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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#251

Post by stonemetal »

pyrocat wrote: post #228
msandford wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And men are under-represented in nursing (at 6%). Human beings bias themselves in addition to the biases that society puts on them. http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing As long as the ratio isn't much worse than 3:1 (men or women are at least 25% of the workforce) either way I'd argue that it's a pretty balanced work environment all things considered. Shooting for 50/50 equality would potentially make more i…

Equality is definitely a goal, I think we should have more male nurses, but that's not really a priority when men are over represented in most of the higher paid fields (doctors, lawyers, CEOs .etc). Let's work on helping the more disadvantaged party first, yeah?

I don't know if we drove some men into nursing from high paying engineering jobs then there would be more space for women in engineering. Salaries would raise for everyone still in engineering so it would become more attractive to women.

Re: Female Founders

#253

Post by alecdbrooks »

Zikes wrote: post #146

Judging by the comments on this article, it would appear that once you've been labeled a sexist it is downright impossible to dispel. I'm not sure what people expect, exactly. Is pg supposed to give up all his worldly goals and possessions and live as some sort of equality monk? Should he know of and contribute to every one of the many groups and organizations involved in gender equality? And what exactly is wrong wi…

>And what exactly is wrong with the "I have black friends" defense? Are you trying to say that pg is friends with someone in spite of his supposed hateful nature? That he's somehow looked past the person's "shortcomings"?

The critics I've read aren't saying pg has a hateful nature. They're saying that he hasn't fully accounted for his unconscious biases.

Given that everyone's friends have actual shortcomings, it doesn't seem a stretch to say that people are friends with people they imagine to have shortcomings because of an unconscious bias.

Re: Female Founders

#254

Post by protomyth »

First, it is a shame Mr. Graham got the business end of a "reporter"[1] trying to get click-bait in a story, and sadly, it is almost impossible to correct the story on the second or third or etc. day. The initial "truth" is what people remember. I've been down that road, and it is a politician's game[2].

I am extremely happy though about this paragraph "First of all, kids need to be able to program, in both senses of the word: they have to know how to write a program, and they need access to a computer they can write programs on, which nowadays probably includes Internet connectivity."

I was lucky and grew up in the 8-bit era where cheap, programmable computers with magazines teaching programming were the norm. Now, the cost of programming is much higher and has excluded many. I am happy Mr. Graham is doing something about this.

1) I have a particular problem with the "edit actual words for clarity" school of thought among some "reporters"

2) check the inevitable worsening of any number released by the government (job), initial ok - correction worse

Re: Female Founders

#257

Post by xenophanes »

PG isn't a worm. He's done good things, not bad things, and he knows it and won't say otherwise. He tries to clarify (implying his accusers are mistaken), rather than apologize. Some people don't like anything great; they weren't tearing him down due to misunderstanding but malice. They don't like his attitude and accomplishments, and clarifying that his views are reasonable won't satisfy them. This is an explanatory passage from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand:

"My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she'll think she's great, won't she?"

"You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?" He made the same sound; its meaning was so eloquent that she needed no other answer. "Why?" she asked.

"Because she thinks she's so good. What right has she to think it? What right has anybody to think he's good? Nobody's any good."

"You don't mean it, Mr. Taggart."

"I mean, we're only human beings—and what's a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones—so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence. When a man thinks he's good—that's when he's rotten. Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he's done."

"But if a man knows that what he's done is good?"

"Then he ought to apologize for it."

"To whom?"

"To those who haven't done it."

Re: Female Founders

#258

Post by CGamesPlay »

abalone wrote: post #215
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…

There's also this gem. PG: "A lot of people outside the startup world seem to assume that investors have the same sort of naive bias ordinary people do when deciding who to invite to join a club—that they simply fund the people most like them. That is not true." John Doerr, famous investor: "That correlates more with any other success factor that I’ve seen in the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. If you look at Bezos,…

Citation on that quote, for anyone else who was curious: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121025688414577219

Re: Female Founders

#259

Post by Mikeb85 »

glenra wrote: post #226
DanBC wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The fact that you know of programs "to get men into nursing or women into construction" that have been "posted to HN before" or have seen some claim "debunked" in the past doesn't mean the person you're writing to has. FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction. Not to say that they don't exist, but I'd agree with your interlocutor that the level of hand-wr…

> FWIW, I read HN pretty regularly and had never noticed any programs to get more women into construction.

Here there actually is a government program to get women into trades, simply because there's a shortage of skilled tradespeople in general, and nearly every other demographic is 'tapped out' if you will.

Construction, while it can be lucrative, is simply not 'aspirational', so anyone looking to improve their social status steers clear of the profession.

Re: Female Founders

#260

Post by [deleted] »

krstck wrote: post #178
MrZongle2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'I think we absolutely need to make this field more friendly to women.' And I completely agree. I guess my point is: how much of this outrage is manufactured? Is the gender imbalance truly a "crisis" or is it an artifact of something else entirely?

Certain parties like to fuel the outrage flame because they make money on clickbait. There are also just people with an axe to grind that get off on starting fights. Then you have people that will swear up and down that there is no gender problem in tech, nothing wrong with 'brogrammer' culture, etc. The reasonable people in the middle all think they are arguing against the extreme views, but just end up fighting eac…

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