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Diversity and Startups

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171–180 of 218 posts

Re: Diversity and Startups

#171

Post by rhizome »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #65
staunch wrote: post #41

What about class? Ivy League Parents -> Private School -> SAT tutoring -> Ivy League College -> Investment by Ivy League VC -> Acquired by Ivy League Tech Company vs Poor parents -> Shitty Public School -> High School Drop Out -> Programmer at Ivy League Tech Company (maybe) There's a reason most of the big tech companies are from Ivy League graduates. And you can't ignore how many successful startups only happened b…

There's likely to be big correlations between class and race. Gender is obviously a much more complicated one. I think aspirations are likely to play a big role here, after all people tend to judge their successes relative to their family and close friends. So for a kid from a poor neighbourhood (who's more likely to be black), getting a good job with a decent salary and benefits is a great success already and runnin…

So for a kid from a poor neighbourhood (who's more likely to be black), getting a good job with a decent salary and benefits is a great success already and running a startup is too risky so there's less incentive.

For starting and running a startup, maybe, but those forces are much less in effect when the upper classes are doing the hiring. As we see at a lot of these companies, they aren't really reaching very far outside of their cohort. Cue the culture-fit debate.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#172

Post by adamzerner »

MartinCron wrote: post #156
adamzerner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The belief that African Americans were literally inferior to European Americans animated most of 20th century racism, so this observation is probably less helpful than your otherwise clear writing makes it sound. I'm afraid I may have implied something I didn't mean to imply. I'm not sure what you mean by "this observation". I didn't mean to imply that people see girls as "literally inferior". Just that people prob…

If you really want to address both women and girls, may I respectfully suggest trying the phrase "women and girls"?

That seems too long winded.

I understand your point that "girls" might have a connotation of disrespect. As if they're young and immature. But I think it's a slight connotation.

Given the context, of me pointing out that girls are being mistreated and that I think we should treat them better, I think the connotation is negligible. In other contexts I could see "girls" being disrespectful, but I don't think it is in this one.

With that said, maybe I'm being too stubborn. I often protest trivial things like this. For the record, if the case were reversed, I would absolutely be using the term "boys".

Edit: Also, I think the big thing is that I don't think of people in their mid-twenties as "adults" (men/women). I'm 21 and I'd refer to a friend of mine as "a guy I know" or "a girl I know".

Re: Diversity and Startups

#173

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tptacek wrote: post #155
shawndrost wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question was, "Why is competition a diversity problem?" The answer is "science indicates that competition motivates genders differently". The fact that our industry is deeply, irretrievably competitive is (imho) part of why it's deeply, irretrievably gender-skewed. (Caveats: you're right that women perform in the industry just fine. Also, many women are motivated and successful in competitive environments, and t…

No. The industry must be competitive. Companies compete in the market. People must stop promoting the fiction that women are poor competitors. That's a stereotype that just happens to be awfully convenient for male entrepreneurs.

Considering the trail of idiocy and failure in tech, especially at C-Suite level, 'The industry must be competitive' is perhaps not a statement that overlaps with reality.

Competition is not a fetish. It's not a de facto solution that showers the world with good things. Quite often it makes people do unintelligent things for silly reasons.

It's actually a mythology. And it's perfectly fine to criticise blind adherence to it.

As for women in tech - I'm always fascinated that the pressure is one way. Why don't the fashion or beauty industries - which are hardly small or financially irrelevant - complain that so few men work in them?

I suppose there's a presumption that tech is very serious and important, and fashion and beauty are trivial, silly, and vapid.

Problem is, tech is often trivial, silly, and vapid too - as is a lot of business culture. How many products have been released that fundamentally fail to work? How many projects have veered off in surreal directions because innovation[tm]? How many episodes of Dilbert have there been now?

Perhaps it's the perception of seriousness and importance that's the real problem.

As a side note, fashion contributes around £26bn to UK GDP. It's very difficult to get hard facts how software compares, because the definition can include anyone selling anything from a website. But web design and app development on their own are much, much smaller.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#174

Post by dang »

a-t-shirt wrote: post #81
thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just hi-hacking this comment to talk about the same line. Everybody needs to stop with this "white-male" nonsense, which is inherently racist. There is much cultural diversity among what is considered "white" and that is painfully obvious. The "black" American guy and "white" American gal might have more in common with each other than the "white" Italian working in the cubicle next door. This also applies to the vast…

At least one moderator here (with the username "dang") has blocked discussion of the fact that white men are actually underrepresented in tech. For example, take a look at this thread from about three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7662013 He labeled the submission itself a "troll" (and locked it) because it generated what he called "high-indignation, low-information" responses. Read the responses a…

> and locked it

That's false. We didn't lock anything. We simply made the post not be on the front page.

