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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#891

Post by spottedgiraffe »

curiousmindz wrote: post #868
insert_coin wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem. America was supposed to be the land of the free, where anyone from anywhere could have an opportunity didn't matter who they where. Instead we created African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Gay-Americans, Straight-Americans, Native-Americans, etc, and everyone is out for themselves. And everyone is against one another. Female-led, Black-led, Latino-majority, who gives a fuck. Do…

Sadly, it is not as simple as that: Imagine a society of squirrels and hamsters where squirrels have been oppressing hamsters for centuries. Then, one day, they decide to stop doing that and treat everyone the same. On average, a young squirrel will come from a family that is vastly richer and better educated than a young hamster. So, if they have to compete "fairly", the hamsters will remain much poorer for centurie…

Ideally we would rebalance between those from poor families and those from rich and educated ones. Oppression exists in different forms and there are also poor squirrels.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#892

Post by globular-toast »

lmilcin wrote: post #517

I have worked with couple female developers and I had many interesting discussions on the whole problem of being woman developer. Here some random thoughts / observations: Hiring women because "we need at least one woman on the team because of the quota". Would you like to know you have been hired because the team is forced to have a women and everybody knows it? Same company. I have received an email that you can "g…

Women went from being trophy wives to trophy employees.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#893

Post by krageon »

igorkraw wrote: post #356
hhjinks wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can make up whatever motivation they want if they feel slighted. All it takes is for the female founder to ascribe sexism to the VC when he suggests swapping CEOs, and you've got the entire media circus on your neck. And then people stop being rational actors when mob mentality kicks in.

Well if that was the case where are all the horror stories ? With the acceptance rates of startups at VC pitches etc., shouldn't we be expecting a lot of VCs being hounded with allegations of sexism and the media circus going amok? How is YC still in business given their acceptance rates?

> where are all the horror stories

If you talk about this (either as a personal thing or something you've seen happen to someone else) you will get crucified, basically anywhere. It doesn't take a whole lot of extrapolating to see why there are no horror stories.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#894

Post by knighthack »

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…

1. 'Sexism' should be limited to acts of discrimination that undermine another sex.

2. Advice (which is essentially a gift of knowledge/experience) is not something you are entitled to by virtue of your sex.

3. A man cannot be said to be 'sexist' when he chooses not to give advice that could potentially incriminate him, especially falsely. If a person (whether a man or a woman) chooses to keep silent, and especially where no fraudulent aspect is involved, that is part and parcel of doing business. You are not entitled to call a person 'sexist' just because they do not want to give advice to you.

4. There are virtually no consequences to the woman who accuses. Yet in comparison, the long-lasting consequences of an investor being falsely accused in public far outweigh any advantages to the contrary. This is enough to make any man clam up, and is a legitimate cause to withhold advice.

5. More importantly, in a commercial setting, no one is obliged to give you an advantage just because you're a woman. If you expect such an advantage/benefit because of your gender, then you are being sexist. A woman who wants to do business should not posit that a man is actively being 'sexist' if he chooses not to help her. That makes no sense.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#895

Post by virgilp »

h0l0cube wrote: post #878
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…

> made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something of the sort Not saying you weren't the subject of over-reaction, or not, but I think this is an example of sub-par feedback. It would be better to point out the issues in concrete terms, and say this is something that should be addressed, and why. And if you can't do that, you should ruminate on it until you can reify whether it is wrong…

This is good advice but it cuts both ways.

The other side of the same coin is whenever you receive nasty and undeserved feedback, you don't reply or argue.. You say "thank you for the feedback" and ruminate what good you can take out of that, if any. You don't fight back - not if you actually want to receive feedback in the future.

It's exactly what the article is saying: men are clamming up. If one doesn't know how to deliver excellent feedback/is worried about the packaging, the sane strategy is to just shut up. There's seldom a personal upside for delivering constructive feedback to anybody - and in a situation where bad delivery has unlimited downside, it's smart to just refrain from it.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#896

Post by jarek83 »

Situation is so bad. I guess there is no easy way out, and many people are hurt, let alone others missing out.

How about creating a tag that would be attached to a person profile anywhere it's online, saying something like "Criticism welcome" or "Criticism is not sexism". So this would serve as assurance of not being willing to pursue any feedback by the tag/badge holder.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#897

Post by hntrader »

wreath wrote: post #836
Nextgrid wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't sexism/racism/etc per-se, and more the current culture of airing dirty laundry in public, amplified by hungry mobs and social media companies who profit off the resulting dumpster fire ("engagement" as they call it). Furthermore, beyond the media (whether social media or traditional media - print, TV, etc) industry profiting off it, some people's careers are entirely based on this problem persisting…

> I think this problem is mostly specific to the tech/media industry. There are plenty of other industries where racism & sexism are no doubt present, but overall people in these industries seem to be busy working and making money (which is the end-game of work at the end of the day) instead of constantly being offended. What are those industries where they have software engineering positions open but w/o the SJW typ…

Just sort industries by political leaning. Any industry that's 40+ percent conservative might have a handful of SJWs among the engineers but they're not at the critical mass to organize and really create trouble. Wokeness gets very little bandwidth in these industries.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#898

Post by smeej »

mc32 wrote: post #759
smeej wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I understand where that sentiment is coming from, that everything must come from some hatred in someone else, because so many things in the world seem arbitrarily difficult and so many negative things happen for no reason. Ultimately it's unproductive, but I understand the appeal of it. When my sister experienced sudden cardiac death in her twenties, 8 months pregnant, for no apparent reason at all, I des…

I’m sorry for your loss. Yes, we want to have control over destiny, and depending on the negative event may reserve anger at creation or things and beings within it. However, what the GP and GGP are referring to are intellectually avoidable. It’s mainly there because of social indoctrination and its effect on reason and judgement. Especially the young who are impressionable and believe these things uncritically. It’s…

It's intellectually avoidable, but I don't think it's emotionally avoidable. Any plan to deal with it or resist it is going to have to account for that.

I don't think the root of the problem is intellectual. I think the root of the problem is the insecurity and fear and grief that causes the desire to blame something--anything--even when that thing has to be imagined.

I do think motivated people are taking advantage of that instinct and using it to drive people apart, encouraging them to blame -isms, and the problem can be addressed at that level too, but if we could somehow clear up the fear and sadness that drive people to look to anger as the easier emotion, those opportunists would be wanting the requisite opportunity.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#899

Post by jokethrowaway »

lgleason wrote: post #737

My wife, who is a second wave feminist that believes that women should be given the same opportunities, but are not victims, ran across some of the craziness a few years ago. She was in a tech forum where a woman was complaining about her experience at a company. It amounted to this woman having a perception that she was not being valued as much as a male colleague and was immediately jumping to the conclusion that i…

She's lucky to have been kicked out from such a toxic environment.

What I do personally is to just avoid all of these people.

I have the impression it's harder to avoid them in California because people are particularly brainwashed over there - which is one of the reasons I avoid California as well.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#900

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #591
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.

Completely agree, in the face of a person who is possibly hostile, or just in general a person that generates a lot of uncertainty what incentive could you give me not to stay silent? People need to think about it in terms of incentives, what incentive do I have to try communicating with an incredible mindfulness and scrutiny that I might then fail at. The failure to do so properly could have potentially endless down…

> or just in general a person that generates a lot of uncertainty what incentive could you give me not to stay silent?

not OP but the silence is a feature that allows you to actively listen[1] which is impossible when trying to come up with an answer while the other person still speaks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_listening

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