The boys’ club no one was supposed to write about

If you work in tech, Wired’s new cover story isn’t exactly going to shatter your worldview, but it’s a genuinely great read all the same.

Reporter Zoë Bernard spent months talking to 51 people (31 of them gay men) to map out a subculture that’s been an open secret in Silicon Valley for years: gay men, at the upper echelons of tech, quietly raising up their own networks the way powerful people have always done.

One angel investor puts it plainly: “The gays who work in tech are succeeding vastly… they support each other, whether that’s to hire someone or angel invest in their companies or lead their funding rounds.” Another source frames it almost philosophically: “Straight guys have the golf course. Gay guys have the orgy. It doesn’t mean it’s problematic. It’s a way we bond and connect.”

The piece doesn’t let the culture off the hook entirely. As is true wherever power dynamics exist, nine of the gay men interviewed describe experiencing unwanted advances from more senior colleagues — and Bernard doesn’t shy from examining where networking ends and coercion begins. But her sources are careful about what that means: “This is a complex subject and I don’t think readers can draw the distinction between some bad men being gay and all gay men being bad. It can be a slippery slope into homophobia.”