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The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

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Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#61

Post by balls187 »

melindajb wrote: post #51
jv22222 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought is that it's not because they mean to be rude. It's because they pattern match. I've noticed when folks see the same pattern over and over it's difficult to see outside it. My friends wife is an F16 fighter pilot. I was surprised to find that out. Truth is I should not have been surprised, but it went against the patterns I'm used to seeing. I wonder if that's at play here?

No, no, no, no and no. Stop it. Pattern matching isn't science. Stop pretending it is. https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794... To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

> No, no, no, no and no. Stop it.

Nice job in raising the level of discourse here.

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#62

Post by melindajb »

balls187 wrote: post #61
melindajb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no, no and no. Stop it. Pattern matching isn't science. Stop pretending it is. https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794... To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

> No, no, no, no and no. Stop it. Nice job in raising the level of discourse here.

oh because claiming a bullshit voodoo science as argument was so earth shattering? seriously. especially coming from someone with "balls" in the name. read the link. Love it, i'm now not being allowed to reply. I love how it's ok for guys on hacker news to denigrate and insult women and minorities but if we say, look stop it, you're all suddenly begging for rationality. NOTHING about pattern matching is rational. So you have no right to expect rationality as a response.

all the links to reply to any comment are now gone. would you like a screen shot?

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#63

Post by melindajb »

jv22222 wrote: post #60
melindajb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is why pattern matching is bullshit: https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794... Here, I'll even save you the trouble of clicking: To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

From the post you linked to... "So pattern recognition is a useless heuristic made up by a group of rich white men as a way to quantify something" If that statement isn't racist, biased, and, well, just quite mean really, then I'm not sure what is.

cry me a river. you don't get to whine about this stuff, when you're the party in power. Work to better it, stop whining, that's what those people tell everyone else.

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#64

Post by thibauts »

melindajb wrote: post #49
nicolethenerd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is just pattern matching - 'sexism' seems to connote intent, or at least some kind of discrimination / negativity. Assuming that a woman you meet is more likely to be non-technical than technical is just probability - it's not a great thing, but I do it too, and I am a woman. It doesn't mean that I think women shouldn't be in tech, or that I'm surprised when they are - just more likely than not, in my experien…

Here is why pattern matching is bullshit: https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794... Here, I'll even save you the trouble of clicking: To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

Not everybody it out to hurt you, discriminate, or hate you. That being said, immediate reaction / assumptions cannot be treated the same way as thoughtful examination. At all.

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#65

Post by balls187 »

melindajb wrote: post #62
balls187 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, no, no, no and no. Stop it. Nice job in raising the level of discourse here.

oh because claiming a bullshit voodoo science as argument was so earth shattering? seriously. especially coming from someone with "balls" in the name. read the link. Love it, i'm now not being allowed to reply. I love how it's ok for guys on hacker news to denigrate and insult women and minorities but if we say, look stop it, you're all suddenly begging for rationality. NOTHING about pattern matching is rational. So…

> all the links to reply to any comment are now gone. would you like a screen shot?

Hrm...sure it's not that you're trying to reply to a new comment (there is a delay before you can reply)

I understand your point. Unfortunately the way you made it makes you come across as an irrational individual.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fbi+profiling&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...

> especially coming from someone with "balls" in the name

Considering that's my name...

> i'm now not being allowed to reply.

Did someone prevent you from replying? Did your comment get deleted?

No one is preventing you from replying. You disagree with the above commented, I disagreed with how you came across.

> NOTHING about pattern matching is rational. So you have no right to expect rationality as a response.

How so?

Think that it's okay for TSA agents to search a 82 year old women, instead of say me (a dark ass dude who looks like a terrorist)? Should their sampling of passengers should be completely random?

People shouldn't denigrate anyone: women, men, minorities, or majorities.

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#66

Post by zorpner »

jv22222 wrote: post #60
melindajb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is why pattern matching is bullshit: https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/8178b2794... Here, I'll even save you the trouble of clicking: To be direct: Pattern recognition is bullshit voodoo pseudo-science masquerading as objectivity and meritocracy. It’s sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and xenophobia dressed up as science. It sickens me.

