She can always marry a guy who makes less money than her and is willing to be a stay-at-home parent who takes care of her kid.
But she'd rather whine.
Reflections on Being a Female Founder
191–200 of 311 posts
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think SFs hostility to children is largely independent of tech. It's about not building housing for 40 years, and running a terrible school system, etc.
Interesting observation. While I maintain tech isn’t friendly to families with children, I do agree it’s not a driving factor in SF losing this population. The cost of housing and schools have a lot to do with it.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#193This was a good read and I thank Tracy for writing it. However, I do have some remarks about the comments I am reading here, so I am writing a top level post so as to not single out a specific comment. It doesn't become ok to stereotype just because the stereotypes are saying nice things about the right demographics. I read a comment here talking about women going into management roles because of higher 'EQ', and bei…
Yes the tone deafness in these comments is astonishing. I can absolutely see why women/minorities are unwilling to put up with that to work in technology. My hope is that more people begin to see that this isn’t ok and that the culture changes, and I am glad that you pointed this out specifically.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I would love to see a lot more female developers. See there you betray a rather sinister idea. If you had said that you want to see any unfair barriers to entry removed, or that you want to ensure equal exposure and opportunity across all people and all fields then I could support it. But instead you made your desires quite clear: you just want female developers. That means the gender, physical appearan…
there are many good reasons for wanting more women developers, IMO. are there any bad reasons for wanting such? this is not a flip comment. if it causes a laugh i dont see a problem with that but it is honestly not intended to denigrate anyone, but bring people into, well, software, which is probably the greatest thing in existence. diversity is generally considered a good thing in evolution. i dont know if that appl…
>are there any bad reasons for wanting such?
-to signal virtue for PR purposes -to expand hiring pools and thus drive down wages -to get more sexual partners -to create leverage points for internal politics (e.g. opportunities to accuse political opponents of sexism)
Perhaps you were actually asking about bad outcomes, not reasons:
-women are rationally perceived as less competent after they were given preference during hiring -women who would have been happier in another field are encouraged into tech where they are less happy than they would have been in medicine, or law, or marketing, or at home -women who aren't up to the task are admitted; the mismatch sets them up for failure where they could have succeeded and had better personal outcomes in another job
Both my above lists are offhand samples.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, when I hear that a woman (or man) with kids is running a startup, I think "that kid isn't going to have the full attention of that parent..." Especially when I read stuff like: > I pressured myself into proving that I was as dedicated to PlanGrid as I always have been. I interpret that phrase as "...at the expense of dedication to my kid". I personally think it's okay to "be less dedicated" to work in ord…
Kids don't actually demand that much time. It just turns out a lot of (Western) people spend tons of time with their kids, so we think they demand a lot of time. For example, I used to live in Africa and in the town where I lived, kids 2 and older were expected to look out after themselves. Regularly, a 4-year old would be asked to go get some bread from the store, or even cigarettes and beer. I think this is natural…
I'll second your opinion about raising children outside the West, but from Russia - due to relatively great childcare options (a hold over from the Soviet days, when women were tasked en masse to rebuild the country after the massive casualties of soldiers in WWII [1], and the infrastructure to support that had to be rolled out reliably and systematically), it seems to me that my own peers in Russia are less conflicted about children, and less fixated on this psychoanalytic conviction that every single thing one does will potentially create trauma for a lifetime. When visiting my family, I noticed most adults were married and with children by the early twenties - but they didn't put their life on hold! They continued their degrees (men and women both) and careers, children in hand. Someone told me the equivalent of "it's just children, what's the big deal?" when I asked about it. Note this was after the reversal of the decrease in fertility trend of the early 2000s. [2]
I came away with the impression that my Russian colleagues are mostly correct. We have been working and fighting for survival for eons - the entirety of human history! And it is only in the last couple of hundred years that we developed this idea that a child is precious and fragile, and a parent must be nothing short of perfect lest they raise a monster.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#196This was an interesting read. Building and selling a company for $875m, that’s amazing! I was a bit confused, did the tech exec just quit without notice when they learned the CEO was pregnant? How would they be able to justify that insanity to their next employer?
I'm not going to comment on the actual article, which IMO is a frank stream-of-consciousness blog rather than an analysis.
But here are 2 things to keep in mind:
1) Founders, and some engineers, join a startup for the vision or adventure.
But most other staff, especially salespersons and executives, are there for reliable cash. Not "on-the-come" or "we'll see where this goes."
I've interviewed salesmen for a startup, and the first question they ask is, "What's the base salary?" And it better be risk-free and close to $100k in SF, regardless of the commission. Or they'll just think, "Time to call my buddy at FAANG or Oracle" and walk out.
2) If you haven't had a child, then you don't know what the dramatic physical, mental and social impacts are. The author described mostly the physical side of having a child, but not the other 2 factors. Post-partum depression can have long-lasting effects far beyond the act of giving birth - my partner behaved literally like a stranger for 18 months. What you see on TV is definitely not reality.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#197Earlier 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.
It makes me wonder about the correlation between "the more of an asshole you are, the easier it is to rise in power" and "the more of an asshole you are, the more you treat everyone you can (especially those that aren't the same as you) poorly". I can't think of a single time I've seen someone treated poorly because of race or gender in my professional career (direct treatment; I recognize that systemic problems are both harder to see and potentially more dangerous). I'm also not high up on the power scale.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#198Earlier 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…
I'm sorry this happened and thank you for sharing. We really do need to encourage a speak up culture. The most disgusting part of what you posted to me was keeping quiet for the good of the team. I'm sorry, but I don't care about any stupid App or project enough to make that an acceptable option.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#199Disclaimer: I don't make the rules, and the rules are probably unsubstantiated. There's no shame in going to toilet, it's just not in to do it in plain view. It's not the "feeding your child" bit that raises eyebrows, it's "naking your boobs".
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23608466.
Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
You write "(or man)", but of course, it's not, really. My wife was asked in multiple interviews about her children and how she planned to care for them while working full-time. I've never even heard of a man being asked that. At any rate, someone else's child care arrangements are absolutely none of your business, and this isn't a reasonable point to make on this thread.
I was regularly in my last round of interviews, and I'm a man. Shrug.
Really. Say more.