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Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

femfosec.com

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#641

Post by tomcam »

StavrosK wrote: post #558
AussieWog93 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James Damore went a bit further than the author did. He also didn't take care to avoid offense and misunderstanding when talking about certain topics. For example, he mentioned that women, on average, have more neuroticism. He's technically correct in terms of the psychological definition of the word (women will, on average, experience higher levels of anxiety than men when exposed to the same level of negative stimu…

> For example, he mentioned that women, on average, have more neuroticism. [..] he didn't consider the political ramifications of describing 3.5 billion people as neurotic. You're doing it too. If I say "men have, on average, more muderous tendencies than women", am I describing 3.5 billion people as murderers?

Absolutely not. If you are talking about young men, you are stating a statistical fact. As a former young man, I would not be the least bit offended.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#642

Post by tomcam »

sky_rw wrote: post #540
tomcam wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big capitalist here. I agree completely. The reason I'm a millionaire instead of a billionaire is that my first priority was always to have a stable family and marriage. I noticed all the billionaires seemed to go through a few wives before settling down. Didn't like what that did to the children, or what I imagined it might have done. This kept me out of SV (and in much more, at the time, stable and family oriented…

If becoming a billionaire or not was simply a matter of choice for you I’m surprised you couldn’t figure out a way to do it without running through wives.

Sarcasm noted. As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not that smart. But I figured out I could do if I worked hard enough and smart enough to get the fuck out of the neighborhood/family I lived in and never get abused or beaten again. I managed that much.

I’ve done in-depth studies of successful people since I was a young kid, and the richest ones simply didn’t seem to have time for family. You could probably crack that nut. I can’t. I have a house and a farm and a family close to me, however flawed. I’ll take it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#643

Post by as300 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #579
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single person who has children takes 2-4 years off from work? (as300's original comment, five posts parent to this one.) No, I'm pretty sure that 90% of the population does not do that.

Ahh, fair. I didn't realise that's what he was talking about specifically. I thought he was referring to the (real) monetary losses that come from people shifting priorities away from career and towards family.

No, I'm not saying we compensate people for the opportunity cost for not having kids. I'm saying we compensate them according to the value to society of them having them and spending time raising them.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#644

Post by tomcam »

coryfklein wrote: post #450
tomcam wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. This is something dudes can't write about. My wife & I simply decided decades ago that one of us would always not work. We lived cheaply so we could accomplish that goal, but we wanted a good family life. I would have been happy to be a househusband because she's about 50 times the programmer I am, but she doesn't love business and I do. We ended up doing great, but we had to start out assuming that a 2-caree…

Why can't men write about it?

If that’s a sincere question, look up the term “male privilege“

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#645

Post by asoneth »

whydoyoucare wrote: post #539
asoneth wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of more than a dozen friends who moved to Silicon Valley for work/education, all but one left California around the time they started their families. The impression I get is that they're happy they had a chance to work there for a decade or so and now they're happy to live somewhere else. Silicon Valley sounds like a great place to do many things and it's OK if having a family is not one of those things. I'm not sayi…

I believe it primarily has to do with cost of living than anything else.

Yes, though salaries are a factor as well.

When I ran the numbers on some offers years ago my estimate was that moving to Silicon Valley would be a financially sound decision if I lived frugally because I'd be less exposed to the high cost of living. But once you start factoring in things like owning a home, childcare, etc the salary premium compared to cities like NYC, Boston, Seattle, Portland, etc just isn't sufficient.

So it makes some sense that the area attracts young people looking to strike it rich but pressures them to leave if they haven't won the startup lottery and still want to have a family.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#646

Post by rayiner »

blackguardx wrote: post #575
rayiner wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree, I think in the countries and social spheres where this is an _actual_ choice for women, it is very much a "life choice" (because the rest of the world makes more than enough children to resolve the issues of "sustainable human society"). When we'll get to a point where world wide population growth drops below 2.1 factor, maybe then we can start reconsidering this policy. That's not really a rebuttal to…

There has been various research about Earth's carrying capacity. The numbers are controversial but it shouldn't be controversial that there is _some_ limit. I think we are going to have to adapt to a post-growth world. Or maybe things will grow in other ways. I am not worried about declining birth rates. It's not like we are heading for a "Children of Men" scenario. The population will stabilize before it goes to zer…

> I think we are going to have to adapt to a post-growth world. Or maybe things will grow in other ways. I am not worried about declining birth rates. It's not like we are heading for a "Children of Men" scenario.

