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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#731

Post by pm90 »

throwaway192874 wrote: post #686

This meshes with an experience I had a few years into my career which I'll never forget and had definitely influenced and will continue to influence my future interactions with women in tech. I, cis white guy in the bay, was hired as a consultant to help build out a product and was pair programming with a woman founder & new engineer and made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something o…

So what happened is that you had one bad experience and decided that it was representative of all people in that group? And you're saying that it wasn't made a big deal, that it was just pointed out to you?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#732

Post by stadium »

"Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. In the purely historical universe that they have chosen, rebellion and revolution end in the same dilemma: either police rule or insanity."

Albert Camus, The Rebel

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#734

Post by dcolkitt »

awb wrote: post #499
Thorentis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.

It’s probably both. The men are assuming based on the female founder’s gender _alone_ that she might accuse him of sexism. Regardless of how rational this fear is, they are stereotyping new female founders they’re meeting for the first time based on what an X% of other female founder’s have done in the past. For the men, it’s probably a risk/reward calculation. Keep your head down and be polite and have ~0% chance of…

Okay. Let me draw an analogy. Say you're in occupied Hungary circa 1956. Whenever you hear anybody walk by speaking Russian, you clam up for fear that they might be Soviet secret police.

Would you describe this person as "racist" against Russians? I don't think a reasonable person would apply that label. I think they'd say they're responding rationally to the specific circumstances of their immediate situation. That sort of behavior shows no inherent animosity to Russian people in general.

(And before anyone cries foul, I'm not in anyway saying sexism accusations in 2021 corporate America is anywhere near the same as the KGB. I think that should be patently obvious. The reason I picked this specific example was to stretch the underlying logic to a situation that's clear enough to be cut and dry situation.)

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#735

Post by thaumasiotes »

csours wrote: post #349

This reminds me of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I have to wonder how she may have received criticism of her ideas if there was a baseline of equality of ideas from men and women. Basically, to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective. It would be a bridge too far to link it to the cheating.

> to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective

So, one important criticism of Theranos, which was made at various points starting very early on, was this:

"If a substance is present in the patient's bloodstream, you still won't be able to detect it unless it is also present in the blood sample."

Theranos was always offering a product that was not even theoretically possible. Blood samples must be large enough to contain at least one molecule of whatever you're trying to test for, if it's present. When that's what you start out with, how are you supposed to "take criticism as a way to improve"?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#736

Post by noisy_boy »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #622
uyt wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can insecurity be ascribed to gender? If it was a man, and they got offended, could we say it's also because he was insecure about not finishing in time? I think it's difficult to say gender as the de facto reason here. I'm not ruling it out, but I don't think it can be labeled a certainty, either.

If it was a man, atleast it won't be about mansplaining - could be insecurity, frustration, personal dislike or such factors. In case of a woman, all of the above + mansplaining comes into play and the last one is a slippery slope to being labelled a sexist which is just too much risk to take.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#737

Post by lgleason »

My wife, who is a second wave feminist that believes that women should be given the same opportunities, but are not victims, ran across some of the craziness a few years ago.

She was in a tech forum where a woman was complaining about her experience at a company. It amounted to this woman having a perception that she was not being valued as much as a male colleague and was immediately jumping to the conclusion that it was sexism. My wife jumped in and suggested that from the sound of things, it sounded like there may be some other things going on that this person could work on and that it may have nothing to do with sexism etc..

The other people in the forum, including men, crucified my wife for those statements. This along with her daring to suggest in other women in tech forums, groups etc. that not every piece of feedback that is not positive is sexist led her to be banned from several women in tech organizations. Many would not even tell her why, but if they did it was for "being harmful to women" and "suffering from internalized misogyny" among other things.

Given her experience alone, not to mention other things we have all seen in the community none of this is surprising to me. Ironically, one of her concerns when she saw the "micro-agressions" etc. trend take hold, beyond the fact that she felt it was trying to fix one wrong with another, was that it would lead to this...and here we are. [edited for clarity]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#738

Post by anm89 »

dkersten wrote: post #520
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…

As a non-minority person, I often see people just being assholes. For example, some dominating dude who talks over everyone, who ignores others input, who takes credit for everything, etc. As a white male, when I encounter that behavior, I think to myself, wow, that guy is a fucking asshole. However, and I have experienced this, people who are in a minority often take it personally, that they're an asshole to them ,…

Yeah this really gets to the core of a lot of this for me.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#739

Post by anm89 »

herval wrote: post #539
dkersten wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-minority person, I often see people just being assholes. For example, some dominating dude who talks over everyone, who ignores others input, who takes credit for everything, etc. As a white male, when I encounter that behavior, I think to myself, wow, that guy is a fucking asshole. However, and I have experienced this, people who are in a minority often take it personally, that they're an asshole to them ,…

Why would you say something to defend the asshole? In your example, you interpreted the same - the guy was an asshole. Why give them a pass? In most cases I hear of people that claim they’re afraid of giving “candid feedback” to a minority, it’s almost always the case that the person is an asshole when giving feedback IN GENERAL as well. Maybe evaluating your general behavior first, before going all scared of this or…

He's clearly not giving them a pass. He's calling them out. I encourage you to reread that post.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#740

Post by robbmorganf »

fastball wrote: post #728
robbmorganf wrote: post #710

I'm reading a whole lot of frustrated comments here and totally get where the frustration is coming from. But in a different direction, I wanted to offer a thought for how to improve: Rule #1: Always ask people if they want feedback before you give it. Do it for men, women and non-binary folks. If you can, give hints about the topic ("hey, would you like feedback about your skills alignment with the problem?"). I've…

As a counter-point, I've known people that would take this as condescending right off the bat, so YMMV.

Are they more receptive to feedback when you just launch straight into it? Or is there something different that you do to prime them to be receptive?
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