"As an aside, organizations like TiE are absolutely absurd. You're trying to fight a "boys club" by forming your own boys club." Amen. I am Indian but I think

"As an aside, organizations like TiE are absolutely absurd. You're trying to fight a "boys club" by forming your own boys club." Amen. I am Indian but I think TIE perpetuates a racist/ethnic mentality and I would never take a cent (or rupee :-P) from them. Indians can be very racist/exclusionary I don't want to be judged on my skin color dammit, just judge me on how well (or not) I code (or do product design or marketing or whatever). In one company I worked at (ThoughtWorks) the owner was a kind of weird socialist (he was a nice guy just had these weird political beliefs - he thought the USA had too many conservatives but China had a very nice political system and that Reagan was a tyrant but Chavez was cool and so on) who believed in "Affirmative Action" and many dumb folks (carefully not specifying ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion etc here, to avoid a conflagaration) were promoted based not so much on any skills or successes but because they fit into a predetermined "diversity" slot. Soured me on the whole concept (No, I didn't want a promotion to management. I was (and am) happy being a dev). Thankfully , to date, programming remains a field where affirmative action and other half baked political fantasies don't apply.