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Diversity and Startups

blog.ycombinator.com

141–150 of 218 posts

Re: Diversity and Startups

#141

People who are not white males... I know it's hard to believe, but relative to their proportion in the workforce white males are slightly under represented in tech. Additionally, people of color are dramatically over represented. It's easy to march under the banner of "men in tech shouldn't act like sexist jerks"—what kind of sexist jerk could object to that?—but the more accurate slogan "we need many fewer Asian mal…

Do you have any figures on tech as a whole? The thing that I'm never sure about in these discussions (on any on HN really) is whether people are talking about "tech" to include people working 9-5 in IT at a bank somewhere or whether it really means "venture capital backed startups operating out of California".

The San Jose Mercury News estimated that Silicon Valley tech jobs are mostly held by Asians.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22094415/asian-workers-now-dom...

Based on my experience, I'd believe it, though the proportion is likely less in San Francisco and more in the South Bay.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#142
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do not believe it unreasonable to demand evidence to the extend and nature of sexism in tech (as I have seen no formal study on it at all). I'm trying to not be rude here, but my inclination is to tell you to just go look for such studies or run such a study yourself. Nobody owes you a spoon-fed version of reality on your terms when they make their own decisions. What is unreasonable is saying that normal business…

>I'm trying to not be rude here, but my inclination is to tell you to just go look for such studies or run such a study yourself I am not the one who is asserting things, they are. Custom demands that the person asserting something is the one who is to bring evidence. >HN has decided to move the conversation forward, and I give them kudos for that. If we run around on hearsay and feelings, how do we really know what…

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Re: Diversity and Startups

#143

People who are not white males... I know it's hard to believe, but relative to their proportion in the workforce white males are slightly under represented in tech. Additionally, people of color are dramatically over represented. It's easy to march under the banner of "men in tech shouldn't act like sexist jerks"—what kind of sexist jerk could object to that?—but the more accurate slogan "we need many fewer Asian mal…

[deleted]

Re: Diversity and Startups

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The average black man has a lower IQ (Google it, many citations)" - wow, well, that f'd up comment says alot about alot

That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it! In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wiki…

That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you'd rather ignore things than try to solve problems? It's very easy to ignore the IQ gap and other differences between groups. It's harder to try to solve it with things like improved education, reduced poverty, etc. This is exactly the problem. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and you don't even have to worry about attempting to solve it! In case you really are unaware and averse to Googling, http://en.wiki…

That settles it, everything googled on the internet must be true, especially when they comport with your bigoted view of the world. I mean, I read on the internet that black people were 2/3 human somewhere, must be true.

You can Google for academic literature. I provided some pretty comprehensive citations in my last post.

Or you can just ignore the world around you and not be troubled by the problems minorities are facing.

Hey, did you know that the unemployment rate is higher for blacks than whites? Does citing that statistic also make me a bigot? Does it make you feel better to ignore that problem too?

Re: Diversity and Startups

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of applicants are his age or older? Probably very, very small for obvious reasons. Most founders PG's age and older have more financial resources (and network, etc) making YC's terms less appealing than for younger founders without any experience. In terms of diversity, age doesn't quite fit in here.

19% female applicants were accepted, and 24% applicants were female. 39% accepted applicants were from outside the US. 0% of founders were anywhere near pg's age. Are all Entrepreneurs under 40? Not remotely. But more astounding: You would never get tech industry leaders saying "men are just smarter" or "whites are just smarter" yet Zuckerberg makes exactly that statement for agism. And he made that statement at a Y…

Pretty sure "0% of founders were anywhere near pg's age" is false.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#148
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that as the gap widens that poor kid might have no actual chance at a decent stable job with benefits. Odds are he will be stuck in part-time land with no benefits and doing odd jobs on the side, so for him going with a startup must seem like a better choice. Also since we are talking about aspirations you have to consider the "all or nothing" attitude that's so common these days, and I see a lot of pe…

Someone sufficiently poor probably doesn't have the funds to start a startup period. You might strike lucky and get funding from YC but how likely is that to cover everything? Including getting to the stage of securing the funding (like travel expenses, time to build a prototype etc). Also amongst poorer families there is a greater expectation that children will contribute back to the family pot at an earlier age.

I agree that it sucks to be poor, but I don't know how much startup funding can fix that.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#149
First off, I applaud YC's efforts in this sphere to give all groups more opportunity to participate in startups and tech in general. I do not mean to disparage efforts or "derail" a conversation, but to bring up the fundamental question once the low-hanging fruit - discrimination, etc. is gone - self-selection and equality of result as a goal.

Any diversity discussion will eventually reach the awkward points of over-represented minorities and self-selection, which negatively impact numerical diversity: There are some elements of the industry that will inherently self-select for groups. Asian males are currently the most over-represented group - racially due to US immigration policy and cultural factors encouraging many recent immigrants to go into technical fields and not humanities.

Men tend to self-select into higher risk and highly competitive environments - e.g. startups, hackathons [1] but also ones with negative outcomes - crime, gambling addiction - see the 9-to-1 ratio of incarcerated men to women. (Denying the evidence for risk-taking and self-selection is to me, similar to denying evidence that sexism exists -- on the face of not wanting to confront it).

At what point do these become issues to address? It seems like the desired result is not the strawman, Harrison Bergeron, 100% representative (of what? the US? the world?) demographic, so what is the desired outcome? I'm for eliminating discrimination and bias, but I don't think this will leave us with a 50-50 perfectly balanced startup scene, but it's the most fair. You would either have to change humans' own free-will preferences for risk, or the nature of the industry (with other side effects). If you have ideas on this, I'm open to hearing them.

This is a legitimate question - shutting down discussion here in the name of being "against progress" or trivializing the issue is highly reminiscent of Paul Graham's warnings in "What You Can't Say [2]. The demographic balance of any industry or field is always in constant flux, and heavily influenced by self-selection and non-discriminatory factors. We need to remove discrimination, but also know that a fair outcome in the absence of discrimination - with equal opportunity does not necessarily lead to perfectly equal outcomes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8087536

"Broadly speaking, competition definitely creates sex-based selection-bias. Men self-select into competitions more than women, and are more motivated by them.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201210/when-c...

https://www3.nd.edu/~wevans1/fresh_honor_seminar/vesterland.... "

[2] http://paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: Diversity and Startups

#150
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…

True - the way out is to hire interns from state schools/small programs.
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