Many 'tech guys' lose their attraction when looking for a girlfriend

During an acquaintance at a bar in Manhattan, Gary, 23, stood with a beer in his hand and tried to explain to a girl why he worked as an engineer at the data analysis company Palantir. He said the $250,000 salary would help pay his parents' increasing medical bills.

However, Gary did not receive sympathy. The woman said medical debt is "no reason to work in a place like that," referring to Palantir providing surveillance tools to governments, including the US and Israel, related to military and law enforcement activities.

Since joining Palantir in 2025, Gary has found that saying the company's name often causes his date to react harshly. He shared with Wired, one girl said he was "evil", another questioned how he could live peacefully with his conscience. "Sometimes they just flat out stop talking to me," Gary said. His friends even asked him not to mention Palantir during their outings so as not to ruin the group's chances of dating.

According to Wired, the stereotypical image of the optimistic tech guy wearing flip-flops and an old hoodie is now outdated. Many people now view the technology industry as a place where uncontrolled power is concentrated, causing many risks to society.

For example, Meta has been accused of creating a platform that harms young people with addictive designs like infinite scrolling. Amazon, criticized for treating workers unfairly, generates huge amounts of waste, contributing to the collapse of small businesses. The AI ​​boom is also controversial as many people worry that this technology will worsen unemployment, pollution, and reduce people's thinking ability.

Amy Laurent, founder of a high-end matchmaking company, noticed that mistakes by large technology corporations are causing trouble for single men working in the industry. As a result, when she introduced male candidates in the technology field, many female customers immediately became hesitant.

During the period 2016-2020, when she was a student at Stanford University, Helen believed that tech guys often "stay up late and can be lazy with personal hygiene". Now, Helen's outlook becomes more negative as she begins to wonder about the industry's overall impact on society.

Sasha, a 31-year-old Oakland resident, briefly worked in AI, then moved to a tech company focused on sustainability. In dating, when she meets someone who is or wants to work on AI, she always wonders whether they have the same views on climate, sustainable development and human rights.

"I think 10 years ago, working in the technology sector often demonstrated innovation, ambition and intelligence. But now many people accuse large technology corporations of causing social disruption, concerns about AI, job loss, wealth inequality, privacy and surveillance, content censorship, political influence," Laurent said.

Controversies related to the dark side of technology make many male employees in the industry not dare to share about their work with their dates. Jessica Engle, a family and marriage therapist, said one of her clients expressed concerns about showing off her Apple Watch in her profile picture on a dating site, fearing that the device made her look like a "tech bro" - a term for someone working in the technology industry, especially in Silicon Valley, who is ambitious, arrogant and lacking in social skills.

James, a Tesla employee, admitted to having many "tech bro" characteristics such as paying high rent, mainly ordering food online, and not contributing much to the city's culture. "If I wrote on a dating app that I worked at Tesla, many people would immediately eliminate me," he shared with Wired. Satish Badugu, program manager for AI applications engineering at Google, had some bad dating experiences after moving from New York to San Francisco in 2025. He said the most memorable situation happened late last year, after matching with a woman working in biotechnology on a dating app.

On the first date, in order to find common ground, Badugu mentioned that AI in the future could help detect new diseases and even find cures. However, the opponent immediately became irritated.

"It was clear that she considered AI a potential threat to her job, so I quickly dropped the subject. Needless to say, we never met again," Badugu shared with the San Francisco Chronicle.

However, not all "tech bros" have difficulty finding a girlfriend. In the context of the AI ​​boom, many male employees receive generous salaries and bonuses, a big plus when women are looking for a life partner. Basic salaries for entry-level engineer positions sometimes reach more than $200,000 per year.

Shoshana Grossbard, a professor emeritus of economics at San Diego State University who studies how finances affect relationships, calls earning power "one of the most important factors humans have considered in dating since the dawn of civilization."

AI is currently considered a "future field", employees can receive attractive benefit packages, and the job market is vibrant, bringing a sense of peace of mind more than other fields. "I get a lot of requests from women who want to meet people working in the AI ​​field," said Erica Arrechea, founder of luxury matchmaking service company Cinqe.

Many single women affirm that they are more interested in the personality traits that AI workers often have such as being curious about knowledge, being progressive, and even being a bit timid. "Women in the San Francisco Bay Area often don't like muscular guys who post selfies in front of the mirror at the gym. They want a nice guy, even if he's clumsy," said Wes Myers, co-founder of Keeper, an AI matchmaking company.