How We Got From Wall Street’s Big Swinging Dicks to Silicon Valley’s Big Swinging Brains
The tech entrepreneur has replaced the bond broker, but the swagger is still there
In Liar’s Poker, his 1989 Wall Street memoir, Michael Lewis described a newly ascendant, egregiously conceited type of alpha-male bond broker. This type had a name: they called each other Big Swinging Dicks. “Everyone wanted to be a Big Swinging Dick,” Lewis wrote, “even the women.”
A quarter century later, the A-list entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley occupied an analogous place in the American power structure, but their self-presentation was less aggressive. Instead of “Greed is good,” their aspirational bromides were “Think different,” and, “Don’t be evil.” Instead of Dionysian feats of consumption — Porsches and cocaine binges and morning cheeseburgers — they drove electric cars and subsisted on seaweed and Soylent. They didn’t deny themselves the pleasures of good old-fashioned capital, but they were equally covetous of social and intellectual capital. Their fondest wish was to be considered luminaries, Renaissance men, the smartest guys in the room. They were Big Swinging Brains.
They spoke with alacrity and unbridled confidence, making brash assertions that were contrarian in familiar ways, each offering…
