Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#771

Post by scarmig » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

phnofive wrote: post #763

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”?

Yeah, though now I'm realizing it's a more unique/deanonymizing phrase than I anticipated... sometime in the 2000s it transitioned to being used to describe right-wing media circle jerks. I think it's something I picked up from the liberal blogosphere during its heyday.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#772

Post by lgleason » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #492

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 won’t even pretend to know enough to be able to solve this problem. But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with? Or better yet, be honest with the female friend that you wanted to advice, pointing out what she had done before and expressing your apprehension in providing critical feedback?

I have female friends who would advise the same thing as the OC.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#773

Post by bombcar » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #541

jancsika wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm sexist then I could choose to make such a remark only if it happens to be a female colleague. If male then sleep(). Sexism achieved. If you're not from the U.S. you have to understand the background of mendacity that flows through nearly the entire culture. That's a big part of the backdrop for fairly deep levels of distrust, whether it's of a company, one's colleague, the gov't, etc. For example-- I was watch…

> did the guest believe that global warming was real and that human activity has contributed to this global warming? That's not a good yes or no question, because it not only unites two different points together, but also really depends on your definition of global warming, and also ties a lot of other different issues into it. You could for example believe that humanity affects climate to some extent, but still thin…

It is if you’re basically trying to ask “are in our tribe or not” - which is what many of these political shibboleths boil down to.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#774

Post by ISO-morphism » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

akudha wrote: post #403

ta-ffsmcu wrote: post #51

I can see this happening with myself (male, for the record). I'm usually someone who gives feedback quite frankly, am more critical of others' (and my own) work than average, etc. Over recent years I've read so much about women being passed over, cut off, terms like "microaggressions", women getting less talking time in meetings, etc., that's it's made me extremely self conscious. It's not even that I'm afraid of get…

I feel the same way. A lot of the emphasis is placed on the words and not enough on the context, intent behind those words (by everyone, not specific to male or female or any other group here). People have learned to keep quiet. And when they do speak, they use highly polished, politically correct language (silly example - first time my manager said he is taking a "bio break", I was confused. Took me a second to unde…

FWIW I don't interpret "bio break" as PC - I saw it used commonly while playing World of Warcraft ~2009 as "brb bio" is quick to type/say.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#775

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

chrisweekly wrote: post #578

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…

Lost me at that last sentence.

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#776

Post by friedman23 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

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?

Why do you say it's one experience? I don't want to sound like an MRA because I'm not but we have seen the situation of women destroying the reputations of men play out a lot. Many of the times they were warranted but there have also been many innocent men caught in the cross fire.

Men and people in general do not have a duty to take risk for the benefit of others. Women expecting men to risk their own reputation to help them is naive and stupid. There are benefits and drawbacks to everything and women not receiving any personal guidance from men is one of the main drawbacks from our new "woke" culture.

Also, personally, I don't give advice or criticism to anyone. Man or woman. I don't see how it ever benefits me to do so.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#777

Post by drbojingle » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

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…

What were X and Y?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#778

Post by daamsie » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:10 AM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #769

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?

That is not what I am suggesting.

Co-advisors should be on an equal footing in terms of the power dynamics. They can discuss amongst themselves any advice that they feel might be obstructed by biases and should be able to do so frankly. If others in the advisor group agree on the advice, then they can then present their advice as a group rather than as an individual to the person they are advising.

At that point it doesn't matter who the person is breaking the news. The advice comes from a group of diverse people and is then far more defensible against accusations of sexism, racism, etc..

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#779

Post by waterhouse » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:16 AM UTC

donw wrote: post #696

downandout wrote: post #502

Anyone who is pragmatic and willing to take open and honest advice/criticism from people they respect needs to advertise themselves that way in today’s environment. It is on the entrepreneur to convince the person from whom they are seeking advice that they will not regret giving it. As an alternative, perhaps investors should offer an optional “advice NDA” that would allow them to speak more freely, with less fear o…

While I don't think you should be downvoted, the reality is that there are a lot of people that think they want open and honest advice or criticism, but will respond very poorly when they actually receive anything of the sort. This is worsened by many people doing a poor job of providing said feedback, for a myriad of reasons: because they never learned how, because they were never in an environment conducive to doin…

Do you think giving and receiving feedback well is a trainable skill? (Some companies pay people to offer courses on the subject to their employees, so I guess they think it is.) If so, should it perhaps be taught in ... Well, it's a general enough skill that I would guess the majority of the population would benefit from it, so in theory it could be taught in high school or college.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#780

Post by dang » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

jberryman wrote: post #565

cynusx wrote: post #408

If you are a woman you can easily counter this behavior by labelling it and saying that you don't have a porcelain skin. Bonuspoints if you laugh about a guy giving you super bad feedback and how this did not bother you. Putting people at ease around you (especially customers) is a critical entrepreneurial skill. You can't blame people for being cautious when a lot of people are buying into victim-narratives and conv…

Or maybe these fragile adult millionaire men could just... try harder? have more tact? Maybe we should have higher expectations of these men to have a little more awareness? All that's assuming this phenomenon is even real, and not just an excuse for the author to grind her PeE cEe cUlTuRe axe; the whole thing is conveniently framed with "oh, but of course none of these people I'm not naming could ever admit that wha…

Could you please make your substantive points without snark and name-calling? Your comments in this thread are a noticeable step further into flamewar and break quite a few of the site guidelines. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.