Calling yourself a tech bro is intentional ironic humor. Guys doing this are likely aware of the negative connotations but also the fact that if you are a young man in tech, other people will label you a tech bro regardless. It's just a harmless joke imo.

Maybe tech bros lose their sense of humor when they hit a certain age and become tech boomers.

I believe the accepted term of art is "Dinobabies".

Yeah, the last mature adult brain functions that deal with like, higher level moral reasoning and stuff, don't come fully online until age 25 or so.

Your early 20s are still late puberty. And even as an adult, you've still so much to learn.

But I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say that he was calling himself a techbro at least semi-ironically. Of course in five or ten years' time, that too may become unacceptable, like ironically calling yourself a racist.

Age, comes experience.

But, I was surprised that techbro has such a negative image too and used as an attack. Only found that out when I moved to Seattle. Sometimes it helps to adapt it, because for sure the community/locals on some level really do push it to a label.

Meanwhile, across the country in Florida - everyone encourages everyone to do what you want, learn, succeed and it wasn't rare that in university, outside university events IT/coders/artists and such all hung out together.

But, certain environments affect the meaning and acceptance of words. I still am flabbergasted that my experience in Seattle is still like that and that I was "shamed" for doing what I love. Seattle was the only place also that people in tech would also omit they work in tech and do anything, everything else.

There's a subset of ideas and culture associated with "techbro" beyond just being interested in technology. Obnoxiously Libertarian, overly analytical (lack of holistic perspective), crypto pumping, sometimes pretty racist/sexist (though I would say that's a subset). It's a particular cultural strain of people interested in software, not all young men who code.

These people were "finance bros" working in hedge funds before the VC/startup industry took off, and crypto became the most popular way to scam people.

Edit: actually the "overly analytical" might fall more into the stemlord category, who routinely get mislabelled as techbros.

So much work to keep up with the labels, I just do what I enjoy and so do many other people. It's sad that people just acost and label it as some sort of "bro" label and try to make it negative.

I don't think anybody "keeps up with labels" as such, and it's not about people doing what they enjoy - it's about certain abrasive personality types that are drawn to programming.