Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#561

Post by dkersten » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

igorkraw wrote: post #342

LockAndLol wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in your case German) discussions and experiences from American ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc. It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topi…

Good points, thank you. It just seems like in this case, whenever the topic is discussed everyone points to "it is known" style twitter mobs, and the actual examples of twitter mobs that do show up tend to not be as unreasonable in general. E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up, thanks…

He didn't defend Minsky in a tone deaf manner at all though, what he said was completely taken out of context. In the post where the lady "outted" him, she literally quoted what he said and then paraphrased it to mean something completely different.

RMS literally said that its possible that Minsky did not know that she wasn't willing because she was being coerced by Epstein to appear like she was. What is tone deaf about that? It seems pretty obvious that Epstein coerced his victims into acting a certain way.

The post took this and rephrased it as "RMS said she was entirely willing", which wasn't even close to what he said.

> And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of what really is rape reasonable?

Except he never questioned what is or isn't rape. He didn't even question whether the girl in question was a victim, it was pretty clear that he agreed that she was. He only said that, because of coercion by Epstein, Minsky likely was presented with the appearance that everything was ok, even though it wasn't and that this would have affected his judgement.

Of course, Minsky's wife also said that they were on Epstein's island together and that Minsky did not engage in any of the accused activity anyway. But that's neither here nor there.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#562

Post by throwaway19937 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #247

haltingproblem wrote: post #239

[deleted]

How come other professions like Law and Medicine were able to make huge progress overcoming similar problems while tech continues to lag behind? This is not an intractable problem.

> How come other professions like Law and Medicine were able to make huge progress overcoming similar problems while tech continues to lag behind?

There were class action lawsuits that required law firms, law schools, medical schools, and hospitals to accept women doctors and lawyers.

Technology didn't have these interventions so it's unsurprising that sexism is more of an issue than in other fields.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#563

Post by quicklime » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:55 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #8

DoreenMichele wrote: post #5

I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism , I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say. I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due…

Genuine question, if you were a man in that situation, what would you do?

For that particular situation, I'd stay silent. I agree there's a risk, and that this is a problem.

Longer term though, I'd make sure we hire female investors into my VC fund. I'd take them along the journey of investing with this startup, and if I felt a female CEO needed to be replaced with a man, I'd discuss this with my investment partners. Any harsh feedback, if given, would be coming from all of us, and a mixed panel would be harder to accuse of sexism.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#564

Post by danielmarkbruce » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

timoth3y wrote: post #558

While I have no doubt that the author's examples are true, and of course sometimes feedback is misinterpreted. However, I've never found this line of argument compelling. Yes, as a man, sometimes you do have to be careful about how you give feedback to female founders, coworkers, or employees. It's a skill to be developed just like 1,000 other little skills you need to develop be reasonably successful in life. This s…

In the public sphere the risk/reward is quite different. What you are talking about is relatively private.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#565

Post by jberryman » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

cynusx wrote: post #408

If you are a woman you can easily counter this behavior by labelling it and saying that you don't have a porcelain skin. Bonuspoints if you laugh about a guy giving you super bad feedback and how this did not bother you. Putting people at ease around you (especially customers) is a critical entrepreneurial skill. You can't blame people for being cautious when a lot of people are buying into victim-narratives and conv…

Or maybe these fragile adult millionaire men could just... try harder? have more tact? Maybe we should have higher expectations of these men to have a little more awareness?

All that's assuming this phenomenon is even real, and not just an excuse for the author to grind her PeE cEe cUlTuRe axe; the whole thing is conveniently framed with "oh, but of course none of these people I'm not naming could ever admit that what I'm saying is true..."

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#566

Post by downandout » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #556

downandout wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the (at least) 2 people that downvoted this: what part of this comment is controversial or offends you? I don’t see it, and I would love to understand. Downvoting without comment does no good for anyone.

I didn't do this in this situation, but I sometimes downvote by accident in an attempt to collapse. There are a lot of people on this thread so it could have happened.

It’s now at -4 (went from +2 to -2). Which means that there is something in it that offends people, but nobody is willing to say what it is. I am genuinely trying to understand, because there isn’t a single shred of text in that comment that was intended to be offensive to anyone.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#567

Post by Google234 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #241

arnath wrote: post #220

I can't be the only one who thinks this is bullshit, right? The scenario described in the article isn't a dilemma unless the gender of the CEO is part of your reason. If it's not, you will have some rational explanation and should be able to point to your history of not being a sexist asshole.

I'm really curious if the purported consequences of an accusation of sexism are so harmful for these wealthy investors. For example, Ellen Pao filed a lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins and wrote a whole book about sexist behavior she experienced while working there. That got a ton of publicity - what has the long-term impact been? Kleiner Perkins seems to be doing fine. I'm not saying investors don't perceive a risk he…

It’s definitely worth clamming up in the fraction of the fraction of situations that the author describes (female founder + potentially very negative feedback) if it means avoiding a Ellen Pao type situation. On one side you have something that could destroy your reputation, work, and cost you and on the other is holding back advice that may or may not help someone a bit.

Also, are really downplaying what happened and ignoring the fact that it could have ended up much worse for KP.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#568

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #334

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #17

This is kind of the end result we're heading for, where you can only talk candidly with people who are equal or lower than you on the oppression hierarchy. The shitty part is that I'm pretty sure 99% of people are reasonable human beings but the media has to make it seem like that isn't the case so the risk equation changes. Similar to how kids used to roam around the neighborhood but now it's deemed too risky becaus…

The risk of the unpredictable, catastrophic risks that children face when they roam lower than it has ever been. The risk of an unpredictable, catastrophic event for a man is higher than it has ever been. I don't think that's a good analogy.

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#569

Post by SilverRed » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #515

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #430

The other day, I was in a Zoom meeting with another man and a woman. The call had too much latency, and the conversation was a tad heated, so we were all interrupting each other to some extent—but I noticed halfway through that I was interrupting the woman more, and she was speaking the least. Just like in all the research. While I certainly didn't go silent for the rest of the meeting, I made a concerted effort to l…

You shouldn't be interrupting people unless they go to unreasonable lengths without providing a pause for others to chime in.

Its very hard in a high latency call to not interrupt people.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#570

Post by vmception » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #259

I had an experience at work where a coworker (who is black) shared his experience of being told to "stay in his lane" early on in his career. The insinuation was of course racism, he didn't mention it but it was obvious. Then I and someone else (who are white) shared our exact same experiences. He told me he felt cut off, etc, even though we were sharing the same experience. If we had something similar happen, how ca…

> Why do we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities feel comfortable all the time?

> The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white.

You lost me here.

You had one experience with one person and extrapolated that to multiple entire groups.

You should be able to discern how your conversation with that one person was okay and not a "cancelable" offense, and how your comment that I quoted is not okay and could be a "cancelable" offense. Or if that's not the issue, you should be able to see how to have that conversation.

Can you see that I can't tell if you've been pushed to extreme views where you wind up on websites where other people say the same thing and agree with you, or if you all your experiences are segregated like this to the point you would fit a definition of racist?

That was rhetorical.

The point is that your one experience is something fairly predictable but not an area that validates your complaint. There would be a way to continue that conversation, acknowledge the person's experience and how they conflate that with race-based oppression, while also being able to contribute to the conversation.