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Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

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Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#951

Post by paperwasp42 »

foobiekr wrote: post #842
paperwasp42 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a woman, I adopted this solution about a year ago. I will literally tell new teammates, "Look, I'm new to this career, I have a TON to learn, and I would love to be critiqued and given advice on how I can improve. I operate under a good-faith policy, so I will always assume you're being helpful and not condescending, unless you're overwhelmingly insulting (ie: telling me women aren't made for leadership roles.)" I…

The problem is you can retroactively change this policy at any time and re-interpret past comments.

This is true, and that's why I also try to bring up examples of times I have had blatantly sexist behavior toward me. (Which luckily, has been extremely rare.) It allows me to talk about my reaction, which has always been: let's have a personal, one-on-one chat about why I'm not okay with this. This conveys two things:

1) My "assume good faith" policy doesn't mean I'm okay with genuine harassment, and I have no problems standing up for myself. 2) I will always TELL colleagues if I'm uncomfortable and give them a chance to change their behavior before I escalate anything to HR.

But ultimately, this is something that comes down to trust. Trust in my colleagues to not take advantage of the "assume good faith" policy, and trust in me to use good sense to interpret my colleagues' behavior.

And, frankly, the modern workplace is a really hard place to cultivate trust in. But I do my best, and thus far, my efforts seem to have paid off.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#952

Post by calylex »

bombcar wrote: post #792
thaumasiotes wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to over-simplify severely, instead of taking criticism as a way to improve, she took it as an attack, which I think was part of what made Theranos insular, overprotective So, one important criticism of Theranos, which was made at various points starting very early on, was this: "If a substance is present in the patient's bloodstream, you still won't be able to detect it unless it is also present in the blood sample…

“Theranos wouldn’t have gotten away with it if she hadn’t been attractive” is also some form of weird sexism - said slick conMEN don’t exist or something.

She's attractive?

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#953

Post by dorgo »

BonoboIO wrote: post #213

In our middle european country there was the initiative to end the discrimination to not employ people based on various markers race, skin color, gender, sex, age, education history (maybe switiching industries in your fourties) ... If the potential employer rejected your job application with a reason you could fight him in court for discrimination and get compensation even if the employer. Great intention, but it ba…

The reason given nowadays is always: Other aplicants were a better fit.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#954

Post by [deleted] »

blub wrote: post #903
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…

Feminism as it is practiced today in the West is a lost cause, but it's been dying for decades. Like many movements around social justice it was hijacked by radicals and became totalitarian in its beliefs, to the point that it brings dubious value to or even harms the interests of most women. The big topics like violence against women have not been properly addressed and feminists focus instead obsessively on minor t…

[deleted]

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#955

Post by MathCodeLove »

rambambram wrote: post #943
MathCodeLove wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This victimhood mentality is atrocious and is something I recently wrote about. I don't normally do this but here's a shameless plug if anyone wants to read a bit more about this phenomenon. https://inconvenientconsiderations.blogspot.com/2021/03/hero...

Your article hit home, very good read. Does your blog have an RSS-feed, or is there somewhere I can 'follow' you?

Thank you! I see another user replied to you about an RSS-feed, do you find their answer sufficient? I don't have any social media presence as of yet, I'm just getting into blogging and that was my first ever article.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#956

Post by MathCodeLove »

dgiol wrote: post #947
MathCodeLove wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This victimhood mentality is atrocious and is something I recently wrote about. I don't normally do this but here's a shameless plug if anyone wants to read a bit more about this phenomenon. https://inconvenientconsiderations.blogspot.com/2021/03/hero...

Thanks for sharing this. One of the best pieces I've read on the topic, it's sad to see society's shift in this regard. I agree with you, and we can't know yet what the consequences of this will be in the long term. It seems like it matters less and less how good we are at what we do, and more and more what "class" we are considered to be in. In my view there are few things more rewarding than taking control of our l…

I'm glad you enjoyed it, I agree entirely about the reward in finding a sense of agency of ones own life. The mentality I wrote about has a way of robbing us of our independence and leads to a deeply rooted unhappiness. I truly believe it to be a major contributor to so much of the turbulence in the world today.

