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What I Didn't Say

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Didn't Say

#91

Post by _delirium »

crazygringo wrote: post #63
ericabiz wrote: post #32

As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech. In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following: 1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use techn…

Blind applications would be great if they were possible, but I suspect they would be as helpful as a blind audition for concert conductors -- i.e., not at all. When you evaluate a team, you need to be able to judge their confidence, see how they interact with each other, get a feel for the trustworthiness, the way they look at you when they answer a question, and so on. If you can't see them, and their voice is disto…

That's a plausible hypothesis, but it'd be interesting if someone were willing to test it experimentally. Some evidence for the hypothesis could be found if a "blind" YC batch did much worse than a typical YC batch, measured say 3 or 5 years in the future. Of course, with relatively small sample sizes nothing is likely to be proved beyond doubt, but it'd be interesting to know, and the amount of money needed to test it wouldn't be huge, since YC isn't making VC-level investments. Of course, it's not free or risk-free either, so I could see if they weren't willing to test it.

I've long wanted to see in general some more experimental testing of selection variations. What if YC (or some other funder's) candidates were just selected completely randomly from the applications? What if they were selected solely according to some dumb criterion, like take everyone with the most degrees, or the longest CV, or the most GitHub LoC? What if they were selected purely based on the applications (without the dumb-criterion requirement) but without interviews? For a few tens of thousands of $$, someone willing to try those kinds of things out could get some pretty interesting information on how reliable different selection methods are.

My own hypothesis is a negative one: that beyond screening out a few obviously-bad candidates and taking a few obviously-good candidates, the bulk of the YC selection process is randomly related to outcomes, and the YC mentoring/contacts/press/etc., rather than predictive value of the selection process, is the main driver of their generally strong outcomes. But I can't prove that. :)

Re: What I Didn't Say

#92

Post by atmosx »

It is true though, women are not hackers where I live. That doesn't mean that womens are out of skills, and PG explains really nice it's just how it is and it might change in the future.

Given the way my mother cooks, I can state that when it comes to food she totally can be a called a hacker :-)

Re: What I Didn't Say

#93

Post by hyperpape »

jug6ernaut wrote: post #66

"I was explaining the distinction between a CS major and a hacker..." "What I was talking about here is the idea that to do something well you have to be interested in it for its own sake, not just because you had to pick something as a major.So this is the message to take away: If you want to be really good at programming, you have to love it for itself. " Labeling "CS major"'s as non hackers, good to know as someon…

I think it's meant to be "I was explaining the distinction between a _mere_ CS major and a hacker".

Wasn't Mark Zuckerberg a CS major, and Graham praises him.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#94

Post by kremlin »

Perihelion wrote: post #54
kremlin wrote: post #22

I didn't find any of the quotes that I read, even if they were out of context, remotely offensive. But I can see how someone who makes it a point to be offended by things might deliberately interpret it in a bad way, and convince other people that that is in fact what was meant by it. For example, you say that you don't know how you'd convince 13 year old girls to be interested in programming. The normal interpretati…

As a woman in this industry that has been programming since I was ~8, I wasn't offended in the slightest. In my opinion he said there was a problem that he'd have to think about before offering a solution. "It's easy to be offended by things. It's also obnoxious and often irresponsible." Personally, this sort of behavior affects my career. When I first started at my current job people were afraid to speak to me becau…

It is undeniably the case that men are more...cautious about what they say and how they behave around women, particularly in the workplace. As a man, I'd have to say that such caution has precedent - you may be an exception, but (this incident being a great example) in my experience women are much more easily offended.

And I could see how that could make things less enjoyable for women who aren't so up tight; women who are easy going and just want to get along with their co-workers and share a laugh and get good work done.

It is unfortunate.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#95

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #63
ericabiz wrote: post #32

As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech. In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following: 1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use techn…

Blind applications would be great if they were possible, but I suspect they would be as helpful as a blind audition for concert conductors -- i.e., not at all. When you evaluate a team, you need to be able to judge their confidence, see how they interact with each other, get a feel for the trustworthiness, the way they look at you when they answer a question, and so on. If you can't see them, and their voice is disto…

[deleted]

Re: What I Didn't Say

#96

Post by jordo37 »

spindritf wrote: post #11
tomasien wrote: post #7

Are you still going to write about women founders? I 100% take you on your word about all of this, but that I still think a lot of the things you said were off the mark in understandable but important ways[1]. You're obviously well meaning and thoughtful and I think it would be great to read more about your thoughts, although I know you'd prefer to avoid the shitstorm that would follow (no matter how well reasoned yo…

There are no gatekeepers in the startup culture. How would that even work? Would pg deny you a business license? Stop you from getting a VPS? Remotely invalidate your copy of The Art of Computer Programming?

This seems naive. There are those with power, who not only make decisions based on their own work but also by setting precedent. If you look at other accelerators and how many of them follow the practicies and forms put down first by YC then its obvious that the impact from YC is large, both in the large number of startups they directly touch (especially in the last several years) and the number of industry wide practicies they influence from the use of convertible notes and now SAFES, to the preference for coder-founders.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#97

Post by crassus »

freyrs3 wrote: post #82
crassus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of mixed opinions about him. On the one hand, he's been influential in making Pycon more friendly to women, which I support[1]. On the other hand, he appears to have swallowed the feminist kool-aid without reflection. He has a knee-jerk reaction whenever an alleged case of "sexism" comes up - he is inclined to take the side of the "oppressed" group and facts be damned. He takes a guilty until proven innocent stan…

So he's a flawed human being who makes mistakes just pg and the rest of us. What really is scary to me is the group dynamic that has come out of this "social justice" movement in that it seems to fueled by very loud public commentary about very small events. The pronoun incident with libuv really just took this to level of absurdism.

I blame it on universal college education. At least I ran into this stuff in college for the first time. SJW stuff is too alien and strange for most people to believe without indoctrination. But now there is an audience demanding burning of sexists and racists, the definitions of which have been expanded to include any person of a non-protected class that mentions sex or race.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#98

Post by ajju »

ericabiz wrote: post #32

As a female founder, I think this is a well-thought-out, articulate response, and I appreciate pg stepping up to say something about women in tech. In a similar vein, I'd love to see YC take on one or both of the following: 1) Do at least one application cycle completely blind. How could you accomplish this? Much like in the concert auditions where this was first tried, put people behind a curtain--and then use techn…

Erica, genuine question: Did you reach out to any female founders who went through YC to ask about their experience?

Re: What I Didn't Say

#99

Post by hyperpape »

throwaway135 wrote: post #80

Why is adding more women to the tech industry automatically assumed a laudable goal to throw resources behind? I'm Middle-Eastern (probably a smaller minority in the North-American tech scene compared to women), and while I (like most people) would certainly like to be surrounded by more of my brethren, it's not something I'd be comfortable spending resources on because the return on investment is so nebulous; divers…

My response elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6985366

From an economic perspective, having any group not participate in a valuable activity is a waste.

Re: What I Didn't Say

#100

Post by DasIch »

yawn wrote: post #26

Jakob Kaplan Moss owes PG a public apology for his behavior. The witch hunt tweets that were coming out of him without getting the facts straight are downright disheartening.

His behavior was perfectly fine unless you assume that the "interview" as published was wrong. We now know it isn't and the facts have changed.

I doubt he would have tweeted any of it, if he had known this.

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