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For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#12It couldn't possibly have anything to do with more men than women being into computing? They cite examples of women who were in computing dropping out. But surely lots of men dropped out, too. But the women made more news. And since there were more men, more remained to go on and get rich on the internet. It's just bad, bad science. Please apply some proper statistics instead of stirring up emotions with anecdotes.
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#13Very good article. I must admit, the more I read about Thiel, the less I like him. It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush.
The ones who 'sell' the best and who have the most connections and resources get ahead in today's Silicon Valley. It's as simple as that. Nothing 'meritocratic' about that.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/12/the-meritocr...
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#14[deleted]
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#15Very good article. I must admit, the more I read about Thiel, the less I like him. It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush.
The more I read about Thiel, the more I wonder how someone so smart can be so dumb.
Is that him who wants students to drop out of college?
And he went to Stanford ... What a hypocrite!
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#16That title is a bit misleading. I read this yesterday; it's pretty jumbled. It's an article that jumps around a bit describing how a couple of the people from the Stanford Class of '94, specifically David Sacks and Jessica DiLullo Herrin, made a lot of money using the internet. It doesn't really get into the reasons there are fewer female than male entrepreneurs from that class, at least not with any depth, and then…
I agree, it wanders all over the place like they had to meet a quota of words. I don't think the article really communicates what it was like for the "computer nerds" off in a weird, unproven, tiny little corner of the world nobody cared about or believed in. I think if you explore that, you'll start to understand why women weren't as much a part of that weird subculture. It wasn't all bad, I worked closely with women at IBM in 1994 (working on OS/2) that was also the year WIRED started to go mainstream. TV ads started to show URLs. Java went mainstream in 1994. But before 1994, almost nobody knew what the Internet was. Once the Internet went mainstream, people already familiar with the technology had a huge advantage: nerds.
In 1994 when I was at the University of Florida, only one dorm on the entire campus had "Internet" access. But it wasn't web access, we only had telnet. The moldy dorm was 100+ years old and barely had air conditioning. They called it "Fletcher Island" because we were cut off from everyone else--there was maybe 6 of us guys on the whole campus that had Internet. And there was only one guy that knew how it worked--he never spoke, was very pale, and he lived like a hermit back in the dark corner of this ancient building. The air quality was so bad that I got sick and had to move out. Maybe 2-3 women lived under us but we never saw them because the hallways were locked to keep the sexes apart.
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#17Very good article. I must admit, the more I read about Thiel, the less I like him. It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush.
The more I read about Thiel, the more I wonder how someone so smart can be so dumb.
The more I read words by people who have read about Thiel, the more I wonder how armchair critics without much achievement on their resume can expend so much hater energy. Since when was success only deserved by those who could do, or think, no wrong?
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#18Why do articles like this always divide it by gender and never combine gender and race? There are more Asian women featured in this article and probably included in the class than black (and potentially hispanic) men, despite the fact that the population of black men is and was in 1994 larger than Asian women.
I've always wondered why the tech industry is so obsessed with the gender gap and yet almost completely ignores the race gap. Is the gender gap really a bigger problem, or is it because men in tech think they are more likely to socially benefit from championing gender equality?
The racial gap is present in almost all faucets of American life. That suggests a society wide issue.
The gender gap is fairly unique to the tech industry and it is pretty extreme. My graduating class at Illinois for EE was 95% male.
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#19Too much hype. What this article does not mention is that all of these people are now in the sunset of their careers. Even the ones that achieved a lot are already declining from their peaks. I'm much more interested in what the class of 2015 is going to do.
Re: For Stanford Class of '94, a Gender Gap More Powerful Than the Internet
#20Very good article. I must admit, the more I read about Thiel, the less I like him. It's unclear to me why they think that SV is more meritocratic than anything else. Sports still seems much more meritocratic than SV. Any industry that depends so much on getting funding hardly seems like it would be especially meritocratic -- at least at first blush.
I'm inclined to agree but, honestly, Peter Thiel is one of the better and more thoughtful ones within that set. Closed networks like "the Paypal Mafia" are really, really bad for the world and Thiel is at least showing some interest in looking outside of it. In general, I think he's less elitist than most of them are.
One thing to remember about Silicon Valley is that it's still suburban California. It's fucking provincial. It has orders of magnitude more money (and the house prices reflect it) but it's even more like that "Agrestic" suburb in Weeds than anything in contemporary Southern California.
I still remember, in the 1990s, Northern California thought of itself as "the Good California" because it wasn't the norm for 16-year-old boys to get Ferraris and 16-year-old girls to get boob jobs as birthday presents. In 2014, any perception that Northern California is culturally better in any way is false. Silicon Valley is a lot more brash than Hollywood is. I actually like most Southern Californians that I meet.
I'm finding, as I get older, that West Coast privilege is more irksome and obnoxious to me than the East Coast variety. Most Harvard and Yale grads are down to earth and, to be honest, most Stanford graduate (except MBA, which is sociologically Undergrad++) students that I meet, I like... but this Stanford Welfare that produces Snapchats and Clinkles has got to fucking stop before it brings humiliation to the very idea of technology and sets us back 25 years. As I get older I hate the hypocritical pseudo-liberal privilege of tech more than the stuffy, blue-blooded East Coast variety. People are surprised by this, but those supposedly stodgy and "conservative" investment banks are far better places to be a woman, or minority, or just over 40, than VC-funded tech in the Valley. Silicon Valley is just a depressingly dysfunctional society and, over time, I think people are catching on to the fact and are starting to say, "I don't want anything to do with that shit". That's a real problem, because there are a lot of people doing great work (inside and outside of Silicon Valley) in technology, and I'd hate for their efforts to be hindered or set back by these stupid distractions coming from a few bad Stanford apples.