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Reflections on Being a Female Founder

tracy.posthaven.com

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Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#151

Post by geebee »

victoriasun wrote: post #117
geebee wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they're supposed to ask about that - I believe that kind of question can be legally actionable. You're probably correct that employers assume these things won't be an issue for men - though I did read a paper (sorry no cite) that found employers are unusually punitive toward the relatively small number men who scale back for child care. It's the flip side of the assumption they won't be taking time off…

It is legally actionable but it is unfortunately very difficult to actually prosecute. Lawyers are not really incentivized to take on discrimination cases as they are generally difficult to prove and don't pay out well. As an aside, during my very first job as a junior (female, 21) engineer, an executive told me, unprompted, that I would end my career by the age of 30 to focus on having children. Ironically enough, h…

Silicon Valley doesn’t really like people with family obligations. In interviews in my 30s, I found myself hiding the fact that I had children. Once a recruiter, trying to lure me away from a stable company for a startup, told me that I better take my risks while I still could, before I had children (I had 2).

I grew up in SF and I’m pushing 50. The population of children in SF has dropped to a little more that half of what it was when I was born. That’s an urban trend overall, but SF is an especially glaring example. What can I say? Kids are expensive and don’t pay rent, and parents have to compete for housing with people who Factor in income from renting out that “spare” bedroom on Airbnb.

Tech in the Bay Area would really rather you didn’t have kids.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#152

Post by lazyasciiart »

eyerony wrote: post #58
tialaramex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that bugs me: Women I know who wrote software kept finding new roles where they'd be in management instead and then they moan that they liked writing code and miss it. Maybe that tells us that sexism in software development is prevalent and they wanted out, which is no fault of theirs, and maybe they just wanted more money - but it definitely sucks overall. I find blind technical interviewing easy because I…

> Women I know who wrote software kept finding new roles where they'd be in management instead and then they moan that they liked writing code and miss it. Maybe that tells us that sexism in software development is prevalent and they wanted out, which is no fault of theirs, and maybe they just wanted more money - but it definitely sucks overall. I secretly (well not in this moment but ordinarily secret) consider wome…

> due precisely to this observed tendency to spot where the social and monetary rewards are (management, other social roles "above" developers) almost immediately and start aiming for that ASAP.

Women are not identifying the most socially/financially rewarding positions in tech and aiming for them ASAP. Women in tech are getting told "gosh you are so good at communicating and being literate have you considered being a PM or a manager or any other non-technical role?"

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#153

Post by lazyasciiart »

eastbayjake wrote: post #84
gautamcgoel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, which companies make up the Big 4? Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft?

Usually "Big Four" refers to the 4 largest accounting firms: Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PWC.[1] If it's referring to tech, that's an odd/confusing usage when "FANG" is so prevalent for the same concept but explicitly for tech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_accounting_firms

In my experience, the vast majority of people in tech are completely unaware of the accounting usage. I only know it because my two siblings work for two of them.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#155

Post by kmonsen »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #100
_pzdn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man, that sounds like a trashy thing (for the VC to have done).

I worked for a woman cofounder. It's incredible the things some VCs told her, including trying to get the other founder to drop her from the deal explicitly because of her gender. Make no mistake about it, the ugly goes way deeper than just a bad comment here or there. Thankfully the trend is toward better.

Is the trend towards better? I used to think so but the stories I heard in my time in Google was really, really depressing. The problem is that getting worse can be a self-reinforcing thing. Once a few women get badly treated and leaves the gender imbalance gets worse and the bad behavior gets normalized.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#156

Post by jmchuster »

markdown wrote: post #127
umvi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that a lot of startups are run by single people with time to burn "toiling upward in the night" I recently read "Masters of Doom" because someone here recommended it, and both id software and ion storm were mainly run by single people working hellish 80-120 hour weeks. Technically John Romero had kids, but... early on in his startup he divorced in order to free up more time for making games…

I guess it depends on how you define a startup. Many of the "cool" startups that make the tech press are made by kids fresh out of college, but IMO these are only a tiny fraction of actual startups created in the world every year.

I would think most people here on HN subscribe to Paul Graham's definition, which is exponential growth.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#157

Post by jmchuster »

ifokiedoke wrote: post #125
tialaramex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that bugs me: Women I know who wrote software kept finding new roles where they'd be in management instead and then they moan that they liked writing code and miss it. Maybe that tells us that sexism in software development is prevalent and they wanted out, which is no fault of theirs, and maybe they just wanted more money - but it definitely sucks overall. I find blind technical interviewing easy because I…

My own personal experience as a female software developer is that there is pressure from all sides to go into management, and this pressure can come from both ill and good intent. Others have mentioned that it might be because of perceived superior communication skills (good?), or perceived lack of "good-enough" technical skills (bad?)... both of these add to the problem, but I've also experienced that diversity-awar…

I would have thought that this was an attempt to balance out males being more likely to ask for such promotions (and thus be granted them).

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#158

Post by victoriasun »

mongojunction wrote: post #146

I had mixed feelings reading this. The writer seems an inspiring person, who went though a hard time having a baby. I feel less inspired when I see that even someone capable of such an amazing sequence of choices to create her own success, seems to succumb to the temptation to blame others for her own anger, both at externalities and at her own choices during early motherhood. But I suppose it's also humanizing becau…

I agree we need to empower our next generation, but I don't agree with how you got there. First of all, I don't really see anything in her post that suggests she blamed others for her anger.

Secondly, I find it odd that you are so quick to disavow her experiences as being.. "because I'm a woman" considering that she is literally discussing an experience (pregnancy, birth, infertility, miscarriage) that only biological women experience. Almost by definition this experience she describes is because she is female.

I don't agree that it necessarily follows that acknowledging your gender (or other minority features) is disempowering. Unfortunately, the HN crowd tends to take an extraordinarily extreme view on this -- that it is only the case that women's experiences are purely interpretive, and that the only way to combat it is to pretend it doesn't exist. How odd is it that Lyft and Uber both exist, but its hard for us to imagine that the path to combatting oppression and finding self love within it can have different solutions?

Consider this: Tracy, in the beginning of this article, has actually done exactly what you've suggested: she has tried to empower herself by disassociating herself from her female identity. By her own conclusion, it did not ultimately bring her happiness. And it would be absurd of us to argue that we know her happiness better than herself.

Consider also this: men live a life deeply connected to their male identities, its just not as regularly analyzed as for the most part, a male identity is given standard.

I think, actually, most of us have grown up believing in our own power and that the world is fair. Then we experience the ways that its not and struggle with that powerlessness. Some of us grow resentful to the prior generations for not adequately bettering the world or preparing us for the ways the world is unjust. It is clear to me that this model doesn't work.

What if we empowered our kids by teaching them to love themselves and embrace their identities, rather than pretend they don't exist? What if we told them early on that the world is unjust and taught them to protect themselves?

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#159

Post by jmchuster »

mrkurt wrote: post #86
ddevault wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Women I know who wrote software kept finding new roles where they'd be in management instead and then they moan that they liked writing code and miss it. I hear this a lot from men, too. We have a general problem in the industry of being bad at making senior engineering a rewarding career track.

Right. We glamorize "management" in every way, even going so far as to label devs "individual contributors". As if they only contribute 1x while managers contribute multiples. I have this gut wrenching feeling that tech companies just can't be fixed. There's way too much that has to change and the powerful people don't have much incentive to do the work.

Compare your best manager and your best engineer, and the manager _does_ contribute multiples more than the engineer does. You take this to the extreme, and the best CEOs in history have added additional billions in value to the companies that they've helmed.
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