Here's how you crush Christmas.

On the NYC sub-Reddit today, a user who goes by the handle "onmach" submitted a sincere inquiry about startup culture in New York. Onmach and a friend were considering a move out East, but the friend had a bad experience at a startup interview that devolved into what sounds like your standard brogramming nightmare. 

"When [onmach's friend] got there he did good at the technical interview, but then they took him to a bar and proceeded to get wasted, talk about getting wasted, talk about getting high all day, and that's about it.

Unfortunately my friend is not that kind of guy. He's just a nerd who loves to code and doesn't drink or do drugs. When he asked an aquaintance if this is what it is like up here, she told him that everyone is like that and it is expected to attend these types of functions. How could he not know that, she asked. Certainly this particular company would not hire him if he didn't fit in, so now he doesn't want to go to NYC at all anymore."

Later on in the thread, onmach elaborated on the post-interview binge. It was a Monday night and the entire company of 10 showed up. "Conversation was like, yeah we should bring a hookah into the office, and yeah I was supposed to do that project, but I got high all weekend," he wrote. After recounting the sloppy details, onmach asked, "So, what's the deal? Is this just how it is in manhattan at tech companies?"

Admittedly, generalizing an entire industry's culture based on a "sinking ship full of douchebags," as one Redditor put it, is ill-advised. And this kind of rowdy boy's club is exactly how you keep that ratio in tact. But from the comments, consensus seems to be that is not the norm. Regardless, responses offer some interesting insights into infrequently-discussed recreational habits of startups.

"At my small company, we are partially owned by a much larger, much more conservative company. I hang out with my friend and coworker, talk about recreational activities (...) and do some of that stuff." [Ed note: Reddit is that you??]

"Smaller companies are run based on however the CEO wants them run. Most tech companies are pretty laid back about drinking, but not to the point where they are going to do the interview at a bar. Maybe if you are doing a late interview (5-10pm or something) they will get you a beer or two. I think this was a one off experience."

"I mean... yeah.... lots of people smoke marijuana here, lol. On the plus side he's avoiding working for a company clearly not heading anywhere."

Of course, there's always the other extreme:

"A more common situation in NYC is ending up in a place that expects you to work your ass off 12+ hours a day."

You like my cover letter, bro? (via mmaconvert.com)

Business Insider got an oddball tip this afternoon, in the form of a cover letter for an engineering job in New York City. A firm called Open Source Staffing posted a job listing for a contract-t0-hire API engineer and, according to BI's source, OSS got the this little gem in return.

Dear Open Source Staffing & NYC PHP Meetup Group:

I'm super awesome and have incredible experience compared to this - it
includes the required experience below plus I am trained in MMA
fighting, am the mayor of multiple Chipotles, Starbucks, and locally
famous restaurants in downtown NYC, and I type really fast. You want
to hire me more than anything and you'll be disgusted at how fast and
responsive your API is when I'm done.

You'll have to pay me ridiculous amounts of money but after the job is
done you'll wish you paid me more to stick around because you'll know
whatever company hires me next will destroy yours. It will be worth
it, you'll feel like I just got ripped off every time you write me a
check. Each week you'll feel worse and worse and increase the amount
of money you are paying me until one day you realize there's no amount
of money that could add up to the value of my insanely awesome skills.
It's ok, it happens to everyone.

You're welcome,
David

Apparently all that brogramming braggadocio offended Business Insider's delicate sensibilities. "We sincerely hope [it] was an attempt at humor – and not an attempt to get a job," writes deputy editor Nicholas Carlson.

Funny, we think it's tonally spot on for a startups who like it when you call them "awesome, awesome" and think that "Are you ready for some Javascript, motherfuckers?!!" is an acceptable way to begin your product demo. As long there's some skill set to go along with that ego, we approve. Who wants to read a bunch of  would-be ninja/rockstar coders droning on about their attention to detail?

A gentleman from the Brogramming Facebook page

Until recently, tech was an industry primarily inhabited and represented by ponytailed geek guys. Though the sandals may still abound, the image of the modern nerd is far from nerdy: tech is cool, and not just because the products these geeks develop are so inextricably tied to our every day lives.

Effervescent wunderkinds and Ivy League golden boys are forgoing finance to wade into the tech pool with the geeks, slapping their names on any startup harnessing the Social Graph API and slipping into the most visible roles in business development, marketing and product. Hey, nerd. Move over.

“The combination of easy money and the glamour of appearing in magazines and on television as an 'entrepreneur' has driven some of our best and brightest to dedicate themselves to social start-ups,” writes Allen Gannett of The Next Web. The pursuit of fame and fortune is crippling the tech industry’s ability to do what it does best, he says, namely innovate to make the world a better place.

Mr. Gannett rather confusingly dubs this phenomenon "social media brain drain" which makes it sound like Goldman is losing valedictorians to tech startups (which would be a good thing?), as "brain drain" usually refers to the diversion of talent from a desirable venue into an undesirable one (as when smart people from India go to school in the U.S. but then return home because of strict immigration rules, etc.). But in this case the solution is much simpler than rejiggering visa requirements.

Maybe we just need to make tech uncool again.

Entrepreneurs have made the transition to demi-gods in our status-obsessed society. The rise of brogrammers perfectly illustrates this shift in attitude concerning the quintessential tech worker. The brogramming community on Facebook—“We rage on the codebase, rage in the gym, and rage at the club"—has over 20,000 members. Napster co-founder Sean Parker may be the original tech bad boy, with tales of lavish drug-fueled parties and the Page Six nickname “NYC’s Billionaire Playboy.” Kim Dotcom (nee Schmitz), founder of the recently-shuttered Megaupload and for a time the world champion of Modern Warfare 3, amused the web with photos of himself lounging in bubble baths and pictures of his giant giraffe statues that surfaced following his arrest. For the ultimate celebrinerd, look no further than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose every move—both online and off—is documented with paparazzi precision, and in one case, actual paparazzi.

Despite all the jokes about jobs where people are paid to tweet, social media is not an inherently vapid or soulless industry. Peel away the buzzwords, the BS, and Gary Vaynerchuk's mind-numbing "Next Wave" video series for The Daily, and the industry thrives as a digital bastion for modern connectivity, one that we’re growing closer to quantifying and understanding.

By eschewing the quest for the limelight and focusing on making products that matter, we can begin to steer the industry back where it belongs: with the ponytailed sandal wearers, the keen-eyed innovators, the brainy do-gooders who never once have uttered the word “synergy.” You know. Real nerds.