tech company salespeople, marketing employees and start-up founders — who have moved into luxury apartments there and play bocce on the great lawn. 2013 November 24, Erica Goode, Claire Cain Miller, “Backlash by the Bay”, in New York Times:
   • A term that once mocked a particular Bay Area cultural phenomenon has become an all-purpose epithet. In the process, it has lost whatever analytic value and rhetorical punch it once had. If tech bros are everywhere, then they are nowhere. 2021 January 27, Gilad Edelman, “Stop calling everyone a tech bro”, in Wired:
   • “U.S.S. Callister” inverts this idea by having its tech-bro channel his resentment into fashioning his own personal matrix. 2017 December 30, James Poniewozik, “Free Your Mind? ‘Black Mirror’ Isn’t Too Hopeful”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
   • No, Virginia, the combination of Trump’s tax cuts and tariffs don’t help and, yes, when the AI investment bubble pops GDP growth will drop making the deficit/GDP ratio worse, unless you believe the tech bros hype about AI suddenly delivering universal nirvana. 2026 January 24, Michael Pascoe, “America’s mighty economic power has feet of clay”, in Michael West Media:

Forms

Hypernyms

techie