An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference • Hacker News Board

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#161

Post by jsprogrammer » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 4:55 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #158

jsprogrammer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no debt involved Can you provide an executed contract to confirm? YC appears to have moved away from convertible notes (ie. debt) [1], but if you read closely it appears that PG said the reason was to avoid debt term limits and interest rate limits....so it's an even more extreme version of debt, just not 'debt' according to CA regulations. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-replacemen...

If you read that link you posted you'll see "what the investor buys is not debt, but something more like a warrant. So there is no need to fix a term or decide on an interest rate" Warrants just give the investor the right to purchase equity at a given price some time. They are not debt.

I did read the link, which is why I posted it. If you read it, you'll see that PG is essentially just renaming debt to get around CA regulations.

No matter what it's called: loan, debt, warrant, convertible note, SAFE, it's an instrument that attaches to future earnings.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#162

Post by crazy1van » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

Retra wrote: post #155

tzs wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we test drugs on mice when it is their effect on humans that we actually care about (almost no one actually cares about lowering high blood pressure or addressing erectile dysfunction in mice)? Answer: because understanding what happens in mice might give us some insight into similar mechanisms in humans, and it is easier to do many tests and experiments on mice. Same goes for media tastes. Factors that lead t…

This is from the post I was responding to: >Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if we found women were a much higher chunk of the audience for Twilight and men were a higher percent of Avengers viewers? What is this question suggesting? Is it saying that media preferences and employment differences are similar in such a way that the fact that we do not investigate media preferenc…

> I disagree with the implication that employment differences are to be trivialized as 'matters of preference,'

I dont think that's trivializing the issue at all. Millions of people in the world with different preferences in all manner of things from movies to professions is hardly trivial. What's trivializing is thinking we can do some studies and find some kind of root cause of what is really an average of millions of personal choices.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#163

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 5:44 AM UTC

abathur wrote: post #68

chaostheory wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I forgot about social expectations http://www.npr.org/2014/11/22/365968465/after-backlash-compu... Still I can't help but feel social prestige is still a stronger factor for females than males

Why can't you help feel but feel this?

If you read the npr article that lambda referred to (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/11/220748057/why-wome...), it still feels like women choose fields that are cooler and higher prestige as opposed to being higher salary and lower prestige. lambda just refers to this as "rewarding" vs "mercenary"

I'm also going further disagree with lambda. For society at large, I feel that teachers and social workers do have higher prestige than engineers. Of course I realize that all of my opinions are just assumptions without actual data backing it up. However I do know this: the gender discrimination in both the military and finance are either just as bad or much worse, yet more women flock to both as opposed to our industry.

This is an interesting article as well that helps show that gender discrimination is also pretty bad in other industries that attract more women: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/02/...

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#164

Post by b3tta » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 6:19 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #144

crazy1van wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe women on average just prefer some jobs more than others? Really, I'm sure there are millions of factors that enter into to those stats -- about one for every woman because everyone woman is unique with her own goals and tastes -- but I think the occam's razor for this topic is that men and women on average have different preferences. Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if w…

There are few things in discourse I hate more than this sort of "just", the kind of ignorance-encouraging, status-quo-supporting "just" that tells people to stop thinking. Given that we have a millennia-long history of gender discrimination and given that women got the vote less than a century ago, this "just" is ridiculous. Look at this graph: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom... I guess i…

Hmm... Sometimes even I say "maybe women just prefer [...]", but actually mean exactly that, what you said: There are social trends and in this case there is a social trend specific to women wrongly being taught that they are not as good as men in STEM fields. So much in fact (here in Germany) that it's kind of unsettling, when they tell you "haha I'm just not good in math haha" and you can't even, because it's so effing wrong.

I believe many (young) people will tell you that women are "just" like that, but actually mean "they are just taught to think so", because in their male position there is no need to choose are careful wording. I'm also pretty sure that, while the society at large is fault for this herd thinking about this, the parents play the biggest role in where the daughter places herself in the world.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#165

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 7:03 AM UTC

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #6

chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

I heard an interesting theory on low female attendance in STEM this week: the fact that those fields are stereotyped as nerdy, "low prestidge" men. It keeps a lot of men, at least in the US, out of the field too. When I went through engineering school at least half of my classmates were from countries that have very different attitudes towards engineering. I'm sure there's some data out there breaking out US STEM gra…

> I heard an interesting theory on low female attendance in STEM this week: the fact that those fields are stereotyped as nerdy, "low prestidge" men

Can you give me the source?

