Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reflections on Being a Female Founder

tracy.posthaven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 311 posts

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#231

Post by galoisgirl »

Siira wrote: post #230
strictfp wrote: post #221

I'm convinced that the best thing we as society can do for gender equality right now is to abandon the corporate roles that cater unreasonably much to the stereotypical macho male gender role. These are roles which in principle require you to abandon your private life and spend all your mental energy on the company. Why do we even have these roles? Well, according to behavioural psychology males fight for status, and…

Perhaps the current situation is completely okay? Some people sacrifice their leisure to work for something they care about. These tend to be men because of heightened competition. Who are you to dictate their life to satisfy your statistical egalitarianism? This is just bullying.

The sacrifice way more than just leisure. If this was about leisure, there would be no discussion.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#232

Post by galoisgirl »

_pzdn wrote: post #23

This was an interesting read. I found it well written and kind of sad, if optimistic and hopeful. Personally, I would love to see a lot more female developers. I am betting there is no significant difference in inherent potential talent between the two genders, so why are almost all coders I've worked with male?

This has been discussed once or twice... What did your search engine tell you?

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#233

Post by galoisgirl »

umvi wrote: post #87
vmception wrote: post #66

> I think I was scared of what others might think of me as a new mother and CEO, maybe because of my own insecurities, maybe because of the societal norms ingrained in me. I see this so much from corporate career ladder focused women. People literally feeling guilty for wanting some aspect of motherhood, or going through some aspect of motherhood. (and then ironically apologizing about that, despite the core of their…

Personally, when I hear that a woman (or man) with kids is running a startup, I think "that kid isn't going to have the full attention of that parent..." Especially when I read stuff like: > I pressured myself into proving that I was as dedicated to PlanGrid as I always have been. I interpret that phrase as "...at the expense of dedication to my kid". I personally think it's okay to "be less dedicated" to work in ord…

> I personally think it's okay to "be less dedicated" to work in order to spend more time with kids (for both mothers and fathers).

Thanks for your permission?

Those people have clocks and can count to 60, you know?

They have thought about it. They have agonized about it. They feared and/or regretted missing their child's first steps.

They owe you no explanation.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#234

Post by galoisgirl »

drobert wrote: post #215

We had gender roles because it was the most effective way to survive and raise a family. The cost was that women were assigned rather basic responsibilities. Because tech and services have evolved families can outsource some of the chors done by women in the past like cooking, cleaning. In the case of making babies the the technology is still in development but we will get there. Artificial wombs will be an option in…

> But few women when given the choice would choose to do what she did. Feeding a baby in the car while doing research seems far from desirable for most women I presume. Then the question is why she did it?

I'd say the question is why men do it.

In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, all men say "I wish I hadn't worked so hard". (That's the second after "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me", and others' expectations of male CEOs are a problem too.)

Why do men chose to live a life they regret later?

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#235

Post by rutthenut »

RHSeeger wrote: post #197
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a woman cofounder. It's incredible the things some VCs told her, including trying to get the other founder to drop her from the deal explicitly because of her gender. Make no mistake about it, the ugly goes way deeper than just a bad comment here or there. Thankfully the trend is toward better.

It makes me wonder about the correlation between "the more of an asshole you are, the easier it is to rise in power" and "the more of an asshole you are, the more you treat everyone you can (especially those that aren't the same as you) poorly". I can't think of a single time I've seen someone treated poorly because of race or gender in my professional career (direct treatment; I recognize that systemic problems are…

I feel that in a lot of cases, this is basically just bullying. Where people in power, or at least senior positions, will belittle others to their own benefit. It may not be racist or sexist in its cause, but can be in its nature. Basically, if there is a way to highlight someone for any differences, a bully is likely to use that, especially if it can aim to demean that other person. So it will be sexism, or racism, though not because the originator is racist or sexist, it's just because they are ignorant, not bothered and just like to bully or put down others with any tools at their disposal. Made worse by the way they might rise in power as result of being an asshole in this way. Until they fall

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#236

Post by AdrianB1 »

_pzdn wrote: post #23

This was an interesting read. I found it well written and kind of sad, if optimistic and hopeful. Personally, I would love to see a lot more female developers. I am betting there is no significant difference in inherent potential talent between the two genders, so why are almost all coders I've worked with male?

