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Ask a Female Engineer: Joining a Startup

58 points by cbcowans 10y ago

cbcowans 10y ago
Hi everyone, this is the second installment of our series. The first one was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455274. You'll notice a lot of the considerations discussed in this post apply to everyone, not just women, so there’s no need for the discussion to specifically focus on the “female engineer” part, though talking about that is fine too
- briholt 10y ago
  > there’s no need for the discussion to specifically focus on the “female engineer” part Agreed. Perhaps you could consider reframing the entire series accordingly without gender bias, starting with the title.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  I'm just wondering, then... Is the point to get a female perspective without specifically asking questions about being a female in engineering? Sort of like "Here's a different perspective without actually focusing on the elephant in the room"? Because I do have questions that I'd love to ask specifically about being a female engineer. Or if it's not that, then what is it? And why the specificity of senior female engineers instead of just a panel of senior engineers? Thanks.
  - cbcowans 10y ago
    The idea is just to ask women engineers questions readers send in and see what they say. If they say things specific to being female, that’s cool; if they say things that are more universal, that’s cool too. Please send your questions to ask@ycombinator.com or post them here.
red_blobs 10y ago
I would rather see 'ask an engineer'. Gender doesn't matter and does not reflect engineering ability or experience. If we want gender equality (or any equality for that matter), we really should stop self-segregating and focus on merit and ability. The problem is that identity politics gives certain groups power over the rest and most people won't ever give their power away willingly.
- mrkurt 10y ago
  Gender certainly doesn't reflect engineering ability, but it totally matters. It would be nice if it didn't. This kind of content is interesting because women have _much_ different experiences working at startups than men. What you'd rather see is a world that doesn't exist yet. I'd like to see it too. :)
  - Alupis 10y ago
    Allow me to take the risk of elaborating on the Parent's thought: I believe the sentiment the Parent post is trying to get at, is that by constructing more walled gardens which are "women only" or "for women", such as women only conferences, or women only talks, women only groups, etc... it actually has the opposite of the intended effect. It's a self-induced form of segregation and therefore discrimination - and serves only to make the inherent segregation stand out as being perceived as "normal". By putting one group "first", you inherently put another group "second". I think it's safe to say majority of men would love to have more women in the industry. In an ideal world, the title of this series is "Ask an Engineer", and it would just so happen that a woman wrote the post. Being a woman doesn't somehow qualify the article author in any way to discuss startups - having started a startup or working for one, does. Nobody would think anything of it so long as the information was well presented, and it certainly wouldn't attract all the negative attention this thread has started off with.
    - vcarl 10y ago
      But this isn't a post written by a women nor is it part of a walled garden, it's a question posed to several women, with their longform responses. If it were titled "Ask an engineer" and all the people asked were women, I wonder what the response would be? I ask that without any snark or presupposition, I'm not sure and I'm curious.
chris_7 10y ago
> When my kids were small, I used to do 4 to 6 hours a day of very focused work and would produce the same amount of work as others during an 8-hour shift. I'd be amazed to find this at a startup - I find that it's usually the opposite. It's impossible to focus in an open-plan with dogs running around, music blaring, and people swilling beer, so everyone has to work 10-12 hours to get 4-6 hours of work done. I'm also surprised there's no mention of rape/abuse culture as it relates to the startup culture of "drinks, bro!": https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/ https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/
- linkregister 10y ago
  Is that representative of most startups? The only common elements I've seen in the startups I've been acquainted with is long working hours and below-market pay.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- facepalm 10y ago
  Any indication that women are more put off by beer than men? At the last startup I have seen, the women were much more predatory than the men during beer nights. Not that I like beer nights, but I dislike one sided blaming. Besides, if people want to have beer nights, why shouldn't they have them? Maybe my main motivation to start my own company is that I get to have beer nights. Why shouldn't I be allowed to create company with a work atmosphere I like?
  - chris_7 10y ago
    Well, if your main motivation for starting a company is having beer nights, seems like the company you should start is a bar. > Besides, if people want to have beer nights, why shouldn't they have them? They might unknowingly (or worse, knowingly) employ: - recovering alcoholics - people with religious restrictions - people that were abused by someone under the influence of alcohol - people that were abused whilst under the influence of alcohol - people that just don't like alcohol - people that want to actually go home after work (drinking is not work unless you're a beer taster) Yes, you can make these outings "optional", but then it's all "we missed you last night!" and "you should come out next time!" guilting-type social pressure. There's no need for that in the workplace, so let's stick to building great things! Go drink with your bros, no one minds if you do that!
merb 10y ago
I don't get it. Why these gender, race, whatever posts. Aren't we all equal? Changing our language and adding a sign for gender / race whatever really doesn't help. I mean if woman don't want to work in the IT sector, than it doesn't help to highlight happy woman in this sector. I mean from our last hiring call we had like 90% male. We searched for Junior/Mid Level so I guess if other companies will compare their data they will also see that they have way more male people and that's possible not because they don't want to hire them. It's just that everybody in our "modern" world can choose what to do (at least in europe / america) with their life, so they can choose their jobs and I guess woman just have other preferences.
- xenihn 10y ago
  >We searched for Junior/Mid Level Just curious, but which specific engineering positions, languages/stack etc. were you looking to fill?
  - merb 10y ago
