321–330 of 634 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Criticism and hate seem to be increasingly conflated these days. I don't see anything in that quote that would quality as hateful.
Well, the difference is that the first one is usually fact based and best delivered neutrally. The second one is usually emotion based and delivered with harsh invective, and additionally usually doesn't concern itself with facts.
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…
There is in actually an immense amount of discussion online about the representation of women in the cartooning and comic book professions.
It's not an open-and-shut case that women are unambiguously respected within the fashion industry: http://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2013/11/05/why-arent-women-i...
As I don't read sanitation, construction, or plumbing forums, I haven't run into much discussion of the subject there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can we speed things to being better by being unfair the other way now? Absolutely not. Do you have any evidence for this? Because prima facie, reaching out to women does get some of them into tech fields, and we know that young women who grow up around women in tech are more likely to become such themselves. Are you claiming that we can't actually influence the number of women in tech by discriminating in their fav…
I think the argument is that a society which is constantly discriminating against people one way or the other for "arbitrary reason X of historical importance to group Y" isn't the right way for society to work. You might be able to get the ratio of men-to-women for a particular career field more even, or get more blacks through college, or whatever goal you feel is important accomplished. That's absolutely true and…
More that I don't think you can achieve the harmony you seek. The reason I prefer my metaphor to the left/right driving one is that I intended to allude to the complex nuance involved. Like the sound metaphor: the more you meddle, the more you screw things up.
If I really believed the 'ends' that are sought after could be achieved -- hey sure, whatever means you want, knock yourself out. I guess it's a question of a broader view of 'ends'. I assume the goal is 'harmony and fairness', but if the goal is "X/Y ratio of men to women in A,B,C fields", then sure, I guess you can achieve that.
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,…
John Doerr is saying that sometimes one of factors in making a funding decision is similarity to other massively successful founders, not the people making the funding decisions. PG has been pretty open about the fact that pattern matching to other successful founders is very common.
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…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say it's more like "I'm not racist! I adopted a black kid." The second paragraph was mostly fine but it did come off a little... unhumble. And humility is usually the tone you want when talking about how your company is doing good for X cause, but it could be doing more.
It would be more like saying "I'm not racist because my spouse is black".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
1) whether they can actually describe in some detail what JL / KN / CL do at YC (hint: they're easily seen to be quite active, so one might wonder what's keeeping them so busy)
2) whether they ever bothered to arrange office hours with any of them to see whether they could be helpful (YC partners' schedules are oversubscribed so you can't expect them to come to you to offer help)
3) whether they ever drafted a contract or financing document during their early stages without consulting KN or CL (and if so, why they chose to make important decisions without the advice of experts who are strongly incentivized to help them free of charge)
4) whether their company survived long enough to need advice on financing, contracts, or founder issues such as a departing founder or bringing on a late-stage founder
I think that would help to clarify how justified the initial claims were.
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…