Reflections on Being a Female Founder • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#291

Post by _pzdn » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 11:21 AM UTC

galoisgirl wrote: post #290

_pzdn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> girls are praised for results and boys for effort This is a sad thing, if true. If true, it does sound very changeable. From the article you linked: > bright girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice. Everyone should learn somehow that effort and practice bring about change in behavior and improvement in skill…

No need of the "if true", it's studied. Changing it in entire societies will take time, but there is talk about "growth mindset" vs "fixed mindset".

> No need of the "if true", it's studied.

Terrible. :(

> Changing it in entire societies will take time, but there is talk about "growth mindset" vs "fixed mindset".

I am glad that things are changing, and rather disappointed/frustrated/annoyed that at this point in time it's still a problem. How can we as a society not instil in everyone a deep-seated belief in, respect for, and love of practice? Am I nuts or is that not so much to expect?

Rant over...

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#292

Post by yomly » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #287

cutemonster wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hint of discretion, like a blanket, or being at the corner table facing a wall Maybe this is a stupid question, but why is any hint of discretion needed at all? What is the problem with an uncovered breast and baby eating? Is it for example that you feel excited from seeing a breast, and don't like that happening in a restaurant? Or maybe it feels weird with people slightly undressed, in the same way as you might t…

" but why is any hint of discretion needed at all?" Do you really need to ask though? When there's a topless woman in the middle of a restaurant, 99% of people are going to feel something is off. There's a not-so-subtle difference between 'breastfeeding' and 'I'm going to leave my boobs hanging out while I set my baby down and get something out of my bag' If you were in a restaurant, and someone was dangling their br…

You've hit the nail on the head - breastfeeding is entangled with our relationship with nudity.

I don't personally condone eating nude in public in a restaurant, but there is a broad spectrum of ambivalence towards nudity. For instance, plenty of europe is fine with mixed sex nude saunas and beaches. And the whole thing is pretty asexual.

If you feel ashamed or self conscious or indecent topless on the beach, or even in a same sex changing room, it's probably not a stretch to think you may feel shame breastfeeding on the side of the road in a car.

Now you will have prudes and exhibitionists in any society but the window of normality is going to be a function of what the environment dictates. And iirc being topless on a beach in the US is illegal, whereas no one will blink in Spain or France at a topless woman (except the American/Brit on holiday)

But this is learned behaviour - most children don't care about being dressed or not

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#293

Post by AdrianB1 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

jmchuster wrote: post #271

AdrianB1 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal evidence tells otherwise :) Not kidding, in all the companies I worked for, the best engineers were way better contributors than average managers. Just consider that in many companies management is badly hit by diversity targets, they forcibly promote people to meet these targets and competency suffers.

Yes, I would definitely agree that good managers are much rarer than good engineers. Maybe it's because there's an order of magnitude less managers than engineers at a company, so you have less people to emulate and learn from? Maybe it's because engineers are able to use their off-time to improve their own skills, while for management you really only have books and no easy way for applied practice? And then if we're…

One factor is that for engineers it is relatively simple to measure performance, while measuring manager performance is usually a very obscure and subjective process, allowing entry and promotions for weak managers.

For example, 30 minutes ago a senior director told her entire organization that the primary differentiation in the performance review for the managers will be "quality of communication". Not only this is subjective, but it is not a core performance indicator.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#294

Post by cutemonster » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #292

jariel wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" but why is any hint of discretion needed at all?" Do you really need to ask though? When there's a topless woman in the middle of a restaurant, 99% of people are going to feel something is off. There's a not-so-subtle difference between 'breastfeeding' and 'I'm going to leave my boobs hanging out while I set my baby down and get something out of my bag' If you were in a restaurant, and someone was dangling their br…

You've hit the nail on the head - breastfeeding is entangled with our relationship with nudity. I don't personally condone eating nude in public in a restaurant, but there is a broad spectrum of ambivalence towards nudity. For instance, plenty of europe is fine with mixed sex nude saunas and beaches. And the whole thing is pretty asexual. If you feel ashamed or self conscious or indecent topless on the beach, or even…

@jariel & @yomly -- thanks for writing / replying :-)

When thinking about it, personally, although I'm a man, I'd feel a bit socially anxious / worried about what others would think, if I was without a t-shirt in a restaurant.

> learned behaviour - most children don't care about being dressed or not

(Actually I cared "a lot" and was disappointed when I had to start wearing bath shorts)

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#295

Post by cutemonster » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

drobert wrote: post #253

galoisgirl wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But few women when given the choice would choose to do what she did. Feeding a baby in the car while doing research seems far from desirable for most women I presume. Then the question is why she did it? I'd say the question is why men do it. In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, all men say "I wish I hadn't worked so hard". (That's the second after "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the…

I think for men the incentives are different. If they succeed they have more options in dating, financial freedom, respect from other men, etc. Women get respect too but don't think more dating options (I would even presume the opposite). I met few women that are heavily into investments and becoming independent financially. Women value more relationships, happiness. Men are willing to sacrifice those for money and f…

This is the answer, I'm pretty certain.

