Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. • Hacker News Board

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#61

Post by csallen » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 4:53 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #53

csallen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, although I'm not inclined to take hearsay of hearsay at face value. It'd be great to see a report with some hard numbers proving that this is the case, and examining the cultural differences that could explain why their numbers are so drastically better than numbers elsewhere in the world. Also, from a scientific perspective, this is a disastrously imperfect experiment. You cannot rule out the eff…

I actually agree with your first statement - I saw that a few days ago, and I'm keeping it in mind provisionally. As to the second point, humans are not very genetically diverse. Of course there are enough differences that we can sometimes conclude that a particular person's genes come from an ethnic group, but it's not as nearly as varied as even other primates. Basically, we hit a genetic bottleneck sometime in the…

You're right about the lack of genetic diversity, but even that limited amount of diversity can result in drastically different personalities, tendencies, etc. For some truly shocking material on just how much of a role genes can play, look into the studies done on identical twins raised apart vs adoptive siblings raised together.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#62

Post by csallen » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 4:53 AM UTC

roguecoder wrote: post #43

csallen wrote: post #25

I just finished reading "The Blank Slate", a very interesting book by Harvard (and former MIT) psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, he argues against the politically correct (but factually incorrect) notion that our minds are infinitely malleable at birth, and that our nature is primarily shaped by culture and the environment. On the contrary, genetics and neurobiology play a comparatively tremendous role in dete…

Pinker's book has been ridiculed by pretty much everyone who understands statistics or actually studies neurobiology. Even his views on linguistics are proving excessively simplistic as further evidence is gathered. I recommend against holding up pop-science cults of personality if you would like people to take you seriously.

Pinker's book has been supported by pretty much everyone who understands statistics or studies neurobiology. His views on linguistics are proving increasingly accurate as further evidence is gathered.

See what I did there? Evidence or bust.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#63

Post by rachelbythebay » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 4:57 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #46

rachelbythebay wrote: post #15

Okay. I left Google because I was fed up with how things were going over there (read my posts - link in profile - if you want to know more). I started my own little business. So, okay, let's go. Throw money at me. I'll make more cool stuff with it. I'm mostly a "plumbing" sort of person, but I've been known to make actual top-level user interfaces on occasion too. Well? Who's with me?

I'll bite here on a tangent: are you really interested in taking a $5k check from an individual angel? Do startups (real ones, not just "I started a company!" startups) bother with that stuff? It seems that if you're a three-person YC gang that the effort involved in coming up with an extra week's (if that) worth of runway isn't even close to worthwhile.

No, I'm interested in building something useful for a reasonable amount of money. That's what I do: a simple exchange of currency for services rendered.

Is this about women in tech, or is this some nebulous thing about startups? Because I'm all for the former, and don't really worry so much about the latter.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#64

Post by nandemo » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:00 AM UTC

darren wrote: post #38

mangodrunk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence for increasing diversity helps?

The Impact of Gender Composition on Team Performance and Decision-Making: Evidence from the Field http://www.econ.upf.edu/~apesteguia/Gender_Teams.pdf "Looking across the performance distribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams are outperformed throughout... For MBA students, at the top, the best performing group is two men and one woman." http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-t…

> I think the evidence is pretty clear.

Uh? The 3 excerpts you quote say 3 different things.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#65

Post by andyl » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:06 AM UTC

Old people (older than 40, say) are way under-represented in tech. Can anyone argue with this point? We need culture change, and maybe even affirmative action to force the industry to open up to oldsters. (yes, I'm in the 40+ demographic) In fact, we probably need a whole army of old journalists and bloggers to celebrate the achievements of their beloved demographic, and to get indignant about the injustices when they occur.

And come to think of it, I haven't seen many black or hispanic coders lately. They probably need to impose their demands on the industry as well.

Just kidding. I'm against quotas for oldsters like me, or any other supposedly marginalized demographic. I look for people who simply excel at writing code and building products, which anyone can do if they devote themselves to the craft.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#66

Post by delinka » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:12 AM UTC

wheels wrote: post #26

> I’d like to CHALLENGE every woman in tech who’s a) got a nice car, b) owns a nice house, or c) is making over $125K a year In the US you need to have an income of greater than $200k/year or assets not including your home of over $1 million in order to be an accredited investor. [1] You don't have to be an accredited investor to invest in startups, but it does open up the company to additional annoying reporting req…

What's to keep me from investing all my money in my own startup? I note attempting facetiousness, I'm truly curious how they differentiate me starting my own business and investing all my own money (at a substantial percentage of my reported income) or starting a business with a buddy and putting in a serious amount of cash.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#67

Post by token_female » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:18 AM UTC

Why does having women invest in startups require a cessation of other forms of activism? I'll buy that having women loudly invest in startups might help the gender gap. But that and other efforts are not mutually exclusive. There isn't even tension between them. It's a false dichotomy.

