I am currently attending college, and I can confirm that many at my age refer to a good girl friend as a "bro". It may be stupid and immature, but it is what it is. As other commenters has said, "bro" is describing the relationship and not necessarily referring to any specific gender.
Calling anybody "bro" is rarely serious. I would actually feel less stupid calling a woman "bro" than a man, because if I call a guy "bro" people might think I was serious.
"Bro" has become a word used like "hey guys" in mixed company, or "dude", applied equally to men and women. It's cultural, and like many cultural things, is popularized from chan sites. Starting as mocking the fratguy and Jersey stereotypes, it's now a cultural mockery of itself, like hipsters who hate hipsters.
My brother and cousins are increasingly "brotastic", with tough talk, and repeated high fives (followed by finger pistols). And they didn't even get it from the aforementioned chans; it grows naturally. As scary as that may be to the rest of us.
So, if the term sexist? That's two questions:
1. Is it intended to offend or drive away women? Probably not.
2. Is it offensive to women despite intent? Not for me to answer, as a man. But this is the more important question.
(Sorry, lots of editing. I realized I had a lot more to say. But if they wanted to go for this style, they could've just as easily made the first line say something like "looking for awesome dudes and lady-dudes with awesome skills and awesome personalities to join our awesome startup!" Or something as cheesy to ensure inclusion.)
Calling everyone "you guys" is offensive; it suggests that being a dude is normal and everything else is deviations we can just ignore. I will believe that "dude" is gender-neutral when I can call the guys I work with "ladies" and have it be considered gender-neutral.
1) Yes, even if implicitly. It says "I expect people to conform to masculine norms; everyone else need not apply." Whether or not they specifically set out to exclude women, they did set out to exclude everyone who wasn't willing to tolerate their sexist and exclusionary behavior, who will statistically be more female than male (though plenty of men are excluded too.)
2) Yes it is. Plus, as men stated up stream, it is directly offensive to some men too, and it should be offensive to anyone who doesn't want to work in a field populated by sexist assholes.
I guess I attributed to "dude" what I see more people doing with "actor", an implication that changing the word itself (to dudette, or dudesse, I suppose) is more offensive than using a single term for a single idea that, itself, doesn't need to be gendered. Actually a quick Googling of "dude gender neutral" tells me dude's gender-neutral usage goes back to the 1970s, and has been written on some.
I certainly don't think women would want to be called "programmerettes" or "programmeresses" en masse. And I'm too afraid to Google those.
As to the points I was trying to make, my intent was to say that yes, I believe it absolutely would drive off more women than men by appealing to a culture that is male-dominant. But I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that it was done with the explicit intent of establishing a "no girls allowed" company. I do think those guys should've been more thoughtful about who they were appealing to, and I'm glad MattManser brought it to our attention; it's an interesting read. But I'm not as quick to call them sexist assholes. For all I know, they were going for a sense of cultural fraternity (that someone earlier in the thread excellently brought up as a word that, despite its roots, is a feeling we all typically aim to share.) Then again, that leads directly to my second point...
Being a part of that culture? That isn't a place I would want to work, either. But just because I find something untoward doesn't mean everyone would. That's what I mean when I said women get to decide what's offensive toward them, not men.
If men think something is offensive toward women, and women don't... Then I think it would be a very odd argument indeed. I think men can have an opinion on it, and I think most of us here probably agree it's at the very least tasteless, but matter like this, I would tend to defer to the party claiming offense. The question becomes what makes HER feel uncomfortable, and avoiding that.
It's something polite that could be done with anyone on any topic, but especially should be if the vast majority of a group finds it shockingly offensive.