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#957

Post by worik »

ajnin wrote: post #389
worik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not good. Some of us have felt like that for thirty years. Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any body who crossed their paths. Now life is very hard for them. Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone…

What is that "group of people" you're talking about, can you be more specific ? Are you attributing certain characteristics to people only because they are part of that group ? Should people that are born into that group without a choice be punished for what other members did or are accused of having done in the past ?

Mostly men. But not only.

Mostly white. But not only.

Reflecting decades later I think they were probably mostly insecure, and at the time I realised they were mostly only marginally competent.

"Only a fucking idiot would do that" meaning "I do not know what you are talking about but if I admit it I might look bad, so I will attack you instead"

Some times they were truly brilliant. I could call out some very famous project leaders (one of whom attacked me on a mailing list on a topic over which I was an expert and he was not. Deeply personal attacks) but I do not think it would be helpful. There are plenty of examples, and they are easy to find in old logs.

But times are changing and being a total prick to prove a point is not tolerated in the worlds I (mostly) move in now. It takes debate and reasoning to prove your point.

Should have happened thirty years ago. We lost a generation to fields where asbestos suits were not mandatory to participate. That was literally the advice for almost every forum back in the day "wear your asbestos suit"

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#958

Post by worik »

xenihn wrote: post #297
worik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not good. Some of us have felt like that for thirty years. Once apon a time there were a group of people who swaggered through life saying whatever popped into their brains whom ever it offended or belittled. They engaged in metaphorical, but brutal, wrestling matches not just with each other but with any body who crossed their paths. Now life is very hard for them. Should have happened thirty years ago. Has it gone…

>Now life is very hard for them. Not them, but people physically similar to them. An important distinction. The people you're actually describing are generally retired or dead.

Nope

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#959

Post by ridethebike »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #269
ridethebike wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't Theranos debacle because the tech was never going to work due to it being borderline snake oil and whishful thinking hyped by con(wom)man?

Yes, but it was called a "decacorn" because it was valued at $10 billion dollars and its valuation dropped overnight to zero when it was outed as a fraud. I posit that it wouldn't have gotten so crazy overvalued if it hadn't been headed by a pretty young woman. But trying to explain that is probably "off topic" and just thinking about trying to explain it makes me tired. I'd rather not.

I don't know. There are crazy snakeoil hypes without "pretty young woman" being a founder. Even if it did contribute to the hype the it probably wasn't insignificant compared to rest of the factors

Re: Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

#960

Post by godelski »

imtringued wrote: post #858
godelski wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear based actions can still be sexist though. We're talking about treating people different based on their sex. Let's draw a parallel. Most people would consider crossing the street because there is a black man walking towards you as a racist action. Sure, not burning a cross in their lawn racist, but racist nonetheless (it's a spectrum). I would argue that people that do this do so because they are afraid of said b…

Let's say I agree with you, why create a world in which everything is sexist? Isn't the entire point that we want less of it?

> why create a world in which everything is sexist?

I'm sorry if it was interpreted this way (I know some people want this, but this is not what I'm advocating for).

> Isn't the entire point that we want less of it?

This is goal. But we also can't solve a problem if we don't acknowledge it. To do that expanding the definition helps. BUT if you expand the definition you need to also respond differently (this is where I disagree with what we see). We need to see nuance that there's a big difference between rape and not being as open with advice due to potentially becoming a social pariah. Our responses to these should be extremely different (which is what I'm advocating for). But this also means we need to recognize our progress (which I've been accused of for dog whistling having said that).

I just think we need to stop making our fights over diction and about philosophy. If we're placing diction over philosophy we'll never solve anything and always be fighting. We can never have unanimous agreement on diction, that's just not how language works (words evolve). So the question is if your disagreements with me mainly over word choice or if we have disagreements in philosophy (and are they minor or major?)

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