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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#741

Post by tachyonbeam »

scarmig wrote: post #616
gadf wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In some ways, it reminds me of incel-style thinking. You pick up on some signals that you're facing discrimination. Some or many of them are real. But then you elevate that discrimination into the primary component of your identity: you're a victim, and all your failures have nothing to do with things you have agency over and everything to do with how society is out to get you. Entirely unrelated things get pigeonhol…

That's an interesting parallel. It's self-victimisation, and as a result, it's also self-sabotage.

Incels badly want attention from women, but the way they act basically guarantees they will never have what they want. No self-respecting woman would ever want someone who blames them for all their suffering.

Radical, toxic feminists badly want success, but the toxic behavior they display will ensure that anyone successful and smart will do their best to stay away. No self-respecting businessperson would want to do business with someone who, given criticism they don't like, might turn on a dime and call them a horrible, sexist, patriarchal monster.

You can't have it both ways IMO. You can't say I'm a strong, independent woman, in control of my life, but any time things don't turn out the way I want, it's the fault of sexist cis-white-men. The world is not a fair place, you don't always get what you want when you want it, and sometimes, that's nobody's fault.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#742

Post by anm89 »

quiescant_dodo wrote: post #660
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…

> 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 clar…

Why start with an apology when you've done nothing wrong? This only exacerbates the problem.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#743

Post by anm89 »

vmception wrote: post #570
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…

> Why do we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities feel comfortable all the time? > The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white. You lost me here. You had one experience with one person and extrapolated that to multiple entire groups. You should be able to discern how your conversation with that one person was okay and not a "cancelable" offens…

I'm going to guess the parent has more than one experience

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#744

Post by stcredzero »

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…

Better to let her make more problems for herself than offer a sense of perspective that could get me cancelled.

So it's come to this. People making accurate and pragmatic calculations on real-world cost/benefit, without malice, are making these decisions. What's amazing, is that it's largely the effect of the outrage mob itself. Let me explain.

Answer me this: On average, does the outrage mob give as strong a response to an accusation, regardless of gender? Whether or not this is historically justified is irrelevant here, just whether or not such a bias or skew exists. For the sake of argument, let's say that such a bias exists in the outrage mob, and that it skews very powerfully in favor of accusations by women.

Well, given this circumstance, accurate cost/benefit and expected outcome calculations are going to skew by gender. Women, on average, are going to present a much higher risk of bad outcomes from giving candid advice.

In this way, the sexist, gender-biased reaction of the mob, combined with its outsized power, and the fear of accusations that damage without evidence, is itself distorting these individual decisions. In this way, the sexism of the outrage mob is causing a societal gender-skew which itself results in even more sexism.

In my school days, we were taught the dangers of the mob mentality. We were taught that the mob too easily generates injustice, even evil and horror. Now, we are presented with another situation in which the mob generates more injustice: specifically more sexism. Go figure.

Instead of this mess, how about some gender-neutral due process, innocent until proven guilty, and respect for evidence?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#745

Post by paperwasp42 »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #689
paperwasp42 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, I adopted this solution about a year ago. I will literally tell new teammates, "Look, I'm new to this career, I have a TON to learn, and I would love to be critiqued and given advice on how I can improve. I operate under a good-faith policy, so I will always assume you're being helpful and not condescending, unless you're overwhelmingly insulting (ie: telling me women aren't made for leadership roles.)" I…

At a previous job, I worked under a woman who managed a practically-all-male engineering team. I think part of what made her successful at this was that people in our company had a great sense of humor, and she was an enthusiastic participant in our lunchtime bull sessions, ribbing each other and whatnot. >Becca: What are you doing here? I figured they’d have locked you away in the psych ward for good by now. >Scott:…

> I imagine there are other things you could do, like curse frequently, if you wanted to broadcast that words don't easily upset you. But telling jokes seems best if you think of one.

I absolutely use this technique, although I'll admit it's more of my natural goofy personality versus a serious effort. I'll often say things to my (all male) team mates like, "Hold up, repeat that for the dumb blonde please" or "If you really want that promotion, I can give you some makeup tutorials." I also refer to myself as "the team mom", since I'm always baking sweets for the team and mentoring our shy new grads.

All this jesting is really just a humorous way of me saying, "Hey, look, I'm the only girl on this team, but let's not turn it into an awkward elephant in the room. We may be different, but I know we all have mutual respect, so let's not be weird about it."

I have a phenomenal relationship with my team, and I credit a lot of it to this goofiness. It's hard to be guarded and worried about accidentally insulting someone when that person is saying far more insulting things toward themselves (even if it's obviously in total jest.)

And in an odd way, by turning those sorts of things into a joke, it's also subtly reminding people that attitudes like "she just got hired because she's a young blond" aren't appropriate. People don't make jokes about totally normal, benign behavior.

So it's a win-win situation: I'm surrounded by people I have wonderful relationships with, and those people are subtly reminded of what's work-appropriate behavior through goofy, sarcastic conversations, and not cringey trainings.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#746

Post by [deleted] »

0_____0 wrote: post #592
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…

I remember some comedian pointing out, racism (sexism in this case) drives people crazy. Because it's subtle. Very rarely are people nowadays blatantly racist/sexist, because they get called out for it. But imagine that every time you have an 'off' experience with someone, you end up wondering whether your race or sex had something to do with it. It only takes a couple instances of finding out that that 'off' feeling…

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#747

Post by throwaway192874 »

pm90 wrote: post #731
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?

It's agree that it was just one experience and my reaction may be too extreme, but I'm not claiming this is everyone. My only claim is that for me, it was such an uncomfortable situation that I'm willing to do a lot to avoid it happening again.

And this was >5 years ago, and I think the likelihood of this happening has only gone up in that time.

> And you're saying that it wasn't made a big deal, that it was just pointed out to you?

Yes, but I suppose my point here is that even that was enough for me to be cautious going forward

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#748

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #652

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 coul…

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#749

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

anm89 wrote: post #743
vmception wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do we need to bend ourselves backwards to make sure all minorities feel comfortable all the time? > The point here is you can't talk to minority groups about anything these days, if you are white. You lost me here. You had one experience with one person and extrapolated that to multiple entire groups. You should be able to discern how your conversation with that one person was okay and not a "cancelable" offens…

I'm going to guess the parent has more than one experience

Yes that has been my experience dealing with _almost_ every black person, frankly. I am just saying it how it is.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#750

Post by tdeck »

Google234 wrote: post #567
tdeck wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really curious if the purported consequences of an accusation of sexism are so harmful for these wealthy investors. For example, Ellen Pao filed a lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins and wrote a whole book about sexist behavior she experienced while working there. That got a ton of publicity - what has the long-term impact been? Kleiner Perkins seems to be doing fine. I'm not saying investors don't perceive a risk he…

It’s definitely worth clamming up in the fraction of the fraction of situations that the author describes (female founder + potentially very negative feedback) if it means avoiding a Ellen Pao type situation. On one side you have something that could destroy your reputation, work, and cost you and on the other is holding back advice that may or may not help someone a bit. Also, are really downplaying what happened an…

> Also, are really downplaying what happened and ignoring the fact that it could have ended up much worse for KP.

I'm curious to hear what I'm downplaying here. We're talking about a very rare case where the individual making the accusation had the wherewithal both to file a lawsuit against the company and to write a mass market book that got tons of publicity. And the company won the lawsuit and is doing just fine. Doesn't that mean the risk of real, actual consequences is vanishingly small?

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