"So forgive me if i’m getting a little tired of people telling me: 1) Why I need to put more women speakers on panels at conferences (we’re trying), 2) How women are still at a disadvantage in tech (yeah, i know), or 3) What MEN should be doing to help WOMEN in tech"

Why start out by ostracizing the people who are already vocally fighting against gender discrimination and latent sexism? It just detracts from his point about angel investing. The comment thread here is evidence of this - half the posts are ranting about feminists, affirmative action, and generally anybody who thinks there is a sexism problem in tech. The suggestion about angel investing is lost in the circlejerk.

"(sure they [men] could do more, but frankly it’s your [women's] problem not theirs)."

This is as false as it is offensive. When smart, talented women are discouraged from going into tech en masse because of a sexist culture, it is everybody's problem. In Bill Gates' words to a Saudi Arabian audience, "Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the top ten.”

"To which I reply: Physician, Heal Thy Damn Self. You don’t need men to solve the problem."

Men are the ones who dominate the industry now, and it is mostly men who contribute to the sexist culture (note that I am not saying most men contribute to this. I am saying most of the primary contributors to the culture being unfriendly to women are men. There is an important distinction there. Being a man does not make you automatically sexist). We need men AND women to solve the problem. We don't have to choose just one.

On a minor note, at the end he writes

"thanks to many women who helped proofread early drafts of this post… most of whom I didn’t listen to about how to make it better"

I like how he flat out admits that he is ignoring the opinions of women. What was that about it not being men's problem?

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#68

Post by einhverfr » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:23 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #59

[deleted]

Maybe men don't care about working at a beautify salon?

More likely though Real Men(TM) don't want to be hairdressers! That's only for flaming homosexuals!

Never underestimate the power of a good social taboo.

Now, given that there aren't a lot of gender taboos against women working on Wikipedia or in technology startups, then it seems to me that at least the latter has to be a career choice issue. I think there are very strong reasons to think that men value security and stability of employment less than women, and so are going to be overrepresented in environments which are more risky and less stable than women are. If this is a problem the question is what we do to compensate. Would Marissa Mayer have been able to put in 130 hour work weeks as a new mom? Of course not. That our industry demands such may in fact be the problem.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#69

Post by einhverfr » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:27 AM UTC

Volpe wrote: post #20

wh-uws wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Tech is supposed to be meritocracy. Anyone here who would discount other's because of perceived charity is shortsighted at best and ignorant asshole at worst. All we are supposed to care about is can you code and/or help our business. Being red/white/magenta or whatever gender or permutation there of shouldn't enter into the conversation if Tech is really the "meritocracy" it claims itself to b…

> Tech is supposed to be meritocracy. You can't have a proper meritocracy if the prospective field don't have access to the same level of opportunities. Women get ostracised from I.T. fairly early on (i.e before education has finished).

>You can't have a proper meritocracy if the prospective field don't have access to the same level of opportunities.

Agreed but how do you define the same level of opportunities?

Suppose the opportunity is "work hard, every day, 12 hours every day from when you are 20 until you are 40 and then retire as a billionaire." There is nothing stopping women from taking that opportunity. But women who do lose something that men who take that opportunity do not lose, namely the ability to really have a family with kids of one's own.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#70

Post by InclinedPlane » Thu, Jul 19, 2012, 5:27 AM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #33

InclinedPlane wrote: post #3

Right, this is just a call for something akin to affirmative action, which has had questionable results at best. The onus here isn't on women. And the right solution is not to preferentially favor women in the tech field. What you'll end up with is a situation where asshole misogynists consider themselves even more justified in treating women in tech as second class citizens. This time because "they only got there th…

I'm a little confused as to what the problem is . Is it that there aren't enough women in tech, or is it that women who are in tech aren't being treated fairly? If it's the latter, then I'm all for fixing that problem. But if it's the former, then it may just be the case that women don't' want to be in tech. I try encouraging my sister to learn about programming and computers all the time, but she'll have nothing to…

Both things are a problem, for numerous reasons.

This is one of those "fish don't have a word for water" problems to some degree, beyond the misogyny that so often exists in tech. Part of the problem is that there is this stereotype of the tech "nerd" who is socially awkward, doesn't shower, works 70+ hours a week. That serves as a roadblock for guys to get into tech as well, but it's far easier for guys to overcome it than women. The fact that women are much less likely to find that stereotype desirable is used as a reinforcement of the notion that "girls just aren't well suited to the tech lifestyle". But the "tech lifestyle" is not an absolute, it's just a semi-arbitrary tradition. And it forms the core of just as much of an "old boy's club" as, say, traditions of cigars, scotch, and golf do in other activities. Or, more so, traditions of strip clubs and casual acceptance of pornographic representations of women, which is also a thing in many corners of tech.

Self-reinforcing stereotypes are part of the problem. The way that women are treated as outsiders and 2nd class citizens is part of the problem. The fact that women who are interested in tech and talented are turned off by the stereotypes and the culture is part of the problem.