On the macro level, for example, and in the “plus” column, is the transparency practice of many leading tech firms, revealing the diversity of their workforces. And on a more micro level, the big security industry RSA Conference this year essentially banned “booth babes” by stressing strict dress attire for its exhibitors.

Bravo!

Now we come to a step back. A new report by Forbes is that the hottest lunch spot for many SF male techies is, rather unbelievably, a strip club…

The lunch spot of the moment is apparently the Gold Club in San Francisco’s SoMa district, which is conveniently located within walking distance of top tech companies such as Yelp and Salesforce. (You can read the article about this here.

Supposedly the attraction is a cheap lunch: for a $5 cover charge, you get a free lunch buffet and …enjoy dancers. (Ironically, Silicon Valley tech companies have long been the providers of free and subsidized lunches for employees –all to attract the best talent, keep them on campus and at their desks…)

Is the new lunch fad simply a good deal on a buffet? Innocent fun? A way to escape the drudgery of staring at a screen all day?

To me, it’s inappropriate and more troublesome than that. It’s one more manifestation of the techbro culture that permeates our industry.

Worse, it seems to have gotten the wink and nod from many tech firms. For example, according to the Forbes article, one well-known tech firm’s hiring managers would take prospective hires to the Gold Club—which was referred to by the secret code name of “Conference Room G.”

But I don’t want to make light of this. Regardless of your take on strip clubs (whether they objectify or empower women), for the tech industry, which has always been exclusionary (both of women and minorities), it’s simply one more example of the way it can be careless and tone-deaf.

Another take-away from this is that corporate culture doesn’t just come from the top. These techbros are influencing their workplace just as much – arguably more so– as their managers are. Imagine being a woman or gay male programmer and hearing guys in the break room talking about their great lunch… How excluded would you feel?

On another cautionary note, this sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, whether an unsuspecting worker is taken to a club by colleagues and feels uncomfortable, or overhearing the guys talk about their fun in the workplace…

On that note, we were reminded just this past week of the most famous sex discrimination lawsuit to date in the tech industry: the case of Ellen Pao against Kleiner Perkins. In March, the highly reported case ended with Ms. Pao losing her lawsuit, but tarnishing the reputation of her former employer, a gold standard Silicon Valley VC firm.

Fast forward and Ms. Pao was recently forced out of her interim CEO position at the Internet community site Reddit. (The New York Times headline read: “It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism is Out at Reddit.”)

Ms. Pao wrote an Op-Ed column about her ordeal at Reddit, which appeared this past weekend. In it she chronicled the work she and the company did to try to prevent and ban harassment on the Reddit site and the resulting “attempts to demean, shame and scare” her into silence that ultimately led to her resignation.

As Ms. Pao has noted, I couldn’t agree more: “It’s left to all of us to figure it out, to call out abuse when we see it.”

Sex discrimination and harassment –and resulting lawsuits— have been happening in other industries for years. No, the tech industry didn’t invent sexism or the wheel. But as they say… we’ve driven the car into the ditch all the same. These are glaring examples of the distance we have to travel.