Female Founders • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founders

#121

Post by tatianajosephy » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:28 PM UTC

PG's main - and strongest - point is this:

YC's MO is to spot value where other VCs don't. When YC started, it invested in young founders. PG is saying that YC now sees female founders in the same light: as marginalized (aka, undervalued), therefore presenting a great investment opportunity.

If the valley's smartest VCs are becoming "Bullish on Women", to use Warren Buffett's phrase [1]), PG's essay is big news for women.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/02/leadership/warren-buffett-wo...

Re: Female Founders

#122

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #33

git-pull wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To cut to the point, how many leg ups did Zuckerberg get between luck and connections? What part of his success was environment, what part was his own will and power? Where does he stand as an engineer, at founding and then? Is he just a face, a legend, or does is he a real decision maker?

He controls 57% of the Facebook voting stock (may be less after his secondary offering). He's one of the most powerful founder CEO's in the world. Zuck definitely got some advantage in connections and upbringing, but there have been countless other founders with the same advantage who didn't win the war PG is talking about.

[deleted]

Re: Female Founders

#123

Post by DanBC » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #119

cjbprime wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I won't comment on the efficiency of the algorithm (although it is questionable). Let's assume that it's a bad design decision. Your logic behind it being prejudiced is still faulty, as it ascribes a fallacious cause. The algorithm merely shuffles page rankings based on two criteria: upvotes and comments, both of which are user-supplied. The algorithm does not support prejudice, it simply behaves in the fashion it is…

The algorithm also uses flags. Some people flag the sexism articles once the wingnits arrive because the threads are effectively useless by then.

Re: Female Founders

#124

Post by rdtsc » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

> However, not the worst does not mean not bad.

I can see you are trying to help the subject and advance the discussion forward. I wonder if it would be more productive to instead just criticize point by point pg's post (which I think was decent), instead write what you would suggest would be an alternative.

You pointed to What about Girls Who Code? (http://www.girlswhocode.com/) and another one and mentioned how he has done no research. Alright, what about CWC? What is your research? Instead of just shutting down point after point in the original post, maybe explain why you think GWC or BGC is a better alternative.

> I don't think he should have written this post.

Then we would have seen comments complaining about "PG has has this incident in a while and hasn't followed up, that is so typical of such and such ...".

Re: Female Founders

#125

Post by moocowduckquack » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

ef4 wrote: post #102

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.

That doesn't address the major obstacle I see when trying to introduce programming to beginners. Finding smart people who can think abstractly isn't actually that hard -- lots of people can do it. But those people won't become productive programmers until they've put in thousands of hours absorbing the minutiae of how our current computing world actually works. The layers of abstraction go very deep, and every layer…

But those people won't become productive programmers until they've put in thousands of hours absorbing the minutiae of how our current computing world actually works.

Depends what you define as productive programming. Not every problem requires intimate knowledge of the whole stack. Besides, I found that the most important skills for me are not in trying to memorise all the details, but to get good at using reference materials and to look for the structures rather than the nouns.

Re: Female Founders

#126

Post by loumf » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

dictum wrote: post #42

loumf wrote: post #13

In a footnote, PG says the poor need hardware to program. I work with poor kids (and volunteer to teach technology to them). Hardware is relatively easy to come by (there are cheap options and donations), but access to the Internet is not.

That's one positive side effect of 3G: more people can get Internet access. Data caps for pre-paid plans are low here (200MB-300MB), but at roughly $5/month, they're the only affordable option for poor families and people who live away from metro areas.

Not for a desktop computer for programming purposes. Access to google, stack overflow, github, hosting, etc.

Re: Female Founders

#127

Post by mtrimpe » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

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.

I also still can't reconcile how a month and a half ago pg apparently believed that Silicon Valley is a near perfect meritocracy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606) and now he's been working hard(er than average) to address systemic inequalities.

For the record though; I thoroughly applaud his efforts on improving gender equality and I very much appreciate the first baby steps he's taking here on behalf of the industry. I really hope though that one day he'll be able to look back on this essay and realise this was really only just the start of it.

Re: Female Founders

#128

Post by baddox » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #110

MrZongle2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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?

> 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? No, having friends that are members of group X does not disprove prejudice against group X. Finding specific people of group X meet your bar from friendship, no matter how high that bar is, does not mean that…

How then, might one prove that one is not bigoted?

Re: Female Founders

#129

Post by MrZongle2 » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:30 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #116

MrZongle2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Note that there is no similar hand-wringing about the lack of women in the fields of sanitation, construction, Yes there is, and examples of programmes to get men into. Ursing or women into construction have been posted to HN before. Someone always always makes the same point as you and for some reason it always manages to infuriate me. I've had to re-write this 4 times because it was so vicious at first. But it do…

'But it does feel tbat a person must be deliberately trollin when they trot out the same tired bullshit that other idiots spout, especially when that bullshit has been debunked on the same forum that they're posting to and when it is so easy to debunk with a simple websearch. It feels as if some people like living their lives with the blinkers on.'

Well then, since I'm spouting "bullshit" (your words):

Educate me. Let me play the "Citation Needed" card.

Re: Female Founders

#130

Post by gaius » Fri, Jan 10, 2014, 9:30 PM UTC

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #43

Why is pg engaging with these trolls? Does anyone think they truly care about women succeeding in business or software? No, this is about making a stink and attention whoring. The appropriate response is to flip these weenies the bird.

One thing I have noticed is female journalists, who chose not to do CS themselves, but feel very strongly that other women should go into CS. Not even that they wish they themselves could go back in time and get into BBC Micros. It's a curious phenomenon and I wonder if it's really driven by anything other bandwagoneering.