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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#301

Post by jkrems »

mtrimpe wrote: post #127
zorpner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Let's stay with what he said:

> Which it presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely.

He's saying that a useful definition of meritocracy does not mean that everyone is only judged by his abilities. He's saying explicitly that such a thing does not exist. Further:

> And if SV is only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good.

I don't know how you jump from "pretty good" to "near perfect meritocracy".

Re: Female Founders

#302

Post by Karunamon »

mcantelon wrote: post #299
Karunamon wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say as you post a paragraph from a (whoops: not dead) terrorist's tirade against liberals. I don't think you could have possibly picked a worse example to hold up as not involving tribalism...

I don't see how the example is tribalist. Ted Kaczynski, in my understanding, was a loner that was neither left or right wing. And I'm not sure why the fact he's a terrorist is relevant to his analysis.

You don't have to be in the opposite of a group to spew hate against that group. And I see very little "reasoning" in that quote, just lots of eloquently-worded polemic which weakly attempts to cast negative aspersions on an entire political view. Some of it is outright false.

In other words, it's content that wouldn't look at all out of place on a right-leaning website's "This is why liberals are bad" section.

Re: Female Founders

#303

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #213

My main takeaway from reading this article and the comments here is: The awareness of this problem is still very nascent and more & more solutions are emerging, as are criticisms of people who are beginning to acknowledge this problem. To hopefully steer this in another direction, and because I have a little girl, what are some resources you all have seen that can help girls become interested and go into technical di…

Aside: I've looked at that BlackGirlsCode link a bit more and I'm quite shocked that such segregation is encouraged, lauded even. Now there's some argument to support educating the sexes separately but if you're an asian girl living in Brooklyn (say) you can't go? Just because you're Asian ... ??? Really? What if you're half-Asian+half-African, how about your skins black but you're South American. Damn.

Do people really think you get rid of negative discrimination by doing more of it; how can such racism be positive?

From their website:

    "*Sadly, San Francisco’s digital divide falls along the same racial and social fault lines that characterize so many of society’s issues. White households are twice as likely to have home Internet access as African American houses. Bayview Hunters Point, Crocker Amazon, Chinatown, Visitacion Valley, and the Tenderloin have significantly lower rates of home technology use than the rest of the city. Sixty-six percent of Latinos report having a home computer, as opposed to 88 percent of Caucasians.*
	
    *Through community outreach programs such as workshops and after school programs, we introduce underprivileged girls to basic programming skills in languages like Scratch and Ruby on Rails.*"
If the racial divide is so disheartening why add your own. If you want to help the disadvantaged then help the disadvantaged not "all the disadvantaged with the right skin colour". Damn.

[redacted]

Edit: I've redacted my over-flamy end comment.

Re: Female Founders

#304

Post by rmc »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #99
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…

Yes they do. But y'know this is a techy site, so people are gonna talk about tech.

Re: Female Founders

#305

Post by pshin45 »

haberman wrote: post #271
pshin45 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(On behalf of the same friend) "That's good to know - I wasn't aware of that. I'm happy to hear this isn't the case, but I've heard this from YC founders many times which is why it was my perception."

Sounds like you, your friend, and their YC founder friends were actually hurting women by spreading untrue rumors that underplayed the true importance of these women in YC. And yet there is no sense of remorse or apology for that. Where is the indignation now towards yourself and them? Or is that only reserved for people who are actually doing something in the world?

What would you have me/us do then?

Re: Female Founders

#306

Post by rmc »

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…

I haven't seen much talk about construction at all here on HN. It's a tech site, full of techies, talking about tech. Of course tech will be an overwhelmingly popular topic here.

Re: Female Founders

#307

Post by mcantelon »

Karunamon wrote: post #302
mcantelon wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the example is tribalist. Ted Kaczynski, in my understanding, was a loner that was neither left or right wing. And I'm not sure why the fact he's a terrorist is relevant to his analysis.

You don't have to be in the opposite of a group to spew hate against that group. And I see very little "reasoning" in that quote, just lots of eloquently-worded polemic which weakly attempts to cast negative aspersions on an entire political view. Some of it is outright false. In other words, it's content that wouldn't look at all out of place on a right-leaning website's "This is why liberals are bad" section.

Criticism and hate seem to be increasingly conflated these days. I don't see anything in that quote that would quality as hateful.

Re: Female Founders

#308

Post by nether »

Karunamon wrote: post #302
mcantelon wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the example is tribalist. Ted Kaczynski, in my understanding, was a loner that was neither left or right wing. And I'm not sure why the fact he's a terrorist is relevant to his analysis.

You don't have to be in the opposite of a group to spew hate against that group. And I see very little "reasoning" in that quote, just lots of eloquently-worded polemic which weakly attempts to cast negative aspersions on an entire political view. Some of it is outright false. In other words, it's content that wouldn't look at all out of place on a right-leaning website's "This is why liberals are bad" section.

That's true, but that's just one quote of his (he's still alive btw). Here's another:

> The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

Dr. Kaczynski is an anarchist who opposes virtually all political establishments.

Re: Female Founders

#309

Post by [deleted] »

mcantelon wrote: post #299
Karunamon wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say as you post a paragraph from a (whoops: not dead) terrorist's tirade against liberals. I don't think you could have possibly picked a worse example to hold up as not involving tribalism...

I don't see how the example is tribalist. Ted Kaczynski, in my understanding, was a loner that was neither left or right wing. And I'm not sure why the fact he's a terrorist is relevant to his analysis.

[deleted]

Re: Female Founders

#310

Post by CJefferson »

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…

Do you spend time on construction forums every day, hearing about the latest trends in construction? I would guess not, which is why you don't hear much about what is going on there.
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