4 ms·

I was serious, however the scope I had in mind was perhaps different than what you are suggesting in that: 1) The target is not just women, it's founders (men

by Jun8 11y ago

I was serious, however the scope I had in mind was perhaps different than what you are suggesting in that: 1) The target is not just women, it's founders (men and women), and specifically founders at incubators where the work effort is intense. That way the scope of the proposal is limited to manageable proportions. 2) We're not talking about any onsite daycare but a very specific case. 3) The main goal is not to "entice women into the workforce" or to increase women in tech (although this great benefit may come as a side benefit) but to disrupt childcare for this particular scenario. So the important questions are: how would preschool childcare be done different, how can kids really create something useful, can a company use this as a sustainable resource, etc.

Mz 11y ago
Sorry, you are hearing things I did not intend. My commentary on how and why things were done during WWII is not intended to define scope of your project. You could just stop at "If you are serious, you could research how on-site daycare was handled during WWII." The rest of my comment is about history, not about your idea.
DanBC 11y ago
It's vaguely disturbing to hear suggestions to use children as experimental subjects. It makes sense across a population (eg, all of UK) to do clustered RCTs, but the YCombinator nursery group would be tiny and so the evidence gathered would be weak, which makes (imo, I'd be interested to hear what the ethicists say) it more problematic. And I'm even more unsure about this bit: > how can kids really create something useful, can a company use this as a sustainable resource, etc. Perhaps I'm misreading it? Better Off Ted had a bit where the children in the nursery were put to work. I don't think that's what you're suggesting?
- Jun8 11y ago
  Exploiting kids as subjects does sound repulsive (although using them as subjects with parents consent is perfectly ok for scientific purposes, e.g. see Alison Gopnik's fantastic work and her TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think?...). My suggestion was rather to use this group, which would be tiny as you point out, as a simple "sounding board", e.g. to develop new ways of teaching young children programming. Another way would be to get their ideas and keep them in the loop for development of new products targeting kids. Toy companies, such as Lego, routinely employ kids to test new toys but I think very few involve them in the creation phase.

by Jun8 11y ago

Mz 11y ago

Sorry, you are hearing things I did not intend. My commentary on how and why things were done during WWII is not intended to define scope of your project. You could just stop at "If you are serious, you could research how on-site daycare was handled during WWII." The rest of my comment is about history, not about your idea.

DanBC 11y ago

It's vaguely disturbing to hear suggestions to use children as experimental subjects. It makes sense across a population (eg, all of UK) to do clustered RCTs, but the YCombinator nursery group would be tiny and so the evidence gathered would be weak, which makes (imo, I'd be interested to hear what the ethicists say) it more problematic. And I'm even more unsure about this bit: > how can kids really create something useful, can a company use this as a sustainable resource, etc. Perhaps I'm misreading it? Better Off Ted had a bit where the children in the nursery were put to work. I don't think that's what you're suggesting?

Jun8 11y ago
Exploiting kids as subjects does sound repulsive (although using them as subjects with parents consent is perfectly ok for scientific purposes, e.g. see Alison Gopnik's fantastic work and her TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think?...). My suggestion was rather to use this group, which would be tiny as you point out, as a simple "sounding board", e.g. to develop new ways of teaching young children programming. Another way would be to get their ideas and keep them in the loop for development of new products targeting kids. Toy companies, such as Lego, routinely employ kids to test new toys but I think very few involve them in the creation phase.