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#166

Post by kriro » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 7:07 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #102

She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site, there is this interesting list: 39% of chemists and material scientists are women; 27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women; 15.6% of chemical engineers are women; 12.1% of civil engineers are women; 8.3% of electrical and electronics engineer…

Maybe it's due to Marie Curie, arguably the most renown female scientist? Eventhough she did Physics and Chemistry she's mostly portrayed as a chemist I think.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#167

Post by rdl » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 8:04 AM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #137

saturdayplace wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YC is still stuck in a world of ideas based on controlling others through the creation of debt and claiming lifetime ownership of others' work. I don't understand this sentiment AT ALL. There is no debt involved, so I don't see any control exerted through those means. And sure, they buy non-controlling ownership of others' work, but that ownership is sold freely. Not to mention the other consideration that lands on…

>There is no debt involved Can you provide an executed contract to confirm? YC appears to have moved away from convertible notes (ie. debt) [1], but if you read closely it appears that PG said the reason was to avoid debt term limits and interest rate limits....so it's an even more extreme version of debt, just not 'debt' according to CA regulations. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-replacemen...

The term and interest rate limits were on the LOW side. i.e. being forced to renegotiate after 2 years if you haven't raised money yet (which happened to a lot of people, and the investors never had a problem with it), and charging a 0% rate (which is below the applicable federal rate and thus potentially viewed as a gift) is not the issue. It's not that YC/notes were trying to charge usurious rates or whatever.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#168

Post by rdl » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 8:08 AM UTC

notsony wrote: post #82

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #64

What a sickening sycophantic declaration just to plug a very dangerous return to calendar-based contraception methods: http://www.readytogroove.com/the-cycle/appendix-a-the-sympto...

I'm going to upvote you. It's a very good point you've made here. This founder is giving bad advice to women who don't want to get pregnant causing some women to ditch contraception like condoms... resulting in unwanted pregancices.

I think the "cycle tracking" stuff is usually more about "really want to get pregnant, having a hard time" vs "not willing to use one of the many other forms of birth control". (EDIT: although, this site does appear to promote it for preventing birth, too, wtf)

(It is always kind of jarring whenever I see that, because whenever I think of reproductive health my first thought is "omg please please please no", but there apparently are people who want to get pregnant/have kids.)

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#169

Post by Perdition » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 9:01 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #127

WalterSear wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hypothesis holds no water in any 3rd world country I can think of.

Sorry, but what planet are you from? Every day we're bombarded with stories and images from the developing world of men, women and children trying to make a living. Villagers migrate to cities seeking work. People work in factories and make a better wage than they could anywhere else without education. Women take micro-credit to start up little businesses like mobile phone call booths, or charging booths, and finance…

You got some citations? Because in most of the countries you are talking about the poor who will do anything to survive aren't getting university degrees and sexist discrimination exists in abundance.

For example in many Islamic countries like Iran women do make up a significant portion of engineering graduates (sometimes even a majority) but few end up working as engineers due to sexism and cultural expectations.

I did some Googling and what I found didn't really support your argument.

https://hbr.org/2014/03/whats-holding-women-back-in-science-...

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#170

Post by WalterSear » Mon, Feb 23, 2015, 9:33 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #127

WalterSear wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hypothesis holds no water in any 3rd world country I can think of.

Sorry, but what planet are you from? Every day we're bombarded with stories and images from the developing world of men, women and children trying to make a living. Villagers migrate to cities seeking work. People work in factories and make a better wage than they could anywhere else without education. Women take micro-credit to start up little businesses like mobile phone call booths, or charging booths, and finance…

>Every day we're bombarded with stories and images from the developing world of men, women and children trying to make a living.

I bet you are. I've actually lived much of my life in countries you would consider 'poor'. There is plenty of prejudice to go around.

>Look at the tech sectors in Europe and India and Asia--they don't have all these hang-ups and prejudices and misconceptions about how women's brains 'work differently' or what the biological differences might be or all that pseudo-scientific bull-crap.

Sounds like you have a lot of the world left to see.