    Java / Scala Web Development
- zorpner 10y ago
  Aren't we all equal? Not yet.
ExcelsiorDevice 10y ago
Are the aliases in this post used for the same people that were in the prior post, i.e., are the names globally unique?
- cbcowans 10y ago
  Correct. Ada in the first post is also Ada in the second post.
vcarl 10y ago
I absolutely relate to Klara's response. I joined as a "founding employee" of a startup, and over the next 3 years the team's biggest problem was being meddled with by the founder (just one, the second founder ducked out after about 8 months—with a sizable percentage of the company). Eventually I was spending a solid quarter of my time running interference between the founder and pretty much every other team member, and when he eventually fired me over our disagreements (there was nobody to run interference between him and I, when it came to that) the rest of the team quit within a month. Solo, first time founders are a big red flag to me now.
- tenkabuto 10y ago
  Have any tips for us solo, first time founders, besides "no needless meddling"?
  - jbattle 10y ago
    make sure you have someone close by who feels comfortable telling you when you are wrong
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Also, don't found companies with friends (unless you've successfully worked with them before), because people tend to let things slide with friends longer than they would with an average co-worker.
  - vcarl 10y ago
    In our case, the goalposts for what the product should be kept moving every 3 months, which was probably the largest single problem, it caused most of the friction imo. It didn't help that we were a hardware startup, so changes couldn't be made as easily. A solution to that would be to agree upon (and document) what the MVP is, and not change course until you've validated that the idea doesn't meet the market's needs. We had a single client/partner, their desires ended up driving a lot of changes late in development that ended up being incompatible with earlier engineering decisions, but the founder pushed them through. We ended up not being able to do environmental testing because of the time those changes took, and the first time it rained the cases for our electronics filled with water. I'm also now a solo-ish founder and I only have technical/team management experience, so I'm learning too :)
neom 10y ago
I just wanted to say I really enjoy these and thank you for doing them, it's very enlightened.
baybal2 10y ago
>leaving me looking for a new job while on a work permit as a single mother of three Uh...
cloudjacker 10y ago
Do more like these! I like how the questions and responses weren't about being women in tech while raising unique experiences We would all love to get to the point where it isn't a noteworthy discussion, but for now allot of people need the SEO of women in tech so they can find something relatable
DelaneyM 10y ago
It's curious/disappointing that none of the respondents suggested that a good criteria for joining a startup is being on the founding team. That may not be in the spirit of the question, but I've found that the best way of finding a culture & mission which really matches what I want/need from a job is to create it.
klara_engineer 10y ago
Hello, Klara here. I should have probably put in my answer that I would not join a startup without healthcare. I was recently offered a job that I was seriously considering. The caveat was that I'd be paid as a contractor and they would pay me the extra money for me to buy my own healthcare. Healthcare for my husband and I would be $700-1000 a month. If we had a child, it would be closer to $1500 a month. Husband works at an early startup and doesn't have healthcare. ($1500 * 12) / (1 - 0.4) = $30k of extra income I would need to break even. I cannot just buy Aetna insurance (in NY) because they don't sell individual plans. I'm not convinced that my other choices are good coverage (Oscar, NYS MetroPlus, etc). Someday, we'll start a family and I want the best coverage possible.
- chris_7 10y ago
  Definitely feeling that, I had to switch to a much-less-effective asthma med because my bad startup company insurance doesn't cover the one I've used for almost my entire post-childhood life. Then, couple that with the typical startup office dogs, and... wheeze.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Having office dogs at the cost of employee heath should be as unacceptable as builders without hard hats.
- mrkurt 10y ago
  It's so easy to provide healthcare now, that's a good criteria. Just send them to Gusto. Also 1099 / contractor is shady unless there's a really good reason.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    It's easy, it's not however usually affordable for anything but the best funded startups. Consider that the average cost of employee heath care would add 2-3k per employee per year. Very significant. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cost-employee-benefits-employer-2694.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cost-employee-benefits-employ...
generic_user 10y ago
I have a question for the anonymous Woman, Do you feel that tech companies that pander to misandrist Third Wave Feminist entryists and try to incorporate there ideology will be harmed in the mid to long term As Men move to organisations that do not Discriminate against there gender and treat them as people rather then accomplices of the patriarch who need to be marginalized? In my observations both Men who want to enter the tech industry and those who have established careers have become aware of the misandrist intentions of Feminist entryism in the tech industry and are steering there careers away from companies that may limit there growth within the organisation and place less value on them simply because the are Men.
gjolund 10y ago
I recently left a startup that had 3 female first time founders. They forced me on several occasions to pass by qualified candidates for unqualified ones in the name of "diversity". They were constantly complaining about how they weren't taken seriously by other founders, but then proceeded to schedule interviews with forbes about "Mom's in tech" and "running a startup from their kitchen". They unilaterally decided to remove all males from the platform (a child care service), because some customers had the impression that a male child care provider was more likely to molest their child. At the end of the day I ended up leaving, and the rest of the tech team within about a month. They replaced us with the tech team from a recently folded competitor, which was led by another "mom". Last I heard they were floundering and are somewhat of a laughing stock in the LA startup community, and have a reputation with recruiters as a dead end.
ujalashanker 10y ago
I like Ada'a response. It's very important to make sure that the startup team members get along and care for each other. Also if you detect BS in the vision or idea, its better to stay away.

