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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#761

Post by still_grokking »

fastball wrote: post #718
whatshisface wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the people in this thread are saying is that when there's nothing to gain by speaking, the most foolproof way to be mindful of how your communication is understood is to not communicate. That's a great life principle that goes a whole lot farther than this particular subject.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." - Joshua/WOPR edit: clarified provenance to the best of my ability.

I guess the internet is wrong in some places.

It was the computer WOPR who said this in the WarGames movie.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#762

Post by Gustomaximus »

random5634 wrote: post #460

Female founder friend (non tech space) was in a female focused incubator / competition. She got only one set of somewhat critical feedback - ie, lacks experience in X and Y which are key in product space Z. She posted a comment on her social media focusing on this feedback as "criticism" that came from a sexist guy "of course". It was pretty easy to draw the line to the three panelists, one of whom was a guy. Ouch. I…

I've had similar a few times. The most illogical was had a sales person (female) telling me (male) about how girls cant get ahead in the company, naturally in context to themselves.

I asked them what their boss was (female) and their bosses boss (female) and til a few months before, their bosses bosses boss (was female and recently changed to male). Was not a happy look I received.

And 100% there is sexism/racism in workplaces but in my small bubble of the world it feels a reasonable proportion of people put these kind of excuses on their lack of progression over looking inward, but I've tended to work in more progressive environments so maybe I've missed what the wider world is like.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#763

Post by phnofive »

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…

> caught in the wurlitzer

Never heard that one before. Sorry for the tangent, but is this a reference to the CIA’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#764

Post by mitchdaily »

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?

I see multiple replies along similar lines, attacking a poster for an experience with a single person making them cautious of a particular group.

These replies seem to forget that a single person can destroy your career, livelihood and relationships because they have misunderstood an interaction

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#765

Post by xiphias2 »

wskinner wrote: post #605
xiphias2 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw some improvement in the Netflix movies getting less extreme over time. Emily in Paris was the first movie where the woke Netflix made fun of itself using French people / culture as props. Disney and Netflix had to lose billions of dollars to understand that the loudest voices may not represent the majority of the people.

Can you be more specific about what happened with Disney?

As far as I heared (from youtube ,,conspiracy theorists'') the companies hired outside advisors whose whole role was to see if the movies / series were politically correct, or needed some change. When the pandemic hit, it was a loss quarter for Disney: both the films flopped, and Disney-land had to be closed at the same time. There's a story that the leads got together on a video conference call and decided that it's time to kick out the advisor, and I saw Netflix's stance change at the same time.

I was really sorry about Mulan for example, because it's one of my favourite cartoons, and I was really really looking for the movie remake. They made it politically correct for the US and cut out all the sex scenes and humor because of the Chinese government. I think it's one of the worst remakes of all time at this point.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#766

Post by deanCommie »

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…

I mean just because this particular situation isn't racist or sexist, doesn't mean that racism and sexism don't exist in our industry.

You are painting an entire gender (or the majority) with really broad generalities, all under the premise that gender based discrimination is overrated and exaggerated?

But even presuming that you are right, it still means it's on all of us to stamp out whatever discrimination exists from our industry, especially those of us that are straight cis het white males. So that each of us can be treated on our merits, including those of us who risk being accused of discrimination rather than facing it.

Each of us should absolutely be able to give completely unfiltered constructive feedback to our female and minority peers, and if anyone has any questions or doubts about whether they can do so without concerns of impropriety, that is not is not the fault of the woke or feminists, but that of our privileged arrogant predecessors who have created this status quo in the first place.

The fact that I, as a straight white male have to be careful with feedback is a FAR smaller cost than ACTUALLY having to face discrimination I never have to imagine seeing.

Keep in mind, cartoonish levels of either are no longer present. What remains is frequent and constant micro aggressions driven by unconscious bias that the offenders may not even be aware of. Each individual example is easy to dismiss and explain in other ways. But in the aggregate, this adds up to, and drives people all the way out of the industry.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#767

Post by esyir »

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…

The core issue here is that getting cancelled may be a low risk, but it's 1: substantially higher than it used to be; and 2: An existential / Severe setback tier event.

The fact that the wolves would be out regardless of the veracity of the claims, and that there is no viable avenue for recourse here aggravates this.

Wrapping this up as "sexism" is the same kind of logic that gets you the removal of women-only sports as "sexism".

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#768

Post by therealdrag0 »

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…

Wow that’s hilariously absurd. Complaining about code quality is an incredibly common occurrence on every team I’ve worked on.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#769

Post by noisy_boy »

daamsie wrote: post #664

Perhaps male advisers who are worried about such things could ensure they have a female co-adviser they can have frank conversations with. Why should it fall on one investor to tell the founder that they shouldn't be CEO? This article is actually a very strong argument for diversity in boards.

It is an argument for wrong reasons. Should female co-advisors get designated to talk to female founders? What if they themselves accuse the male colleague of sexist behaviour by asking them to speak to female founders? What is next, we need brown people to talk to brown people and black people to talk to black people and so on?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#770

Post by bombcar »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #692
sooheon wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate what the pence fence is?

It's related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule perhaps? [Though that's not AFAIK intended as a defensive strategy against reputational harm, rather as one against the dangers of lust].

It’s exactly this - and perhaps more useful in ways not originally expected.

The old form of it was “avoid occasions of sin or scandal”.

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