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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#71

Post by moocowduckquack »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #10
moocowduckquack wrote: post #7

I don't know about female founders, but I always thought that given the readership, pseudocode problems placed as job adverts in some of the puzzle magazines would get a lot of interesting candidates, many of them middle aged women who have been solving a variety of logic puzzles daily for decades, entirely for their own amusement. I bet some of them could code like demons, if given the impetus.

Like Lindsay - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2534733/Victorias-...

Is there an alternative source? I have an allergy.

Re: Female Founders

#72

Post by pyrocat »

pg wrote: post #40
parfe wrote: post #26

I find myself disappointed by this blog post. The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Then he follows up with statistics comparing YC to the general VC market. Fine, you do better than most. However, not the worst does not mean not bad. He comes closest to saying anything of substance with the paragraph: So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? Th…

The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Actually by pointing out the degree to which women run things at YC it's closer to saying "I'm not racist! I'm black." And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. And I do know something about groups working on getting gir…

I'd say it's more like "I'm not racist! I adopted a black kid."

The second paragraph was mostly fine but it did come off a little... unhumble. And humility is usually the tone you want when talking about how your company is doing good for X cause, but it could be doing more.

Re: Female Founders

#73

Post by [deleted] »

crygin wrote: post #45
camelite wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A racist is less likely to have black friends than a non-racist. I'd suggest that a racist is even less likely to have black co-founders than a non-racist. edited to add: The reason the "look at my black friends" argument is mocked is that in many cases the friends referred to are not friends in the true sense of the word. There's no such distinction possible when talking about a co-founder. One either is or is not a…

This is a dangerous oversimplification of what "racist" (or any negative bias) means. There are many people who have no problem associating with individuals of [insert class here], but would be less likely to hire them, etc. Racism, like everything else, is a spectrum, and it's critical not to characterize it by its most extreme elements.

[deleted]

Re: Female Founders

#74

Post by darrellsilver »

We just went through the entire 2013 performance for female and male students here at Thinkful (http://www.thinkful.com/).

The results are very revealing for this debate: Once enrolled in our courses, women perform exactly as well as men in every dimension. However, enrollment among women is significantly behind their male peers, but sadly on par with what other coding schools are seeing.

Here's the data: http://blog.thinkful.com/post/72670499078/gender-differences...

Re: Female Founders

#75

Post by redthrowaway »

oskarth wrote: post #54
redthrowaway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pg's job to equalize the gender ratio in programming, nor is it his job to get girls interested in it. Saying he thinks you need to reach girls young does not obligate him to go research what organizations are out there doing just that. He meant the post to be a statement of his position, not a rallying cry to fix a societal problem. You seem to have wanted the latter, not the former. That's fine, but it's n…

Accidentally downvoted you, sorry about that. I meant to upvote it.

No worries, I've done the same myself countless times.

Re: Female Founders

#76

Post by krstck »

I find the outrage over this so disingenuous. It looks to me like it's more about punishing someone for being a high-profile member of a hated, perceived-oppressor group than actually caring about women being programmers.

To think that pg actually believes that there are no female programmers was the least charitable possible interpretation, and the only reason to have picked that one in particular was to confirm your own bias.

Re: Female Founders

#77

Post by vezzy-fnord »

daleharvey wrote: post #55
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about addressing the fact that sexism related stories get flagged off his very own website with surprising speed (either manually, or by his own automated algorithms)? Are we really going to blame algorithms now for promoting prejudice? The reason sexism-related stories fall down is not because of lack of interest or due to prejudice, but quite the contrary: too much interest , causing an imbalance in the upvote-…

The algorithm was written with an intent and it can be changed. Its been very clear for a long time that almost all discussion about women in tech is as good as censored on hackers, which is a shame because its giving a lot of well intentions but naive people the impression that there is no problem.

Unfortunately it seems that no one can actually agree on the exact nature of what the problem is, so most discussions end up being just pointless shouting matches.

Re: Female Founders

#78

Post by MrZongle2 »

parfe wrote: post #26

I find myself disappointed by this blog post. The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Then he follows up with statistics comparing YC to the general VC market. Fine, you do better than most. However, not the worst does not mean not bad. He comes closest to saying anything of substance with the paragraph: So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? Th…

'The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!"'

Tangent: if I am attempting to prove that I am not bigoted against group X and by doing so I point out that I have members of group X amongst my friends, haven't I made my point if they really ARE my friends?

Or is it up to the mob to define what "friendship" is?

Re: Female Founders

#79

Post by arasmussen »

oskarth wrote: post #54
redthrowaway wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pg's job to equalize the gender ratio in programming, nor is it his job to get girls interested in it. Saying he thinks you need to reach girls young does not obligate him to go research what organizations are out there doing just that. He meant the post to be a statement of his position, not a rallying cry to fix a societal problem. You seem to have wanted the latter, not the former. That's fine, but it's n…

Accidentally downvoted you, sorry about that. I meant to upvote it.

^ feature request...

Re: Female Founders

#80

Post by michaelfdeberry »

m1117 wrote: post #53

Hope these people stop criticize Paul and continue working on their stuff to make the world better. Just useless waste of energy.

I haven't really been keeping up, so I don't know if the criticism is valid or not. However, I think the topic of sexism, and discrimination in general, is something that needs to be talked about more openly.

Hopefully something good will come from all of this, so if Paul, or anyone else, has to take a hit at least it will assist in initiating some these conversations.

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