Blood Pressure Blog

Earlier this week I started my first actual full time job, inching me slowly to the blessed land of not being-a-100%-broke-college-student. And while I’ve had about a week to settle in and frankly, have been righteously thrown into the corporate deep end like going through watered down marine underwater combat training, this period has given me time to reflect about the nature of tech companies large and small across the world. Several problems plague corporate America, large ones such as unequal pay, and small ones like that broken soap dispenser in the men’s room. However, I’ve especially been thinking about the lack of gender diversity within tech workplaces, and how we can use unconventional methods to defeat this divide.

The lack of sports led me to contemplate on how they can be used to solve society’s problems. Just like how I went on keto 3 years ago to only have dreams about eating bread at 3 AM, this lack of sports has led me to dream about how sports can change lives. And just as Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech, this idea literally came from a dream that I had. Now, normally interpreting dreams can be a risky business, because any professional dream interpreter with a degree from Google Images will probably say that 90% of dreams either mean a) you are the victim of some long forgotten trauma, or b) you probably have a hard time getting an erection. However, I firmly believe my dream means something and can be used for social good.

My plan calls to use the incredibly American idea of college football Bowl Games to defeat gender equality in the workforce. Jobs in computing and engineering see the worst ratios of men to women, averaging about 80% men to about 20% women, worse than the ratio of air to Cheetos in a Cheetos bag. Bowl game sponsorships are a huge part of the viewing and game experience, and such, tech companies from the upper echelon of Facebook, Nike, Uber, all the way to Brazzers.com probably have large sponsorship deals just sitting on their doorsteps. The prestige of these games is dependent on the venue, sponsor, teams, etc. Games such as the Playstation Fiesta Bowl is a highly prestigious game, whereas the Taxslayer Gator Bowl is at least a 30% chance to be a pyramid scheme run by Jeb Bush. Corporations have also known to get quite creative with their names, such as the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl in El Paso, Phoenix Salad Bowl, or the Barstool Sports Presents the Boca Raton Wet the Beak Ponzi Scheme Awareness Bowl. The simple rule that stands, the stranger the name, the greater the coverage. 

For this partnership to work, we elect the help of an organization, Wogrammer Inc, one that several young women-in-tech support (sidebar here, I think they missed a great naming opportunity and should have called it Wokegrammer). Regardless, this organization runs the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference and probably top 5 longest named professional event since Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race for the Cure. This year’s Grace Hopper Conference is held virtually because COVID complications, meaning thousands of dollars in venue and logistics fees are saved in the process. Therefore, why not spend this money to expand your brand and support women everywhere, with the sponsorship of a Bowl Game? For example, I would attend the shit out of the Grace Hopper Silicon Valley Toxic Masculinity Awareness Bowl. I would be the first to get front row seats to the Wokegrammer Stay Woke Las Vegas Yaaaaasss Queen Equal Pay for All Bowl. Millions of people watch and gamble on these games bringing in thousands in revenue.

As the male crowd are the slight majority when it comes to watching college football, the demographic will understand that Grace Hopper and the respective women in tech are extremely cool people, and the male dominated field of tech will surely hire more women. This plan also suggests that women will have a large increase in college football viewership, and therefore can break up unpopular “boys-clubs” that falsely believe that women know nothing about supposed “macho-shit” like sports. Here I would like to reiterate, I’m looking for short term solutions, frankly because I don’t think about anything for more than 7 seconds and making thinking about long term solutions highly difficult. However, this is America, and until you spoon-feed real issues to 50-thousand screaming fans ready to kill each other and millions more on TV, nobody listens.