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Diversity and Startups

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Diversity and Startups

#181

Post by seanflyon »

tptacek wrote: post #170
seanflyon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While companies must compete to exist, I don't think that requires work environment or culture to be competitive in nature. Interactions between coworkers should be fundamentally cooperative and cooperation between companies (such as contribution to open source projects) can also benefit all involved. The tech industry is not a zero sum game.

If you're reading "competition" as a license to be an asshole to team members, then we agree, but think that point is banal. Otherwise, I reject this argument. I see it as mostly waving off gender concerns. "Let's not address our broken perceptions about the capabilities of women, but instead think about how we can rework the entire fabric of the industry." I'm sure everyone's going to get right on that.

According to Google, compete means: strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same. I'm reading "competition" as a zero (or negative) sum game such as stack ranking for career advancement. In a competition you seek for others to fail.

I think that we already have a primarily cooperative industry culture and that stack ranking is a bad idea in general, not because of gender concerns. I disagree with your statement that this is "a deeply, irretrievably competitive industry" though perhaps we mean different things by "competitive". Seeking capital is, to a degree inherently competitive, but even early stage enraptures are more often than not willing to help each other succeed.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#182

Post by MartinCron »

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…

You realize that you don't get to determine what feels disrespectful and diminutive to other people? That is sort of what it means for them to be other people.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#183

Post by whybroke »

tptacek wrote: post #146
whybroke wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that really your only observation about the utterly extreme public positions I mentioned above?

Very well. Name one.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#184

Post by whybroke »

tptacek wrote: post #147
whybroke wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, comments raising the issue are almost universally down-voted without comment. I imagine that tells us quite a bit.

It does not tell us that all the downvoters believe ageism not to be an issue.

It means the conversation is not welcome here. Which, given the prevalence of discussion on similar issues, does indeed tell us a lot.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#185

Post by araneae »

crassus2 wrote: post #177
designNERD wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gonads and skin color are correlated with a diversity of perspectives. All you have to do is look at the perspectives r/TwoX versus r/all, for instance, or Twitter vs. HN.

For instance, just see the period panties thread. Men don't have the perspective necessary to even comprehend the idea of period panties, let alone build one.

Not everything in tech is that obvious, of course. But it's worth thinking about non-obvious ways in which it might.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#186

Post by lilsunnybee »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #173
tptacek wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adherenc…

Plenty of men work in the fashion and beauty industries. Where is your perception coming from that these fields have low male participation?

Re: Diversity and Startups

#187

Post by gizmo »

streptomycin wrote: post #164
gizmo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make sense to do research on race and IQ. Except for people who are looking for scientific sounding reasons to legitimize their age-old racist prejudices. So to be clear: there is no serious debate about race and IQ to be had. There are no insights to be gained from Race-IQ research. I don't believe -- not for a second -- that a discussion about race and IQ helps minorities. The idea that we have to engage…

I don't see why it makes sense to ignore certain areas of racial disparity. If the racial IQ gap can be closed by various means, we should try to do it. Refusing to acknowledge that a disparity exists (not referring to you, but to people like the other guy who replied to me) doesn't help solve anything. I could replace "IQ" with various other metrics like "SAT scores" or "high school graduation rates" or whatever, si…

The idea that people who look different are inferior is a racist hypothesis -- now scientifically discredited -- that has been repeated for the past 300 years. People who bring up IQ today use the exact same language people used back in the day and that has racist implications. But when they get called on it they backtrack and claim they never meant to say something racist -- they're just talking about neutral scientific findings! Even though historically IQ tests were used to "prove" the supremacy and inferiority of different races.

The entire reason why racism is bad is because it affects the opportunities and quality of life of minorities. If racism had no measurable effect on anything it wouldn't be a real thing. So any thinking person would expect racism to have an effect on SAT scores and high school graduation rates.

Talking about race and IQ as if it has no history is like talking about a sauwastika as if it were just a symbol that represents balance. Talking about "SAT scores" or "high school graduation rates" would absolutely help, simply because of historical context.

There are many more things to be aware of in order to talk sensibly about race though. First of which is that the concepts of "black" and "white" are cultural inventions, and have no biological meaning. So the very idea of trying to measure the IQs of black/white people is unscientific silliness.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#188

Post by xiaoma »

dang wrote: post #174
a-t-shirt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have to say that I've lost some respect for HN today. While there are many times I've missed the quality of the community from the early days of 2007, it's only been recently where I've wondered if the front page might be as censored as Digg was around the time I first discovered HN.

Re: Diversity and Startups

#189

Post by xiaoma »

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…

I have to say I found it disappointing to see Sama call out Hacker School and Google's explicitly discriminatory policies in a positive way. I'm all for helping people in need. As someone whose earnings were at less than half the poverty level just two short years ago, I can definitely empathize with people struggling at the margins, whether social or economic.

However, I believe making the decision solely based on a person's anatomy is wrong.

Context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879598

Re: Diversity and Startups

#190

Post by tomjen3 »

king_jester wrote: post #89
tomjen3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of the ways that people slow down progress, in startups or in society, is by resisting unreasonably at every step in a series of steps in an argument. They key here is _unreasonable_. 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). Frankly all I am seeing here are the very methods described in What you can't say being u…

> 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). There have been so many studies, blog posts, and anecdotes about sexism in tech. Basic searching for this stuff will get you all the relevant info you need, nobody is obligated to walk you through it if you aren't aware.

>There have been so many studies, blog posts, and anecdotes about sexism in tech

I am not aware of any studies, otherwise I would have read them. Blog posts and anecdotes - are useful for acting on individual cases of sexism, but because they are, by definition, limited to one or two cases, taken out of the whole, using them as arguments for widespread sexism is wrong (in the sense of incorrect).

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