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What I Didn't Say

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Didn't Say

#201

Post by ars_technician »

nashequilibrium wrote: post #127
crazygringo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind applications would be great if they were possible, but I suspect they would be as helpful as a blind audition for concert conductors -- i.e., not at all. When you evaluate a team, you need to be able to judge their confidence, see how they interact with each other, get a feel for the trustworthiness, the way they look at you when they answer a question, and so on. If you can't see them, and their voice is disto…

1.)The fact the female founders are asking for this, tells you that they don't feel on par with the way things are being done today. 2.) Paul has admitted to being susceptible to the Mark Zuckeberg effect, at least he was honest about that and should be respected for the fact that he realizes that. Most VC's i believe also fall into this trap but don't admit it. 3.) Now what are we going to do about this? Shrug our s…

>1.)The fact the female founders are asking for this, tells you that they don't feel on par with the way things are being done today.

How many are asking for this? Where are your stats?

Re: What I Didn't Say

#202

Post by sedev »

apsec112 wrote: post #62

"I think everyone should have the media perform a hatchet job on them at least once. It’s this really scary feeling when you know you’re trying to be honest and do the right thing, and yet you see how easy it is for a hostile writer to cast every single thing you do as corrupt and destructive. And how quick everyone is to believe them. And how attempts to set the record straight get met with outraged “how dare you gi…

That piece was new to me, and very interesting! Thank you.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#203

Post by smtddr »

spindritf wrote: post #11
tomasien wrote: post #7

Are you still going to write about women founders? I 100% take you on your word about all of this, but that I still think a lot of the things you said were off the mark in understandable but important ways[1]. You're obviously well meaning and thoughtful and I think it would be great to read more about your thoughts, although I know you'd prefer to avoid the shitstorm that would follow (no matter how well reasoned yo…

There are no gatekeepers in the startup culture. How would that even work? Would pg deny you a business license? Stop you from getting a VPS? Remotely invalidate your copy of The Art of Computer Programming?

No official gatekeepers, but there are certainly some things that can help/hurt you exponentially.

  If Google drops you from search-results, game over!
  If YC accepts you, game on!
Neither one of those are official gatekeepers, but they're something to be concerned about. I signed up with coinbase.com because I tend to trust companies that are YC-backed. The fact that they're in SF and I can walk right into their office on my lunch-break if my money disappears also helps.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#204

Post by dchichkov »

> If you want to be really good at programming, you have to love it for itself.

It is difficult not to love things that you've discovered for yourself and learned to do as a kid. So the following:

> If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own.

while not required, could be just an 'often encountered' case.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#205

Post by jneen »

calibraxis wrote: post #191
hooande wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reputation can be a blessing or a curse. YCombinator has a great reputation as the best startup incubator and it's founders have sterling reputations as being the people you absolutely need to talk to if you're considering a tech startup. It takes a lifetime to become known as superlative, the proverbial gold standard. It's as true on the mean streets as it is in the halls of power: You are what people think you ar…

Does your company respond to customers like this: start by pointing out your "sterling reputations" and end by claiming "I understand"? The person you responded to offered two doable action points. A litmus test is if YC moves on at least one of them. YC does not have the excuse that it doesn't have the technical know-how. And it would be a laughingstock if they didn't have the hacker spirit to figure out how to impl…

not sure why i can't reply to ars_technician, but fwiw sexism is a problem that we need protections against.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#206

Post by MartinCron »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #145
rcfox wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as if PG can't be trusted Just because we're in pg's house, it doesn't mean we have to treat him like a god. He's a fallible human being, just like the rest of us. The whole point of a blind interview is to prevent implicit bias that the bearer might not even be aware of.

Paul Graham is assumed guilty of being sexist and he's probably unaware of it. Got it.

This doesn't have to be about assumption of guilt, as it's not a binary "person X is or is not sexist/racist/ageist/whateverist" distinction.

We all have some biases, and taking reasonable efforts to mitigate them has worked very well in other fields, the typical example being the screen for orchestra auditions.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#207

Post by marquis »

001sky wrote: post #190
marquis wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pressure of not being a 25 year old guy, basically. Or 25 for that matter.