From the post you linked to... "So pattern recognition is a useless heuristic made up by a group of rich white men as a way to quantify something" If that statement isn't racist, biased, and, well, just quite mean really, then I'm not sure what is.

I always hesitate to post this on HN, because it almost never goes well, but here it is:

Racism (sexism/classism/etc) is not about race (sex/class/etc). It's about power. For this reason alone (let alone all the other good ones), there is no symmetry in these biases (e.g. the false equivalence of misogyny and misandry).

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#67

Post by chris_mahan »

I'm just going to link to Don't rely on "Magic Happens Here" from the O'Reilly book "97 Things Every Programmer Should Know".

http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Don%27...

Then I'm going to ask the programmer/engineer to flip the model around and ask that they look at Operations in the same way they wish management see them.

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#68

Post by jacalata »

jv22222 wrote: post #46
OverlordXenu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has very little to do with intent. Subconsciously thinking someone with a name usually thought to indicate blackness—like Tyrone—is different is racist. Subconsciously disbelieving that a woman can answer technical questions or is a fighter pilot is sexist. It may not necessarily be your fault, because society and your peers have taught you this, but that doesn't really matter. Especially because you have a respon…

"Disbelieving"? Or "unaware"? Disbelieving has intent. Unaware is simply not thinking about it. Would you say it is ok to not think about something due to unawareness? Or would you say that was being sexist?

Its usually called privilege or internalized bias.

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#69

Post by jacalata »

thibauts wrote: post #58
parfe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My thought is that it's not because they mean to be rude. It's because they pattern match. I've noticed when folks see the same pattern over and over it's difficult to see outside it. Awful lot of words you used to avoid typing "sexism". Hide behind whatever phrasing you prefer, but automatically assigning a person gender roles out of intellectual laziness embodies sexism.

Calling people sexist when they try to bring a valid point pretty much amounts to intellectual laziness too, don't you think ? Like it or not, our brains are wired to be able to ignore unusual cases and save complete analysis of each and every situation. This course of evolution may be why you and I are able to post on this website, after all. Sexism, racism an any other form of discrimination are made of this. That'…

Assuming she probably isn't is not sexism, it is an often-correct assumption.

It's both.

related - one of the things I hate about hn is people whining "that's an appeal to authority, that's a logical fallacy, how dare you say you would believe a 50 year old hr manager about workplace customs over my 13 year old sister!" Technically they're correct, if I were invested in the argument I should follow up both proposals equally and not just dismiss one. But in real life, ain't nobody got time for that, and we use heuristics instead. The trick is identifying the biases I'm using as a heuristic, and also identofying which of these heuristics are hurting other people and when it is worth doing the long route of checking each argument - for the cocktail party example, would it kill people to just ask a woman what she does, even if they probably aren't in tech?

Re: The Myth of the Non-Technical Startup Employee

#70

Post by ap22213 »

drawkbox wrote: post #35
ericabiz wrote: post #14

The situation described at the tradeshow in this article has also happened to me, repeatedly and consistently. The difference? I AM technical. I just also happen to be a woman. I love the tech industry. I've been in it professionally since 1997, and I've run tech startups as a CEO for the past 13 years. And if there's one thing I can count on, it's the consistent, pervasive assumption that I'm not technical. I hate g…

This is a good example of sexism. But also a hint of target marketing, a few things of note... Since there are less women in tech, technical people assume they are boring most people with technical jargon including most women (probabilistically). I bet if you dropped some technical info early it would knock it out of that mode quickly. I know when a women knows or doesn't know about tech I do change how I talk but I…

I think it's a good point, even if it's an unfortunate situation. I empathize with ericabiz - I'd love to see more balance between genders in software development. (and, sadly, I think it's only gotten worse since I started in the 90s). But, having gotten the 'eyes glazed over' look by every professional woman with whom I've tried to talk software within the last year, one just gets sort of trained after awhile. (maybe similar to how women get trained to assume that guys will hit on them.)

But, ericabiz, I recommend going to events solo - you'll meet more people that way. If you get hit on, bring the topic back to software. They'll get the point. Or, alternatively bring one or two female software friends with you. Couples going to events don't work so well, in my experience - regardless of who's the technical one.

Alternatively, wear something that only a coder would wear. Put some technical stickers on your laptop. Give some kind of sign to differentiate yourself.

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