But I think it'd be good with more female CEO's, for the whole world (this also based on biology).

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#296

Post by cutemonster » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

bhubert wrote: post #220

drobert wrote: post #215

We had gender roles because it was the most effective way to survive and raise a family. The cost was that women were assigned rather basic responsibilities. Because tech and services have evolved families can outsource some of the chors done by women in the past like cooking, cleaning. In the case of making babies the the technology is still in development but we will get there. Artificial wombs will be an option in…

I know I'm a little lateto the party, but I want to make the point that I don't actually think that there being few women in leading roles is the problem. I think it is a symptom. I think it is a symptom of a real underlying hidden problem that is the discourse of todays society is biasing the interests of our children differently based on gender. A lot of places we're strongly associating the color blue with boys an…

> the problem is that we are raising our boys to want to be leaders and our girls to not.

What you think initially caused that behavior in the first place, some time long ago?

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#297

Post by jmchuster » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 8:31 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #293

jmchuster wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I would definitely agree that good managers are much rarer than good engineers. Maybe it's because there's an order of magnitude less managers than engineers at a company, so you have less people to emulate and learn from? Maybe it's because engineers are able to use their off-time to improve their own skills, while for management you really only have books and no easy way for applied practice? And then if we're…

One factor is that for engineers it is relatively simple to measure performance, while measuring manager performance is usually a very obscure and subjective process, allowing entry and promotions for weak managers. For example, 30 minutes ago a senior director told her entire organization that the primary differentiation in the performance review for the managers will be "quality of communication". Not only this is…

Yeah, interviewing is definitely harder. Again, we can draw the analogy to engineers. Is there a large pool of managers that have gone through interview training for managers and have dialed-in questions that give them good signal on how successful the managers will be? And then you run your candidate through multiple rounds of these interviewers? Are you running your candidates through different simulated encounters with different people and different setups? Or would you say it's closer to interviewing an engineer without asking them to code? So let's say you're trying to interview engineers without asking them to code, then you probably need to at least see all code they produced at their last job and ask their past coworkers about them. So then the analogous requirement for a manager would be to then interview a representative sample of their past reports?

Measuring how "good" your managers is always a hard topic. That's why I found Google's research on it so interesting, since they had both the means and the incentive to run a large-scale study using themselves as the dataset.

I'm not entirely convinced either that evaluating engineers works out that much better. What is the core performance indicator there? Lines of code? Tickets closed? Bugs created? Reputation amongst other engineers? All of those metrics are wrought with perverse incentives. I'd probably end up preferring evaluating managers on "quality of communication" compared to evaluating engineers on any of those.

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#298

Post by cutemonster » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 11:40 PM UTC

Moru wrote: post #212

dpoochieni wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This so much! I had a girlfriend, now friend, which is terribly successful and attractive and she regrets it all saying maybe it would have been better to focus on a family early on. She still has a very good chance in doing so, but clearly thinks it would have been better to use her 20s doing that and didn't do it because of the pressure to be a career woman in her circles and educational experiences.

On the other hand she has enough experience and skin on the nose to be a great and stable mother now.

@dpoochieni

> [She] clearly thinks it would have been better to use her 20s

is it okay if I ask what was her age when she said that?

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#299

Post by cutemonster » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #246

strictfp wrote: post #221

I'm convinced that the best thing we as society can do for gender equality right now is to abandon the corporate roles that cater unreasonably much to the stereotypical macho male gender role. These are roles which in principle require you to abandon your private life and spend all your mental energy on the company. Why do we even have these roles? Well, according to behavioural psychology males fight for status, and…

Never have worked with a single engineer that worked for status. Not once. Especially softies know their place and have mostly other interests. They evidently exist, but they have to be a rare kind. Perhaps a specialty in certain industries. There is of course the usual bickering about who has the longest... best solution, but that is another thing and certainly not restricted to men. Much more prevalent is the stuff…

> Never have worked with a single engineer that worked for status

Do you think they'd tell you they did, or show it in some way?

I think they'd hide such goals, because wanting higher status tend to not make a good impression

Re: Reflections on Being a Female Founder

#300

Post by cutemonster » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:56 AM UTC

_pzdn wrote: post #262

scott_s wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was following the time honored HN tradition of posting one line about the article and then taking up a tangent. Please don't.

You're right; it's bad practice. Sometimes I just want to talk tech and it's easier for me to talk about a tangent that I undersand than to stay on-topic when I don't have any knowledge, but that's a bad habit when it comes to a post on someone's article. I'll eliminate this behavior.

I think such related discussions can be interesting

There's nothing in the guidelines against bringing up related topics -- instead it's just the gp's personal opinion

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html