How Halt and Catch Fire is taking on sexism in the tech industry

The tech startup at the heart of AMC's drama is different in one key respect — it's led by two women

Halt and Catch Fire
(Image credit: Annette Brown/AMC)

As the second season of Halt and Catch Fire draws to a close on Aug. 2, the AMC drama — about a 1980s-era band of misfit programmers attempting to bootstrap their online gaming-social networking startup — has definitely caught fire with fans like Jason Hirschhorn.

Hirschhorn, a former co-president of MySpace, finds plenty that rings true in this season's storyline, which has tried to re-create the breakneck pace of startup life. The show tracks the two female lead characters — Cameron Howe, the brilliant, acerbic programming prodigy who supplies the vision and the code, and Donna Clark, her equally brilliant yet more diplomatic problem-solving partner — as they launch, build, and ultimately decide to sell their company Mutiny.

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Andy Meek is a senior reporter at the Memphis Daily News. His work has also appeared in outlets including Fast Company, Buzzfeed and TIME, among others.