Female Founder Secrets: Fertility • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#751

Post by theoka » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

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…

In my household, we sort of accidentally fell into what I feel is a healthy middle ground (for us). Fairly traditional gender roles where I bring home the income and she has ended up focusing on childcare while finishing school. That said, we could definitely stand to optimize some things in regard to workload balancing; my time outside of work consists of us taking turns letting each other rest from or responsibilities e.g. spend time doing absolutely nothing. In a few years, both of our kids will be in school (1 currently is), and she will likely bring home just as much if not more than half of the income when she re-enters the workforce unless I receive a large pay increase between now and then for whatever reason.

Of course it hasn't been a breeze and we've both atrophied in some personal areas of skill due to this specialization. I tend to talk to people like each future action is a step in a project to be completed, then relieve myself of the details of any task I don't play a direct role in. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. She gets a list of things done in the time it takes for me to make a plan of action but is overwhelmed more when considering the large and/or complex tasks and the time management involved, though is otherwise equally proficient. There's some synergy in there that we're still figuring out.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#752

Post by chromanoid » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #749

chromanoid wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe we will just grow people in vats. Who will raise the people who were made in vats? Which is the real problem here, not who reproduces.

Pregnancy and childbirth are not wonderful experiences and there would definitely be an uptick in children per woman if you could get a baby without carrying it inside you for nine months and then pushing it out. How large the uptick would be I don’t know.

> Pregnancy and childbirth are not wonderful experiences

I would say it depends. My wife would not want to miss it. Especially her first birth was indeed a wonderful experience. The second was too fast but still a wonderful experience.

Why children per woman? In such a world where humans grow in vats, it would be children per person...

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#753

Post by branko_d » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

jxramos wrote: post #437

JPKab wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women across all income demographics desire men who make as much or more than them. It's a fundamental preference that OKCupid identified a long time ago. As a man, I don't fault this. The risk to a man of reproducing with a woman who isn't great at making money isn't as high, at a fundamental level, as it is for women. A man isn't incapacitated in any way by the act of reproducing. Nor is he prevented or blocked out…

> Biology is brutal and doesn't care about fairness or morality. I still try to meditate on the evolutionary advances for sexual vs asexual reproduction to begin with. There's got to be a huge advantage of the separation of the sexes that is hard to fathom just because it's everywhere. Is it a springboard of genetic diversity that optimizes in ways we can't imagine otherwise? The 'compared to what' is always somethin…

Evolution = variation + selection

Variation = mutation + gene mixing (i.e. sexual reproduction)

Without ability to mix genes, the species is left with only one kind of variation: mutation, which is horribly inefficient.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#754

Post by chii » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #728

andi999 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Also the main point is: this means most of the gains (almost all) of a company go to the employees. The idea 9f let's redistribute income so the rich get less and everybody gets more would not make a real difference. (that is also the reason why the middle class has the highest total tax)

No, I got that part. My argument is that if those gains were redistributed to workers, income gains would be modest at best. 55k to 65k for a single year if we got rid of all billionaires. If we assume we instead distribute the growth of the wealth as income, it's more like 500-1000 dollars a year more in income. If we take everything from everyone worth 2 million or more, and distribute it at 10% a year, that's stil…

And also that by doing this sort of redistribution, you will disincentivize investment, and incentivize consumption (from the rich) - after all, what good would the investment be, if it is going to be taken away when it succeeds, but you take on all the risk of the investment? Rather buy a yacht and go on lavish, extravagent holidays with the money - they can't redistribute the memories in the brain!

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#755

Post by chii » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

whamlastxmas wrote: post #722

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…

Every girlfriend I've had would happily be a stay at home wife. My current parter has a masters degree from Harvard and works very hard and even she would rather be a stay at home wife. But as you said I think it's both genders. I'd love it too

it's a thinly veiled request for UBI of some sort, but for parents to raise their kids.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#756

Post by Digory » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #375

Digory wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every human being can value traditional female work (or, more broadly, human obligations to each other) more than money. But we seem to want to be paid. It's interesting that socializing the payments seems to strike people as more freeing than just social obligation. This seems like the kind of thinking that eventually requires payments to give up the thrill of killing each other.

> But we seem to want to be paid. It's interesting that socializing the payments seems to strike people as more freeing than just social obligation. It's not that we _want_ to be paid. It's that we _need_ to be paid, because in order to raise a child you need a stable source of critical things for many years: - food & water - shelter (and heat) - clothing - waste disposal If I wanted to take several years entirely aw…

The traditional way of solving this problem is to assume stronger social obligations -- to a spouse, and to family, and sometimes community.

I realize some people won't do that. But we're talking about tech CEOs, so these are people who have some control over their lives. If we re-normalized those social obligations, I think it would be better than transactionalizing it.

And it's not all-or-nothing. I've tried to arrange my life so that I can make enough money, but also spend a lot more of my time doing the things I value more than money.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#757

Post by tjs8rj » Sat, Mar 06, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #742

tjs8rj wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting this from? What you’re talking about is a symptom, not a cause. While the issue is still hotly debated, the biggest causes for inequality and wage stagnation since the 1980s in order of impact is: skill-biased technological change (tech favoring skilled workers and amplifying their output, network effects, winner take all economics), globalization and offshoring, and China. For comparison, the r…

> While the issue is still hotly debated, the biggest causes for inequality and wage stagnation since the 1980s in order of impact is: skill-biased technological change (tech favoring skilled workers and amplifying their output, network effects, winner take all economics), globalization and offshoring, and China. > For comparison, the rise of China alone is believed to account for the loss of 20%+ of the manufacturin…

This isn’t a “narrative”, it’s a studied research topic in economics, and a big one that draws plenty of attention and funding.

Like I said: skill-biased tech change is the biggest factor by far, but China dominating manufacturing apart from those technological changes has had a major impact as well.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#758

Post by mempko » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #726

mempko wrote: post #723

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What's wrong here? It's not like Elon designed the model S, Mercedes engineers along with Tesla ones did. Mercedes invested in 10% of Tesla and even ordered Tesla batteries for Mercedes models. But found Tesla didn't test their batteries for durability and safety. Mercedes reduced the range of their B models and added shielding to compensate. Tesla owners had to learn the hard way after several Model S cars caught on…

Tesla has sold over 1,000,000 cars at this point. Over 99.997% of those were sold after Musk was CEO. So, while it's technically absolutely true that "they sold cars before Elon joined", it's a literal rounding error.

Here I am, trying to give credit to Tesla's success to the countless engineers and designers who did 99.9% of the work. By your own math, what Elon did is a rounding error.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#759

Post by astrange » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

d1zzy wrote: post #542

rayiner wrote: post #536

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> 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…

> This viewpoint is common, but doesn't scale. Having kids isn't a "life choice." It's a basic requirement for a sustainable human society. 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 wher…

The rest of the world's birth rate is pretty low too by now. Only Africa has a high birth rate.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Fertility

#760

Post by astrange » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #427

andrepd wrote: post #320

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I don't want to sound like an extremist but this is what happens when everything in life is mercantilised. Money becomes king.

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…

Elon has six kids, so can you.