Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

The law prefers letting some who are guilty escape punishment over punishing the innocent.

Mob vigilantism does just the opposite. It does not trust the law to punish all who are guilty, so it punishes on mere accusations without concern for the innocent.

The difference between the two may be the reason fear is so powerful here.

She has a good point, and it's not one that can be easily addressed. I doubt there's any way for a "one size fits all" approach. I have had to manage both men and women, and the gender wasn't always a good indicator of the need to be careful in what I say.

But feedback is important. One of the things that I've learned, over the years (not just in tech -long story), is how to give feedback.

I have made some mistakes, and I rapidly learned that I only get one strike, as a manager, and not even that, if I'm not careful.

I have also been in the position of delivering feedback to someone I don't want to piss off, if at all possible (think green, with spandex pants), but it's vital that they absorb what I have to say.

I've learned that electronic communication is best avoided, when delivering feedback; especially negative feedback. Sometimes, I have no choice, but, for example, if we have FtF meeting in a week or so, maybe that is a better time for me to mention that I need to see a better burndown rate, as opposed to sending an email, or Slack message.

Also, in my experience, I've found that it's important to allow "pushback." This is especially important, when talking to smart, self-driven people. I have had people tell me to go piss up a rope, after giving them feedback, didn't react, and they ended up taking the feedback to heart, after cooling down. Sometimes, people just need to feel they got to say something, and giving them a safe place to say it, is important.

In some ways, it reminds me of incel-style thinking. You pick up on some signals that you're facing discrimination. Some or many of them are real. But then you elevate that discrimination into the primary component of your identity: you're a victim, and all your failures have nothing to do with things you have agency over and everything to do with how society is out to get you. Entirely unrelated things get pigeonholed into the paradigm you view the world through. And as a result you never recognize that you can potentially get better results by self improvement and assuming the people you meet are operating in good faith.

> It didn't used to be a spectrum and it's a terrible innovation that it's viewed that way today by so many. Racist used to refer to people that believed in the inferiority and superiority of certain races. Only recently has it become socially acceptable to accuse someone of racism or sexism at any sign of prejudice. This is a major cause of the divisiveness in the culture today and if you're doing it, you're part of the problem.

I'd argue that people now are still treating it as a binary situation and not including the nuance that is requisite of a spectrum in determining their response. As an exaggerated example we can't treat a grand wizard who burns crosses on lawns the same as someone who touches someone else's hair. If we react the same then the reaction is not acknowledging the continuum but rather lowering the threshold for the binary classification.

> When we talk about people's prejudices it causes us to examine potential solutions in a productive way. When we accuse someone of being racist or sexist, we imply that they're beyond redemption, and we can skip right to hating them and feeling superior about ourselves.

I think we actually have a lot of agreement. Reading your response I think a lot of our disagreement comes down to diction, not philosophy. When you say

> Everyone else, and I mean everyone else, is just a mixed bag of good and bad prejudices that can, with work, be improved over time

I fully agree, I just use different words because that's the words used around me. Words only mean what society uses them to mean. This is a big part of why I mentioned intention being an important component. I don't view someone that is racist/sexist as being nonredeemable, this includes Neo Nazis and Grand Dragons of the KKK (I know this is an unpopular belief, but it is one I hold). This is part of why I said that we need safe spaces to fail. I do think how we react needs to be tempered and thought out because my goal is to fix behavior, not punish. But if you lump me together with those that seek punishment (I believe this is a minority, but highly sensationalized minority) we're going to have a hard time discussing. Because I don't have major qualms with what you've said and I don't understand how you read my comment as such.