Edit: I posted a longer reply, but decided it was a bad idea.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#175

Post by argonaut »

tptacek wrote: post #70
argonaut wrote: post #63

One objection I have is with hackathons. From my observations most hackathons aren't particularly inclusive environments - they may do more harm than good. Examples include the intense focus on competition and prizes (I didn't think it was a good idea for YC Hacks to explicitly advertise the prize of getting an interview), the fact that many hackathons now have applications processes where more applicants are rejecte…

Why is competition a diversity problem? To me, the idea that aggressive competition selects for a specific age, gender, or ethnicity is itself problematic. Not to mention that I think that's not true.

Since I seem to have ignited a huge sub-thread on competition, I'd like to clarify my intent. There are varying degrees and kinds of "competition." The competition I had in mind is the kind of competition associated with people pulling all-nighters for the entire weekend, loading up on Red-Bulls, and worrying about the best ways to pitch judges (and manipulate those pitches).

That kind of competition is generally unrepresentative of the "cooperative competition" of the tech industry.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#176

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

potatolicious wrote: post #163
tzs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone doesn't want to consider women for a job, it probably means that they think women have some inherent unsuitableness for that particular job. They aren't aggressive enough for sales, or don't have the upper body strength for landscaping, or some such. They don't mind hiring women for jobs that they think women can do (secretary). They probably have women friends, date or marry women, and so on. If someone d…

> "They don't want black people around for any job." This is observably false. In American culture there are many jobs are perceived to be "for" blacks, and jobs that are perceived to be "for" hispanics. Racism and sexism isn't as different as you seem to think it is. In the modern context (i.e., not guys in hoods hanging you from a tree) it is all about perception and opposing when races/genders stray from their "pl…

>Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead.

This.

Who sets policy? Who makes the decisions? What value system do they use to do it?

And most of all - who benefits from their decisions?

The debate isn't really about diversity, it's about values. And you won't get 'diversity' until those values change and become less dysfunctionally self-serving.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#177

Post by crassus2 »

designNERD wrote: post #169
thrownaway999 wrote: post #109

Could someone convince me why I should care about the gonads and skin color of the people writing code for me? Does anybody really think YC's performance would be better if their founder classes looked like a diversity picture from a college recruiting brochure?

You don't understand the importance of having different perspectives represented when you are making products and services for everyone? Seems pretty simple to me.

Could you point out for me where Sam talks about diversity of perspectives? All I see him talking about is what the OP mentions - gonads and skin color.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#178

Post by famousactress »

argonaut wrote: post #127
famousactress wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the irony of making sure we're careful to make subtle distinctions about the top fraction of a percent of the population... in response to a comment about massive class imbalance.

Your words, not mine. My actual intention was to get the OP to move away from an emphasis on the "Ivy League" brand, which I think people need to stop putting up on a pedestal.

I understand, and I don't mean to be argumentative or even trite but my intention was to express disinterest in what words we use to describe elite schools that close-enough-to-no-one can go to.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#179

Post by samth »

adamzerner wrote: post #172
MartinCron wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to address both women and girls, may I respectfully suggest trying the phrase "women and girls"?

That seems too long winded. I understand your point that "girls" might have a connotation of disrespect. As if they're young and immature. But I think it's a slight connotation. Given the context, of me pointing out that girls are being mistreated and that I think we should treat them better, I think the connotation is negligible. In other contexts I could see "girls" being disrespectful, but I don't think it is in t…

Note that the male version of 'girl'is not 'guy', it's boy. Do you use 'boy' regularly to refer to adult men? If not, perhaps not using 'girl' either is appropriate.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#180

Post by designNERD »

melindajb wrote: post #129
throwaway420 wrote: post #97

> We’re encouraging our startups to get HR infrastructure in place earlier. If there's one thing that a fast and nimble startup DOES NOT NEED, it's HR drones trying to assert themselves into the startup. This is great news for us that compete with YC companies because it means that you're going to be handcuffing yourselves and bogging yourselves down employees who are literally a negative to the bottom line. > Specif…

What you fail to recognize is that YC is funding a disproportionately large number of founders who have little to no work experience. this leads to situations where the founders have no idea how to protect their company(including their investors) from harassment and discrimination lawsuits, or the attendant PR nightmare that hurts all their fellow batchmates. I happen to think this is not enough but at a minimum I've…

The young YC companies don't hire anyone not like them so they don't need HR.
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