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Female Founders

paulgraham.com

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Re: Female Founders

#61

Post by vezzy-fnord »

cjbprime wrote: post #50
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about addressing the fact that sexism related stories get flagged off his very own website with surprising speed (either manually, or by his own automated algorithms)? Are we really going to blame algorithms now for promoting prejudice? The reason sexism-related stories fall down is not because of lack of interest or due to prejudice, but quite the contrary: too much interest , causing an imbalance in the upvote-…

> Are we really going to blame algorithms now for promoting prejudice? Your implicit claim is that a human can't write an algorithm that promotes prejudice. Are you interested in defending that claim? It seems very obviously false.

I guess you could. Although I'm not sure how exactly an algorithm can be inherently prejudiced, that sounds rather postmodern. You can make one that is inefficient or apply one that isn't suitable to a given data set, and end up with skewed results. But an algorithm promoting prejudice by itself? I don't know. I always thought mathematics was neutral.

Either way, it absolutely does not apply here. HN's algorithms sinking sexism-related stories is a side effect. The fact of the matter is it will sink any story that has an imbalance in the upvote-to-comment ratio, whether it's about sexism, Haskell or the Church of the SubGenius.

This is the same logic as saying that encryption is evil because it can be used by terrorists to hide information. Encryption always does the same thing, it's fundamentally neutral, regardless of what's being encrypted. The same way HN's algorithms are fundamentally neutral, regardless of what happens to trigger their procedures.

Re: Female Founders

#62

Post by jiggy2011 »

daleharvey wrote: post #55
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about addressing the fact that sexism related stories get flagged off his very own website with surprising speed (either manually, or by his own automated algorithms)? Are we really going to blame algorithms now for promoting prejudice? The reason sexism-related stories fall down is not because of lack of interest or due to prejudice, but quite the contrary: too much interest , causing an imbalance in the upvote-…

The algorithm was written with an intent and it can be changed. Its been very clear for a long time that almost all discussion about women in tech is as good as censored on hackers, which is a shame because its giving a lot of well intentions but naive people the impression that there is no problem.

Those threads always turn into flamewars that spill out into other threads.

Re: Female Founders

#63

Post by pshin45 »

parfe wrote: post #26

I find myself disappointed by this blog post. The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Then he follows up with statistics comparing YC to the general VC market. Fine, you do better than most. However, not the worst does not mean not bad. He comes closest to saying anything of substance with the paragraph: So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? Th…

(Posted on behalf of a friend)

"PG, of the three female partners you mentioned, one is in charge of legal, the second: taxes, and the third (largely) of founder relations.

How many full-time or part-time YC partners actually advise companies on business strategy?"

Re: Female Founders

#64

Post by evincarofautumn »

johnrob wrote: post #23

Another explanation of why girls don't start companies: maybe they are smarter? The median outcome of a startup is a loss of time and money.

“Smarter” is too blunt a point. Your average young woman is probably more risk-averse than your average young man.

Re: Female Founders

#65

Post by zorpner »

pg wrote: post #40
parfe wrote: post #26

I find myself disappointed by this blog post. The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Then he follows up with statistics comparing YC to the general VC market. Fine, you do better than most. However, not the worst does not mean not bad. He comes closest to saying anything of substance with the paragraph: So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? Th…

The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Actually by pointing out the degree to which women run things at YC it's closer to saying "I'm not racist! I'm black." And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. And I do know something about groups working on getting gir…

> And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces.

That... is not an argument? There's ample evidence to show that members of underrepresented groups within individual companies/industries experience unconscious biases in hiring/ranking/etc, even towards groups of which they're a member.

Re: Female Founders

#66

Post by Grae »

At Thinkful we recently dug into our enrollment and performance numbers to see what we could learn about people towards the beginning of their careers as developers [1].

Turns out that women enroll in our courses at about the same proportion they're currently represented in engineering, which is disappointing, but that there's no difference between their performance once they enroll.

Of particular relevance is the rate at which incoming students report their motivation for taking the course is to "found a startup". 16% of men, but only 5% of women, gave that reason.

[1] http://blog.thinkful.com/post/72670499078/gender-differences...

Edit for grammar.

Re: Female Founders

#67

Post by shadowfox »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #43

Why is pg engaging with these trolls? Does anyone think they truly care about women succeeding in business or software? No, this is about making a stink and attention whoring. The appropriate response is to flip these weenies the bird.

> The appropriate response is to flip these weenies the bird

That is a very mature approach, I am sure :P

Re: Female Founders

#68

Post by tomasien »

tomasien wrote: post #41

Also, I must say I apologize for my Gatekeeper comments ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6986872 ). I didn't have YC's female founder numbers at the time, but being 2x the average VC's portfolio in terms of female founders is pretty darn good evidence that you aren't biased. You weren't attempting to make the point eloquently in your "The Information" piece and you didn't, but you do here. I'm still glad I brou…

Side note: if anyone knows who said "instead of being a gatekeeper, we should be a gateway" I'd love to see it. It's similar to what I said except way, way better and I'd love to see the context.

Re: Female Founders

#69

Post by pg »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #43

Why is pg engaging with these trolls? Does anyone think they truly care about women succeeding in business or software? No, this is about making a stink and attention whoring. The appropriate response is to flip these weenies the bird.

It's not the trolls I care about so much as more moderate people who may have seen the fight from a distance and come away with the idea that YC is somehow sexist. Particularly women, because I want them to apply.

Re: Female Founders

#70

Post by cjbprime »

chadwickthebold wrote: post #58
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about addressing the fact that sexism related stories get flagged off his very own website with surprising speed (either manually, or by his own automated algorithms)? Are we really going to blame algorithms now for promoting prejudice? The reason sexism-related stories fall down is not because of lack of interest or due to prejudice, but quite the contrary: too much interest , causing an imbalance in the upvote-…

Aren't upvotes a measure of interest? I would argue that the lack of upvotes on sexism-related posts indicates a lack of interest in discussing these issues on the part of the general population of HN. What you get is a small group of vocal people eager to discuss the topic while everyone else simply avoids the post. This is similar behavior to what is seen in a flamewar, but could we agree that there might possibly…

> Aren't upvotes a measure of interest? I would argue that the lack of upvotes on sexism-related posts indicates a lack of interest in discussing these issues on the part of the general population of HN.

The sexism-related posts have a large number of upvotes, yet they are penalized anyway by the controversial algorithm under discussion.

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