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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#421

Post by xixi77 »

Helianthus wrote: post #180
angersock wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you driving at? Have some guts and stop beating about the bush.

I dunno, I thought I was being direct. The tech sector has sexism problems, and YC, as part of that sector, is not going to be immune to them. This piece does nothing but puff up YC in an effort to distance YC from the tech sector's sexism, which will only work to a point. The target audience is the section of moderate feminists that are inherently sympathetic to YC; the concerns of those outside that layer, even the…

What are these non-mainstream feminist concerns that are being ignored here?

Re: Female Founders

#422

Post by cfield »

pshin45 wrote: post #381
haberman wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not my place to ask, but if I were Jessica I would probably appreciate an apology. She said you made her so angry that it was difficult to remain calm. If you make someone that angry in real life based on your own mistake, wouldn't you normally apologize for it? But my greater point was that there is generally too much criticism and indignation that are substituting for listening and understanding. Put yourself…

(closing comment from my friend) "Yes, I absolutely am sorry and saddened to have made JL upset. Again, it's been my understanding that while the female partners are great and I'm sure sit in on important decisions, they are primarily YC's accountant and lawyer. If that's not their main role at YC, I and others are mistaken. For the record, I think JL is /great/ and YC would do itself a lot of good to hire other wome…

I can confirm that you and others with this understanding are indeed mistaken.

Based on my extensive experience with all of them, I would shuffle your words around a bit and suggest a more accurate characterization is:

YC's female partners are great and make and participate in important decisions. Though it is not their main role at YC, two of them have chief responsibility for YC's own finance/accounting/legal needs.

In hiring Kirsty and Carolynn, YC did hire other women like Jessica, at least on the "great-ness" scale.

And I wholeheartedly agree that YC would do itself a lot of good to hire other women like all three of them. Just as it would do itself a lot of good to hire other men like pg, pb, Robert, Trevor, Kevin, Aaron, Geoff and Garry.

Re: Female Founders

#423

Post by hrjet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #377
eatitraw wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not like profit from white males running Federal Reserves automatically goes to underadvantaged white males. My point is that if you believe in equal abilities regardless of race/gender then you probably want to completely get rid of race and gender fields in your application form. And if you actually support discriminating against these fields, then you have to explain your decision rather than simply hit down…

> My point is that if you believe in equal abilities regardless of race/gender then you probably want to completely get rid of race and gender fields in your application form. You probably want to avoid them being used in selection decisions, but you may -- particularly if you are a group whose mission is dealing with the specific barriers to a specific disadvantaged race/sex subgroup -- want to have them on your adm…

Polling can be done anonymously and posteriori.

Doing it a-priori is not needed and has serious implications.

Re: Female Founders

#424

Post by ghshephard »

The one thing that caught my attention in this essay as I read over it a couple times, was PG's emphasis on the being a computer programmer, as opposed to computer hacker. My sense (and someone feel free to correct me), is that YCombinator does have a pretty significant (and, I believe, appropriate) bias towards hackers.

Someone can become a computer programmer in a fairly straightforward fashion - just take a dozen or so computing science classes - and, voila - if you pass them you are a computer programmer.

But becoming a hacker doesn't just require that skill, it also requires a desire, passion, and focus that goes beyond just understanding the mechanics and syntax of computer programming.

It's likely that having more female computer programmers will result in more hackers, but I thought it was strange that in an Essay of Female Founders in the context of YCombinator, that PG didn't mention the nuance between "Computer Programmer" and "Computer Hacker" even once. The closest he comes is, "avid programmers" - and I'm wondering if he was writing this essay for a broader audience, and explicitly avoiding the word, "hacker."

Re: Female Founders

#425

Post by heterogenic »

You know what I'd love to see the next time one of these inflammatory gender-related posts comes up?

One thread that only women are allowed to post to. No men to challenge them, play devil's advocate or otherwise defend their privilege. Just one place for us to say our piece without being downvoted into oblivion, where our voice can be heard (in all its glorious heterogeneity).

Because that's what's missing in this conversation about women in tech. Women.

Carry on mansplaining your way through it boys... I'll be over here building things.

Re: Female Founders

#426

Post by esperluette »

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…

Actually, the lack of women in cartooning/comics is a topic that has been written about quite often, here's an example: http://comicsalliance.com/superhero-comics-women-sexism/

There are also many apprenticeships for women in construction/plumbing, because they are 1) good-paying jobs (at least in housing booms) and 2) ones where historically women have been denied apprenticeships/union membership.

Oddly enough, there is also gender imbalance in the fashion industry, but not the way you're thinking of it. Sure, women models make WAY more money than male models, but more top designers are men: (http://www.universityobserver.ie/2012/02/06/gender-imbalance...)

Maybe you should do a little googling before you sound off about the lack of hand-wringing? Maybe it's just you who don't care.

Re: Female Founders

#427

Post by hayksaakian »

ghshephard wrote: post #424

The one thing that caught my attention in this essay as I read over it a couple times, was PG's emphasis on the being a computer programmer, as opposed to computer hacker. My sense (and someone feel free to correct me), is that YCombinator does have a pretty significant (and, I believe, appropriate) bias towards hackers. Someone can become a computer programmer in a fairly straightforward fashion - just take a dozen…

Maybe because he correctly described the problem:

Think about it like a funnel

1) Some % of people are women

2) Some % of women are programmers

3) Some % of programmers who are women are hackers

PG posits that the biggest "bounce rate" is woman -> programmer rather than woman programmer -> woman hacker

Empirically, I recall the article claiming around 1/5 founding teams having 1 woman, (notably this is not a % of founders but founding teams).

Anecdotally I claim that the % of women programmers is less than this number.

I could get more and more concrete, but I think you get the idea.

Re: Female Founders

#428

Post by Gigablah »

heterogenic wrote: post #425

You know what I'd love to see the next time one of these inflammatory gender-related posts comes up? One thread that only women are allowed to post to. No men to challenge them, play devil's advocate or otherwise defend their privilege. Just one place for us to say our piece without being downvoted into oblivion, where our voice can be heard (in all its glorious heterogeneity). Because that's what's missing in this c…

"mansplaining"? "boys"? Are you serious?

Re: Female Founders

#429

Post by mortyseinfeld »

Once again we have leftists commenting on how dividing people into groups is a good thing because of historical racism, segregation, etc..

It's like 1984 newspeak and clear that's it's a sick ideology.

Re: Female Founders

#430

Post by marquis »

loumf wrote: post #136
zachlatta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have you been working to overcome the lack of access to the internet? This is something I've been giving a lot of thought lately.

They just have to go to central places (cafes, libraries). It's not easy. Also, not everything we do needs internet -- we tear apart and rebuild desktops -- that's actually a fairly easy thing to teach even a young kid.

Can you source a router and teach them to build their own internet over private LAN? There is a huge range of basic to one-day advanced things they could do with socket programming and building basic client/servers to have fun with. Then source some donations and build a neighbourhood mesh network.

Note: I'm a woman and started this way teaching myself C when young. Client/server tutorials were one of the most fun, I recall.

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