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Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

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Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#411

Post by qbaqbaqba »

s73ver_ wrote: post #310
staticelf wrote: post #56

As a non-american and as a person who has never been to SV but love the idea that is described in the article that anyone can start up a company I would like to adress the points in the article. 1. Your ideas are only as good as the people in the room. And your door is shut to most people. Well, if anyone can start a company the door isn't shut. I don't buy that white men only invests in white men. I think people inv…

"Well, if anyone can start a company the door isn't shut. I don't buy that white men only invests in white men. I think people invest in companies (for the most part) where investors think they will gain the most money from." Numbers don't lie. And there are countless examples of times where women-led startups couldn't even get meetings with VCs, but after adding a male founder, suddenly were asked to come in for mee…

>And there are countless examples

Do you mind posting any?

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#412

Post by arkh »

ben_w wrote: post #79
arkh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the startup level is useless, you better encourage young people to get into science by making it sexy and not for social outcasts. If there is sexism to fight against it is in education with how maths and physics are painted as "for dorks" instead of showing how y…

Disagree. Fight the problem at every level you encounter it. If startups are begging for more women, universities won’t be able to tolerate students or staff who discourage women from applying and/or finish their degrees.

If a company gets to 50% women in STEM jobs it means 2 other companies of the same size can't have any.

Or you'd have to recruit from other kind of degrees.

But realistically most companies are already begging for women in tech teams. Not being in the US, I've had some jobs where I've been told if they had just one female applicant the job woul be for them if they can type an Hello World program. But when you have 6 women in a class of 80, half of which are students from another country going back there once they have their degree it's hard to imagine a 50/50 team.

I think the biggest wall is not sexism, but the media using some cases to create the illusion of rampant sexism. Exactly like how people think violence is on the rise while stats show it is down due to coverage.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#413

Post by [deleted] »

bogomipz wrote: post #111
austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

>"People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates." No, your average non-techie consumer knows and cares very little about Silicon Valley. People like convenience and innovation that leads to convenience in their lives. There is no transitive property where if I "love" ride-sharing I "love" Uber's leadership, business tactics and company culture. >"Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Go…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#414

Post by tomjen3 »

Clubber wrote: post #396
tomjen3 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then have the migrate to the cities. Seriously, the US was founded by people moving over the Atlantic in search of better opportunities and the west was converted the same way.

50 million people? Simple dismissive answers to complex problems isn't going to solve anything.

Surely most of them have jobs? Even then, the top 5 cities could each handle a million more people - admitably it would require more infrastructure.

Also there is no rule that big problems can't have simple solutions.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#415

Post by bllguo »

aylmao wrote: post #299
bllguo wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, ideally everyone gets well-paid, fulfilling jobs... So, when do we start talking about practical solutions?

A reasonable minimum wage

I do believe in raising the minimum wage, but how does that address the fact that outsourcing and automation have been reducing and will continue to reduce the supply of jobs?

Thousands of people have skills that are not worth enough, these days, to support the lifestyle they are used to. That's the problem here.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#416

Post by jeffdavis »

Apocryphon wrote: post #370
jeffdavis wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that people would be worried about the economic impact, and who would feel it. I don't get how the name is a problem, other than it being a little too accurate.

There's a certain "startup style" that appeared in the marketing for tech in the Web 2.0 period, maybe kicking off when Google adopted "Don't be evil" as their corporate slogan. (I allude to it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436272 ) The name being too accurate falls into the stereotypical Silicon Valley trap of cheerfully "disrupting" with negative consequences for "regular people." Not only does the p…

I am starting to see it: the name is too cheerful -- almost boastful about a powerfully-backed business beating their less-powerful competitors.

Markets are brutal sometimes. This still seems to rank pretty low on that scale. For a long time competition was looked at more like a non-violent form of warfare, and this wouldn't even register. Now, I guess we have a more cooperative view of business (or perhaps some people have just never been in business and don't know), so they should be sensitive to the plight of their competitors.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#417

Post by rtx »

s73ver_ wrote: post #407
rtx wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a son and grandson of coal miners. That is just politician speak. My father and grandfather can't be retrained to do something else and make the same amount.

As someone who enjoys breathing clean air, they can't continue to mine coal. They just cannot. And I'm sorry they feel that way about their wages, but they have to continue to adapt.

Yup, I feel the same about cars and meat. But willing to wait for the generational change.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#418

Post by arkh »

stale2002 wrote: post #354
arkh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the startup level is useless, you better encourage young people to get into science by making it sexy and not for social outcasts. If there is sexism to fight against it is in education with how maths and physics are painted as "for dorks" instead of showing how y…

You misinterpret what is causing the problem. It is not just a pipeline problem at the elementary school level where women aren't being given enough Legos to play with or something. It is a pipeline problem at the company level as well. As in, women in tech are very often driven out of the industry because of all the BS that they have to put up with. Fix the sexism problem at the company level and the industry stops…

If they don't want to join, then what is the problem? Their life, their choice.

Do we see as many article about the lack of women in waste management?

I think that's because seem like easy well-payed jobs. The reality is stupid hours, stupid management and no life. Only people who value money more than their time would choose to stay there.

But hey! A possible solution would be to force women to learn to code then work there for decades. We could start with those who chose to become journalist or some other humanities major. Women are too stupid to choose the right path for them, am I right? /s

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#419

Post by jacalata »

Klockan wrote: post #324
jacalata wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, really? That seems unusual - how are you defining "team"? I use it to describe a group of about 7-10 people and I have definitely seen many of them with no women.

20% are women in the places I have worked so you would expect there to be around 2 on average then. The probability then that a team of 10 has zero women would be around 10% so not that common.

20% is definitely higher than average, and higher than any company I've worked at. And you're assuming a completely random distribution, which is not the case in my experience, for whatever reason.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#420

Post by acchow »

shoefly wrote: post #78

The small midwestern town from which I hail is rotting. The residents could never afford the luxuries flowing here in the valley. They are angry. They are huge Trump supporters. They don't want handouts. They want jobs. They want to contribute. They don't want to leave their homes. They are stuck.

> They want jobs. They want to contribute. They don't want to leave their homes. They are stuck.

Government should subsidize relocation to a full time job.

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