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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#91

Post by dictum »

chadwickthebold wrote: post #58
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-…

Aren't upvotes a measure of interest? I would argue that the lack of upvotes on sexism-related posts indicates a lack of interest in discussing these issues on the part of the general population of HN. What you get is a small group of vocal people eager to discuss the topic while everyone else simply avoids the post. This is similar behavior to what is seen in a flamewar, but could we agree that there might possibly…

I don't have a strong opinion on (the lack of) women in tech. I don't feel strongly either way, so I'd be more moved to change the status quo if I could be presented with a good case that women are being held back.

Sorry for being insensitive, but complaints about presentation slides mentioning porn stars (unnecessarily edgy IMO, but not misogynistic unless you stretch the definitions of freedom/dignity/exploitation to mean that all porn is exploitative), late night invitations to drink coffee and dongle/forking jokes haven't made me more sympathetic to having a debate about sexism in tech; if anything, they've made me avoid reading or commenting on anything related to sexism. I don't want to keep women who feel wronged by some event from retelling the experience, but most of the stories about sexism in tech I've read have made me form a pattern of avoiding sexism stories altogether.

I fear I might be missing insightful essays from women about their experiences (good, bad, and anything in between) in tech.

Re: Female Founders

#92

Post by [deleted] »

redthrowaway wrote: post #49
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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Female Founders

#93

Post by static332 »

If you didn't say anything wrong, don't give any clarification. Because people who think you did wrong, won't believe you either way.

If you did anything wrong, be brave and own it.

Re: Female Founders

#94

Post by DanBC »

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…

One reason sexism stories get flagged off is because they attract hateful sexist idiots who spew vile nonsense.

They are unrepentent and relentless. Flagging the threads is the only way to defend https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments from horrible halfwits.

Re: Female Founders

#95

Post by michaelochurch »

I really despise the way HN is moderated-- there are childish vendettas, there's filtering of inconvenient truths to the VCs and the startup world-- but I never thought PG was sexist or racist. In fact, I hate the fact that, despite being more progressive than most VCs (and willing to discuss these issues rather than equivocating) he's become a lightning rod. What The Information did to PG was almost criminal.

The people who caricature us as being only interested in funding young hotshots forget that when we started, in 2005, young founders were not a privileged group but a marginalized one. VCs didn't want to fund them, and when they did they often as not tried to replace them with "adult supervision." The fact that young founders seem a privileged group now is partly due to our efforts.

That's half-true, but I'd debate that point. From 1995 to 2005, VCs still liked to fund young founders-- but specifically because they were so clueless. They took advantage, worked them to the extreme, diluted their equity severely, and then often handed their companies off to their (usually middle-aged) friends. After 2005, the chickenhawking dynamic (see: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-th...) has evolved and the new one is much kinder to young founders. I don't know if it's related to YC. But YC definitely gave young founders an edge that they didn't have before; now they have a backer who knows, through having seen so many companies evolve, how to avoid being scammed in the ways that young founders in the '90s were.

It seems like YC's actual effect has been to replace a chickenhawking culture that was attracted to, but screwed, young founders with a chickenhawking culture that gives young founders a better chance of coming out on top. That's an improvement, objectively, but it also makes YC appear to own the transformed chickenhawking culture. It's like picking up some litter on the road and being held responsible for the nearby pieces that weren't cleaned up.

Re: Female Founders

#96

Post by saraid216 »

zorpner wrote: post #65
pg wrote: post #40

Earlier 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…

> 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. That... is not an argument? There's ample evidence to show that members of underrepresented groups within individual companies/industries experience unconscious biases in hiring/ranking/etc, even towards groups of which they're a member.

Arguments are for little people. When you're at the upper end of the power structure, you give statements, because they're fact. Because you said so.

Re: Female Founders

#97

Post by SloughFeg »

It's interesting that neither this article or Paul's related December article ever address the most basic and seminal question about this in the first place: why is this a problem? Why is it a big deal if there are less female founders than male?

It seems like this whole discussion has been nothing but a bunch of posturing and vague half-solutions about an issue that I'm not sure even exists.

Re: Female Founders

#98

Post by jiggy2011 »

daleharvey wrote: post #84
jiggy2011 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think NSA discussions now are penalized too.

Re: Female Founders

#99

Post by MrZongle2 »

krstck wrote: post #76

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 you…

Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, plumbing or cartooning. Likewise, not much hubbub about the gender imbalance in the fashion industry.

Could it possibly be that men and women think differently, and those minor differences are reflected in their career preferences? Could it be that these preferences play a bigger role in gender imbalances in career fields than sexism in a modern society?

Nah. That's crazy talk.

Re: Female Founders

#100

Post by Tycho »

johnrob wrote: post #23

Another explanation of why girls don't start companies: maybe they are smarter? The median outcome of a startup is a loss of time and money.

It would be smart to recognise that startup returns aren't normally distributed.
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