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Female Founders
81–90 of 634 posts
Re: Female Founders
#82"So if we want to get more girls to become programmers, we should give them more examples. Ideally in person..."
I am volunteering with a local "Code Club" to teach programming to 8-14 year olds. We have just tried to be open and gender neutral, ending up with between 10-25% female depending on the week. Purely subjective opinion, but Jessica Yuen from the Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/other-featu...) tutorials has been a huge example for these children (boys and girls).
I'd love to profile more examples in our code club sessions. Does anyone know of a central source for people willing to volunteer as "examples" for young computer scientists? If not, maybe we can start a google doc or something?
Re: Female Founders
#83"It's hard to argue I'm biased against female founders when I have a female cofounder myself." He's going with the "black friend" defense?
It's fine to say that, as long as it's not the entire defense.
Re: Female Founders
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Those threads always turn into flamewars that spill out into other threads.
Whereas the latest NSA disclosure, facebook privacy setting etc etc leads to a rational though provoking discussion that stays on topic and within its own thread?
Re: Female Founders
#85I'm a bit disappointed by the fact that this blog post gives perhaps the most obvious and common "politically correct" answers to the question of female representation in the software industry, without actually tackling any controversial subjects like reduced training costs for women.
Re: Female Founders
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are we really going to blame algorithms now for promoting prejudice? Your implicit claim is that a human can't write an algorithm that promotes prejudice. Are you interested in defending that claim? It seems very obviously false.
I guess you could . Although I'm not sure how exactly an algorithm can be inherently prejudiced, that sounds rather postmodern. You can make one that is inefficient or apply one that isn't suitable to a given data set, and end up with skewed results. But an algorithm promoting prejudice by itself? I don't know. I always thought mathematics was neutral. Either way, it absolutely does not apply here. HN's algorithms si…
I think you're overcomplicating it by insisting on isolating the algorithm from its owner and environment. No-one else was doing that.
If you don't want to apply a label to the algorithm, how about "Foo Bar's decision to run Algorithm X against Dataset Y resulted in consequences that predictably increased prejudice, so it would have been better if he hadn't done it"?
If that's okay, note that this is pretty close to what parfe said -- he's clearly upset at the fact that pg chooses to run an algorithm on Hacker News, rather than at the algorithm itself.
Re: Female Founders
#87I 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…
While it's great that you took the time to write that essay, from what I have learned over the years about human nature (not from what I've read but from a large amount of real life experience) you can't use logic and intelligence to change the opinion of those who feel particularly strong about something that is emotional to them (think middle east conflicts). [1] Because emotion and rationality are two different things.
[1] The most important thing about any relationship is that the other party will at least listen and consider what you have to say. People online (and spouses or girlfriends) who cut off without even considering are persona non grata to me. I wouldn't marry or date them and I wouldn't invest in them.
Re: Female Founders
#88"It's hard to argue I'm biased against female founders when I have a female cofounder myself." No matter how the rest of the essay is, this honestly doesn't mean jack and insults the intelligence of his critics, no matter how off-the-mark they were. He goes on to note other, more meaningful statistics, which is great, but this sentence alone is kind of laughable.
This is taking the whole paragraph out of context. Paul mentions the 3 partners out of 12 in YC and compares it to the rest of the VC industry. I would say its a fair statement. This is a bit of nitpicking here.
I don't know Paul but I do know that based on this article he's laying out the problem based on what he knows which is start ups. I appreciate him doing this as I get a better insight to the problem from someone that has firsthand, "in the field" knowledge. I also got some great takeaway action items that I can apply for my own kids. So, thanks for that.
Re: Female Founders
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
As written, the first paragraph lays out the situation of you being personally accused of sexism and the second paragraph starts with defending yourself against those accusations. I do not think you set the proper context to use the fact YC has a woman cofounder to defend yourself against accusations of sexism.
The 'Some of my best friends are black...' cliche is only actually a problem if it is used to justify a racist statement. Otherwise it's a perfectly valid indicator of having non-racist character.
Re: Female Founders
#90Earlier 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.
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