It is a documented (aka scientifically proven) fact that women generally prefer to work with people and men prefer to work with things. There are exceptions, of course.

In my 20+ years working in IT I met a single woman that was a developer and chose to stay a developer; a few moved from development to project management or operations, but most never wrote a line of code after graduating college, jumping directly in PM, ops or any role that allowed moving away from coding. I do not have any good explanation for this, my first sentence doesn't fully explain this.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#237

Post by AdrianB1 »

mrkurt wrote: post #86
ddevault wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Women I know who wrote software kept finding new roles where they'd be in management instead and then they moan that they liked writing code and miss it. I hear this a lot from men, too. We have a general problem in the industry of being bad at making senior engineering a rewarding career track.

Right. We glamorize "management" in every way, even going so far as to label devs "individual contributors". As if they only contribute 1x while managers contribute multiples. I have this gut wrenching feeling that tech companies just can't be fixed. There's way too much that has to change and the powerful people don't have much incentive to do the work.

No, managers don't contribute multiples; managers are responsible for the contributions of multiple people (teams) versus individual contributions of each person in the team.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#238

Post by AdrianB1 »

jmchuster wrote: post #159
mrkurt wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. We glamorize "management" in every way, even going so far as to label devs "individual contributors". As if they only contribute 1x while managers contribute multiples. I have this gut wrenching feeling that tech companies just can't be fixed. There's way too much that has to change and the powerful people don't have much incentive to do the work.

Compare your best manager and your best engineer, and the manager _does_ contribute multiples more than the engineer does. You take this to the extreme, and the best CEOs in history have added additional billions in value to the companies that they've helmed.

Anecdotal evidence tells otherwise :) Not kidding, in all the companies I worked for, the best engineers were way better contributors than average managers. Just consider that in many companies management is badly hit by diversity targets, they forcibly promote people to meet these targets and competency suffers.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#239

Post by dennis_jeeves »

drobert wrote: post #215

We had gender roles because it was the most effective way to survive and raise a family. The cost was that women were assigned rather basic responsibilities. Because tech and services have evolved families can outsource some of the chors done by women in the past like cooking, cleaning. In the case of making babies the the technology is still in development but we will get there. Artificial wombs will be an option in…

drobert, yours is a fairly well balanced comment.

Summary of the article: we are puppets to our biology. This goes well belong gender, I'm sure that the guy who is paraplegic will have his own story on how he has to cope with things that many people take for granted.

Some of the most objective posts here have been either flagged or banned, i.e there is no option to up vote them.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#240

Post by globular-toast »

I find this article incredibly sad for a number of reasons. The story is of a woman who has reached a level of success that very few ever reach, and not for lack of trying. In addition, she managed to have a child at the same time! This is something very few people in history have achieved.

But the reflections we see are entirely negative. There are no reports of the elation after acquiring VC funding, the high that comes with finally shipping after months of graft, or enjoying the fruits of recognition after becoming one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Nor are there any reports of the joy of having a child or the love and support that exists within her relationship. On the surface this is a person who has achieved everything that we're told should bring happiness, but what we see is someone drained, tired and ultimately unhappy.

The life of a founder and CEO of a company is far from a normal human experience. It's a lifestyle that very few in society are well-suited for. While a lot of people would take the rewards, very, very few are willing or capable of putting in the work required. In a free market economy these things just sort themselves out. We end up with founders and CEOs who are happy to take those roles simply because the ones that aren't happy just won't go through with it. The best people in any role are those that have an almost irrational drive to be good at what they do. I feel that people like Tracy were dragged and forced through ordeals like this due to societal pressures but she would have been much happier in a role that allowed her to enjoy the other aspects of life (like childbirth).

We need to stop forcing equality in places where it doesn't belong. This woman felt like she needed to behave like a man: completely dedicated to the role, but her biology simply won't allow it. The sooner we accept that we can move on. Life is about making choices. You can't have your cake and eat it too. All adults have to understand this sooner or later. For the vast majority of women, happiness is going to come with having children. Let's stop encouraging women into career paths like this that ruin that for them.

Post reply on HN