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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#651

Post by Mountain_Skies »

igorkraw wrote: post #223

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

>I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist.

It doesn't have to be always, it only needs to be once and then your career is ended.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#652

Post by mc32 »

It seems the main problem is modern (woke) society and by that I mean indoctrination.

It's really the fault of the media, school and everyone else who pushes the unnuanced narrative that everything must be judged thru sexist or racist lenses. In that climate where our shortcomings are someone else's fault because they are by default inherently sexist or racist, this is what you will end up with. And so those who could help avoid at all costs any possibility of being viewed though that lens. Ergo the clamming up.

So we end up with people who don't practice critical skills, though they have them, and believe the narrative unreservedly because they have been taught this way. It's lose-lose for us all. Men lose, women lose and American society loses.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#653

Post by retsibsi »

gadf wrote: post #604
scarmig wrote: post #548

A female founder acquaintance of mine (who's quite smart and capable) went on a Twitter screed a couple weeks ago. As it turns out, someone else had copied her idea, and her startup now had a competitor. The competitor was also able to raise a solid amount of money despite her being first to market and her having more relevant knowledge of the problem space (by her own estimation). So, this scenario isn't exactly unc…

So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her. Doesn't this sort of thinking basically make these notions into a conspiracy theory? Every piece of evidence interpreted in a way that it supports the chosen narrati…

It's genuinely difficult to find the right balance, though. (Even as an individual, let alone as a society.) I don't think there's a clean solution; the only easily-applied heuristics are the stupid extreme ones, either assuming that everything that could possibly be Xism is Xism, or that nothing is Xism unless the perpetrator conveniently says something like 'women can't do maths' or 'I don't want you to work here because you are black'. I'm not really sure what to do about this; maybe we just have to wait, make our own judgments as best we can, and hope that our society finds a non-terrible equilibrium.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#654

Post by TameAntelope »

dolni wrote: post #602
TameAntelope wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's going to be true right up until someone crosses a line or someone feels like a line was crossed, and then the entire structure will collapse on top of you, possibly killing a few people's careers in the process. "Just be cool" is not a strategy.

I had the misfortune of working with a person who decided that everything was an affront to her existence. And being that she was a woman, firing her was out of the question because of the potential discrimination lawsuit. God help you if you ever made the mistake of greeting a room full of people with "hey you guys" in her presence. The ridiculousness of the complaints escalated until any Slack messages not strictly…

I hope that doesn't delegitimize people expressing their hurt by actual discrimination in the workplace, because I know first hand how hard it can be to recover from someone trying to manipulate the system like your coworker.

Once you see one person behave like that, a very easy trap to fall into is to think that everyone who is concerned about even vaguely similar things is trying to do the same thing, even if their concern is fair/reasonable.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#655

Post by neonological »

neonological wrote: post #347
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot. I also think the amount of overshoot is proportional to the amount of sexism that was present in a society thirty years ago. I believe Northern Europe has been trending slowly towards gender equality since the 90s, and thus the amount of overshoot here is much less from the rece…

> I believe this phenomenon is more like overshoot in an underdamped system than being the end result. Rapid changes always lead to overshoot. No I don't think it's this. I think it's the advent of the internet. The internet changed everything. What you will find is that the internet is responsible for making everything look like an "overshoot."

I realize some of you may not remember life before the internet but before the internet was around these "outrages" were nowhere to be found.

At that time the abolishing of Racial Segregation was already old news and happened at least 5-6 decades before the internet. If this was an overshoot you would think the overshoot would've happened after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and not on some random time period 60 years later when the internet just happens to be 2 decades old.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#656

Post by erentz »

gadf wrote: post #604
scarmig wrote: post #548

A female founder acquaintance of mine (who's quite smart and capable) went on a Twitter screed a couple weeks ago. As it turns out, someone else had copied her idea, and her startup now had a competitor. The competitor was also able to raise a solid amount of money despite her being first to market and her having more relevant knowledge of the problem space (by her own estimation). So, this scenario isn't exactly unc…

So, this scenario isn't exactly uncommon in the startup world. It happens all the time. But because she's a minority female and her competitor is a white man, it suddenly becomes an example of white supremacy and the patriarchy conspiring to oppress her. Doesn't this sort of thinking basically make these notions into a conspiracy theory? Every piece of evidence interpreted in a way that it supports the chosen narrati…

> You know, the ability to blame everyone else rather than face yourself and take personal responsibility.