This raises a good point, but informal inferences about age, ethnicity, and sex can be made from other parts of the application. Statistics on the discrimination of Ivy league schools show that (east) Asian face a stacked deck in college applications at "selective" schools[0]. Its plausible that much of this is inferred from ethnic names. To the extent it impacts the short-lists for interviews (ie, before candidates…

Your comments on school history etc are completely valid in the context of inference.

I'd like to think that we could genuinely make a fairly well balanced system for meritocratic selection. Yes, it's a lot of work and there is always room for error however I'd like to think that ultimately the STEM industry favours these kinds of methods and they could be improved on so we'd see some kind of futuristic system that we saw in the Starship Troopers narrative (as a crazy example that in the movie at least, no-one complained about). Maybe we just need a ton more data to be able to make better predictions. But I also think that face-to-face interviews are ultimately needed as others have mentioned: cultural fit is important to a degree as well.

On that note it reminds me of the Declara article I read (about the founder Ramona Pierson), where data is working to pair relevant people.

https://www.declara.com

Re: What I Didn't Say

#208

Post by jacalata »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #51
yo-mf wrote: post #15

Truly unfortunate all around. PG getting slammed from every direction. Jessica Lessin's new venture gets a black eye for shoddy journalistic standards. Lots of invective going around for what appears to be liberties of interpretation. And of all of this, I am not sure this really does anything to address the very serious topic on the imbalance of men to women in technology jobs.

That's my biggest problem with this whole thing. I care deeply about trying to fix the gender imbalance, but these sorts of dishonest shenanigans make the whole movement look bad. At the risk of committing the No True Scotsman fallacy, I don't think the people responsible really care about gender equality. If they did then they would have checked their facts, rather than making people doubt them and the views they cl…

I don't think the people responsible really care about gender equality. If they did then they would have checked their facts,

I think that kind of is No True Scotsman, because it's an unreasonable conflation of two attributes ('really caring about x' and 'being careful with sourcing in debate/arguments'). I know lots of people who care deeply about various causes but are terrible about research, sourcing and verification in general. And some people might care deeply about a cause but do damage to it by being involved (deeply unpleasant so that nobody wants to work with them and the volunteer group falls apart, that kind of thing). Level of caring is not, in my opinion, strongly correlated with a person's value as an advocate :)

Re: What I Didn't Say

#209

Post by smirksirlot »

nostromo wrote: post #165
ericabiz wrote: post #32

As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech. In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following: 1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use techn…

Self-selection, as you have done, is a hard problem to solve. Not just in tech, but in our entire culture. As noted elsewhere, Americans are sorting themselves by demographics. It feels awkward to be a woman in a predominantly male organization. It feels awkward to be a republican in San Francisco. It feels awkward to be gay in Mississippi. It feels awkward to be black in Portland. And so we place ourselves in locati…

As you said, victim blaming. It isn't just feeling awkward about things - there are consequences both psychologically, financially, and physically being an outcast. Being uncomfortable with a place isn't something the person can fix themselves - they neither have the power nor the ability to do so.

Diversity begets diversity. The only way to do that is to set up systems and infrastructure that supports and enables that and it requires support from community leaders.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#210

Post by jsmthrowaway »

smtddr wrote: post #183
Perihelion wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly the sort of person I'm talking about. People like you are afraid to be comfortable in a work environment for fear that they'll be fired for saying or doing the wrong thing. Provided you aren't a sexist/rapist, I see no reason why you need to be walking on eggshells all the time at a place where you spend a large percentage of your day. It makes me sad that my presence would make you uncomfortable when…

>>Provided you aren't a sexist/rapist, I see no reason why you need to be walking on eggshells all the time at a place where you spend a large percentage of your day. It's been my experience that when men feel like they're walking on eggshells around women in the workplace it's because they're normally comfortable making sexists/rape jokes and/or have sexist beliefs. The feeling of eggshell walking is them trying to…

Or, we're concerned about being misinterpreted and that misinterpretation being escalated instead of discussed with us so we can clear it up. But yeah, it's easier to just label us as sexists that like to joke about rape, right?
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