I'm not talking about endless growth. I'm talking about simply maintaining existing societies. The fertility rate in South Korea is now below 1. That's a society that's basically gone within three generations.

> The population will stabilize before it goes to zero.

Right--so what does society and culture look like then?

> Or maybe we will just grow people in vats.

We can't even fix male pattern baldness for god's sake.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#647

Post by rayiner »

bradleyjg wrote: post #609
rayiner wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re really that into high pressure job and grinding the ladder why would you be so attracted to raising a family as a sahm ? You can’t do everything at once. No one is stopping you from raising children but yourself. Many don’t go for the business route and that’s a respectable choice but of course you can’t have it all. If in the end your fertility is more important than your career then have kids without ma…

> If you think liberal societies are a good thing, then we really need to figure out a way to allow women to have careers and also children. Probably true, but eugenics motivations aside (and if you insist on going there we have egg donation technology), we probably don’t need to figure out a way to make motherhood and a small fraction of the most demanding jobs compatible. There’s nothing fundamentally unworkable ab…

> we probably don’t need to figure out a way to make motherhood and a small fraction of the most demanding jobs compatible.

I don't think it's really that small of a fraction. It's not just tech founders who are faced with career tracks that have a pressure to perform in the key 25-35 age range.

> There’s nothing fundamentally unworkable about a world where you can be a unicorn tech founder, big law partner, or Harvard professor or you can have children in your 20s but not both.

Insofar as these are the people who become CEOs and politicians, that actually is a problem.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#648

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

bradleyjg wrote: post #603
john_moscow wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a full-time job. It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience. It's not the sa…

But our society has taken a weird turn. Instead of recognizing the importance of this job, respecting stay-at-home parents and encouraging as many families as possible to invest in the future by taking the best care of their kids, we have effectively destroyed it. I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it? And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a r…

> That’s true whether that $200k/year comes from one earner or two. In fact, if it comes from one earner you are a little better off tax-wise (because of the social security cap.)

Wait. What? Where are you that does not have tax brackets? Is that common in the US?

In Australia you are substantially penalised for being a household that draws all your income from one person. It's not even close. And it's infuriating.

One salary $200k/yr, in pocket after tax = $135,333

One salary $100k/yr, in pocket after tax = $75,813 Multiplied by two = $151,626

That's $1,385.50 difference in available income per month.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#649

Post by rayiner »

john_moscow wrote: post #571
astan wrote: post #67

Your whole blog resonates deeply with me. All this corporate grifting and women's empowerment months will do jack shit until we figure out how to make workplaces and lives more equitable for mothers and allowing for gaps, breaks and destigmatizing time off for parents of both genders. Instead, we talk about how sexism is the biggest problem. Sure, sexism might be annoying, but in the west, it is hardly something that…

Here's an unpopular thought: raising kids, motivating them to learn, helping them mature, teaching them your values, helping them get out of bad influence, is a full-time job. It requires education to explain the right things and show good examples. It requires soft skills to be patient and persuasive. It requires people skills to counter out bad influencers. It requires time, dedication and patience. It's not the sa…

It's a demanding and important job, no doubt, but it's not a full time job over the entire working life of a parent. The norm throughout history--and even today in traditional societies practicing subsistence agriculture--has been for both spouses to "work."

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#650

Post by didericis »

paledot wrote: post #623
lettergram wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the people HN haven’t spent much time with people out of the “bubble”. “Trigger warning” This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight. 90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage gro…

Wage stagnation has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with the obscenely rich being permitted to get obscenely richer. It's disappointing that your friends have fallen for that lie.

Those aren’t mutually exclusive ideas.
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