Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

every.to

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 159 posts

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#82

Post by TMWNN »

garius wrote: post #54
laurex wrote: post #49

It’s not just that she overcame odds as a woman in the tech business that amazes, but that she was so clearly someone who cared about people, and chose to risk her business and reputation more than once to stay true to her values. That’s perhaps even more rare in this industry than being a successful female CEO.

Something I didn't have space to mention in the piece was that during the recession of the early eighties, Vector went out of their way to support their dealer network. They offered loans and let dealers delay payments on deliveries to get them through the tough times. It arguably cost them ground against IBM because it squeezed them further financially. But it was also another reason the Dealer network remained fier…

Thanks for the article. Benji Edwards's earlier article was the first time I really became aware of Vector's existence. There are noticeably fewer mentions of the company in Freiberger and Swaine's Fire in the Valley (1984) than, say, Cromemco, and far fewer than IMSAI.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#84

Post by bobthepanda »

ekms wrote: post #66
leononame wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low. Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the wo…

23% > 20% which means if someone goes into the field of computer programming they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman than if they are a man. "remain in the field" is used as a proxy for success. You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear…

consider that a lot of the culture in tech is also there for the first four years of undergrad, and so 23% often represents the people who basically made it through four years. are people who have experienced it for four years likelier to put up with more of the same?

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#88

Post by worik »

DontchaKnowit wrote: post #77
worik wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tech industry is on of the most inclusive industries because it... Where have you been? That ignoring history

[flagged]

> Every tech company on the planet is tripping over themselves to hire/promote more minorities

That is because of the problems than have been mounting in tech because people only hired people that looked like them.

I do not understand what the problem is with DEI. (I am not in the USA, perhaps I am missing out). Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#90

Post by anotheruser13 »

tim333 wrote: post #30
Stratoscope wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what methodology Shirley's company used. But yes, Teletype machines were very common in the mid-1960s. For example, Tymshare, where I worked for several years, was founded in 1964. Their customers used Teletype machines at their own locations, dialing into a Tymshare mainframe and paying by the hour. There were a number of similar timesharing companies in that era. Call Computer and Dial Data come to min…

I just looked up Wikipedia on teleprinters and had no idea they went back as far as 1887. My school had an ASR 33 Teletype linked to a PDP-10 in the 1970s which seemed kind of antique even then, although it worked ok. There's a youtube interview with Shirley showing someone remote working with some sort of computer like device. A terminal maybe? https://youtu.be/d5nzJ1rQBew?t=228

Even further than that. In 1978, we used a TI Silent 700 terminal connected to a PDP-11 so we could learn BASIC.
Post reply on HN