It’s often not even about personal responsibility. Such as the example responding to, it’s just a case of a harsh dog eat dog world. Many well deserving people miss out due to that reality and simple bad luck and I think it’s also important to learn to be able to accept these cases (which can be really hard to do).

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#657

Post by bastawhiz »

danielvaughn wrote: post #531
bastawhiz wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lacks experience in X and Y which are key in product space Z. Obviously you didn't post the feedback, but I wonder how this was phrased. If the feedback was "improve X and Y", I think I sympathize with the panelist. The feedback was solicited! If it was framed as "unlikely to succeed because inexperienced in X and Y" then I think that crossed a line from critical feedback to a somewhat demeaning comment, even if it…

There are better and worse ways to communicate, sure. But fundamentally, you cannot control how people interpret the words that you say.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to be sure you're communicating thoughtfully.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#658

Post by disposekinetics »

sneak wrote: post #507
igorkraw wrote: post #223

I'm a bit sad about how eager everyone is jumping on the idea that "candid advice" will always be construed as possibly sexist. I'm from Germany and we are famously blunt, so maybe there is a cultural aspect to this, but to me candor != risk of sexism. If your advice is candid, it also shouldn't leave any ambiguity..."I'm unsure about you doing the pitch because the last N times you froze up and you seem nervous agai…

A lot of Americans of any gender would be put off by a lot of very routine and candid professional communications that happen in Germany. I find American English in general to be tending toward the near universal avoidance of direct speech and statements, independent of speaker/listener identity. Importantly the speaker and listener are not consciously aware of this happening. The net result is that you can say liter…

Thank you for writing that article. I'm a native English speaker and I intend to speaker clearer because I read this.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#659

Post by seneca »

ntr-- wrote: post #603
danielvaughn wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are better and worse ways to communicate, sure. But fundamentally, you cannot control how people interpret the words that you say.

I disagree. Effective communication requires effort, but many people speak impulsively and fail to convey what they actually mean. If someone is unable to clearly express themselves without being misunderstood then either their thoughts need to be distilled further or the statement needs to be carefully worded. If I am not responsible for how people interpret my words, who is?

So, we're mostly engineers here. Let's use an engineering metaphor. We're trying to achieve interpreters communication. We need to send some piece of data.

We'll simplify down to three elements: the serialization process, the communication medium, and the deserializatiom process.

The serialization process is our speaker. How well can we represent our data in a line protocol? Do we lose fine details, maybe data types get converted? Do things get entirely mistranslated, like a zero value becoming a null? A speaker can do a poor job converting their thoughts (data) into words (serialization format).

The medium is how the data gets exchanged. Maybe details are lost (again) via headers being stripped, or sourced getting over written. People can lose a lot of information based on medium as well, in particular text based communication, different cultural context, or just a noisy room.

Finally, there's deserialization. No matter how well formed your line protocol, how reliable your medium, the receiver can have a library that incorrectly decodes the data. Ints can become strings, zeros can become nulls, formatting can be lost.

So, as you said the speaker is responsible for being thoughtful and careful, but even if they are the listener can get the wrong message due to their own flaws or even just circumstances. And that is leaving aside intentional misrepresentation, which is a problems unto itself.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#660

Post by quiescant_dodo »

uyt wrote: post #598
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…

I was discussing programming puzzles with a new group of colleagues. The way these discussions typically go is that after most of us solve it, they will start giving hints/spoilers to others to keep the conversation flowing. So I did this as usual and offered a hint to the last person (who was a woman) to not see the trick this time. It surprised me when she looked visibly upset and asked me why I was explaining it t…

> This minor event bothered me so much I never talked to her about programming puzzles ever again.

This makes me sad, but it is exactly what I would have done. My life is built on avoiding anything awkward or uncomfortable. And...that's not working for me anymore. Thanks to a mental health professional, I'm working on embracing these "problems".

If I had your experience today, I'd come up with a plan to at least clarify things. I'd probably start with a slack message. Maybe something like:

> I'm sorry.

> When I talk programming puzzles with , we have a routine of the first person to solve waits a short while and then shares the answer.

> I like that system, as spending 45 minutes to come up with the "trick" usually isn't fun for me.

And then see how the conversation goes. I'd expect 70% something with the feeling of apology-accepted, 20% being told that mansplaining is a pattern of mine, 5% things getting very personal/real/vulnerable, and 5% wildcard. Maybe the estimates are wildly off. I'm still new to being honest and real. But today-me looks at those odds and says sum of awkward + fear isn't high enough to beat the expected value of the conversation.

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