Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#811

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:22 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #524

notsuoh wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with?" Respectfully, this shouldn't be on the person from whom advice is being sought, but on the asker. "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?" If someone asked me t…

> If someone asked me this, I'd probably think they used hashtags like #redpill or were into bashing Ellen Pao or something. It comes across as, "you can't say anything these days without being offensive, men in tech are soooo mistreated." Interesting. I hesitate to accept your interpretation as the universal one, because my experience has been that there are ways to express these concerns without coming off as a big…

> my experience has been that there are ways to express these concerns without coming off as a bigot

Please share with us. I can't think of a single way to express these concerns without looking like a "red piller". The mere fact someone even has concerns marks them as suspicious and harmful.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#812

Post by donw » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:27 AM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #779

donw wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you think giving and receiving feedback well is a trainable skill?

Absolutely! I've successfully built and run such training.

Most things are trainable skills. For example, I'll never be able to run as fast as Usain Bolt, not by a country mile. But, if I develop my running skills to their maximum potential, I'll be able to outpace a pretty good chunk of the rest of the population.

Same goes for communications, programming, whatever. You might not have what it takes to be The Best In The World, but most people definitely have the potential to become unreasonably competent at a thing, should they choose to put in the work.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#813

Post by bakul » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

Surely the solution is to get female investors involved where this is a concern?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#814

Post by neycoda » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:45 AM UTC

raducu wrote: post #805

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…

This reminds me of a previous workplace. An otherwise cool female coleague kept making claims people were misogynistic, at first I thought she was joking or that she did have some claim, because someone made an unintentional mysoginistic joke. Then I left the company, and I talked with an ez coleague who was promoted as a team lead. The guy was into some new age stuff, about helping everyone, and she was slaking/not…

> someone made an unintentional mysoginistic joke

"mysoginistic" in the sense of "I literally hate women" or in the sense of "I think women are less capable than men" or "I liked a physical feature of her"?

There's more to choose from, the list of things that are called "misogyny" nowadays has gotten incredibly expansive.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#815

Post by pm90 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:48 AM UTC

volkk wrote: post #794

pm90 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

that's akin to saying, "so just because a gun misfired and almost blew your head off, you're just always going to be afraid of guns?" in this case the gun being your career shattered by idiotic accusations of sexism in the form of calling out bad CSS. being called a sexist is almost like being called a racist. the accusation is enough for people to believe it to be true. so yes, a normal human being will instead be e…

On the contrary. People who refuse to engage with coworkers of a different gender because they were the target of a complaint which didn’t actually make a damn difference in their life are harming every single one of those coworkers.

This sort of overreaction to even the simplest steps taken in direction of correcting incorrect behavior is ridiculous. This person had the opportunity to find out more about what about his action made the person he was working with report it as a “sort of sexist remark”. People don’t casually levy accusations like that, and if you believe this is widespread (it isn’t, for the record) then you’re living a privileged life.

We only have one side of the story and people are quick to jump to his defense. Sorry, I am not so quick to accept anything. There could be more at play here and we just don’t know. But people in this thread and on HN in generally are quick to accept this incident at face value which just points to how the tech culture is indeed rife with toxic masculinity.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#816

Post by neycoda » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:51 AM UTC

undefined1 wrote: post #791

Gustomaximus wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

maybe she was talking about Queen Bee Syndrome? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee_syndrome

But saying a woman has queen bee syndrome is misogyny, right?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#817

Post by neycoda » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:55 AM UTC

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.

^ this

The problem is that in the investing world, often not playing is losing.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#818

Post by pm90 » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

throwaway192874 wrote: post #747

pm90 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poi…

I think it’s very strange to refuse to work with an entire gender just because one person gave a feedback that you perceived as incorrect.

You are free to do as you like, of course. But the future is simply going to be more diverse with people of different genders and races.

Anyways. I do not really know of your specific situation, but talking to a professional therapist is always helpful when trying to deal with such issues. (Feel free to ignore any advice I give, I’m sharing what I found useful personally)

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#819

Post by neycoda » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

danielvaughn wrote: post #531

bastawhiz wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lacks experience in X and Y which are key in product space Z. Obviously you didn't post the feedback, but I wonder how this was phrased. If the feedback was "improve X and Y", I think I sympathize with the panelist. The feedback was solicited! If it was framed as "unlikely to succeed because inexperienced in X and Y" then I think that crossed a line from critical feedback to a somewhat demeaning comment, even if it…

There are better and worse ways to communicate, sure. But fundamentally, you cannot control how people interpret the words that you say.

Them having their own interpretation doesn't mean you did anything wrong, nor that they should have no expectation of reason.

Thoughtfulness is for the aware, and many investors aren't even aware of how they can be raked over the coals by a bloodthirsty mainstream outrage machine for something minor, petty, completely misinterpreted, or intentionally twisted for click bait.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#820

Post by smilekzs » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

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…

Good call! Candid and up-front declaration of openness, basically. The status quo is unfortunate but at least on the individual level it sounds like a viable approach.