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Since I've been complaining about techbros today (in general, and one in particular), I thought it might also be good to write a thread on how to not be that guy:
1. If you're talking with people at a conference, keep an eye on air time. Are you speaking for approximately 1/n of the time, where n is the number of people in the conversational group?
2. If you do ML, and you're mostly interested in the learning algorithms themselves, how to do you relate to the people who work on actually understanding the areas of knowledge you take as application areas? (Hint: "dismissive" is one attitude you are trying to avoid.)
3. How does the tech you're building affect people in the real world? (If you don't know, it is worth your time to find out. If you think there aren't real world applications, are you up-front about that in your papers about it?)
4. How do you treat the activity of doing research? Do you primarily relate to it as a competition or as a collaborative exercise? Do you put time and energy into lifting up the work of others, especially those who aren't granted the privilege of being assumed to be competent?
5. When someone brings up questions of ethics, justice, inclusion, etc, is your first reaction that this is taking up space that should be going to the details of flashy new models/latest leaderboard updates? If so, what do you do with that reaction?
I'm curious what other advice people have for those worried they might be techbros and interested in making sure they aren't. (There's of course the separate question of what to do about those who are perfectly happy to techbro, but let's set that aside for the moment.)