58 points by cbcowans 10y ago

Hi everyone, this is the second installment of our series. The first one was here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12455274. You'll notice a lot of the considerations discussed in this post apply to everyone, not just women, so there’s no need for the discussion to specifically focus on the “female engineer” part, though talking about that is fine too

briholt 10y ago
> there’s no need for the discussion to specifically focus on the “female engineer” part Agreed. Perhaps you could consider reframing the entire series accordingly without gender bias, starting with the title.
fapjacks 10y ago
I'm just wondering, then... Is the point to get a female perspective without specifically asking questions about being a female in engineering? Sort of like "Here's a different perspective without actually focusing on the elephant in the room"? Because I do have questions that I'd love to ask specifically about being a female engineer. Or if it's not that, then what is it? And why the specificity of senior female engineers instead of just a panel of senior engineers? Thanks.
- cbcowans 10y ago
  The idea is just to ask women engineers questions readers send in and see what they say. If they say things specific to being female, that’s cool; if they say things that are more universal, that’s cool too. Please send your questions to ask@ycombinator.com or post them here.

red_blobs 10y ago

I would rather see 'ask an engineer'. Gender doesn't matter and does not reflect engineering ability or experience. If we want gender equality (or any equality for that matter), we really should stop self-segregating and focus on merit and ability. The problem is that identity politics gives certain groups power over the rest and most people won't ever give their power away willingly.

mrkurt 10y ago
Gender certainly doesn't reflect engineering ability, but it totally matters. It would be nice if it didn't. This kind of content is interesting because women have _much_ different experiences working at startups than men. What you'd rather see is a world that doesn't exist yet. I'd like to see it too. :)
- Alupis 10y ago
  Allow me to take the risk of elaborating on the Parent's thought: I believe the sentiment the Parent post is trying to get at, is that by constructing more walled gardens which are "women only" or "for women", such as women only conferences, or women only talks, women only groups, etc... it actually has the opposite of the intended effect. It's a self-induced form of segregation and therefore discrimination - and serves only to make the inherent segregation stand out as being perceived as "normal". By putting one group "first", you inherently put another group "second". I think it's safe to say majority of men would love to have more women in the industry. In an ideal world, the title of this series is "Ask an Engineer", and it would just so happen that a woman wrote the post. Being a woman doesn't somehow qualify the article author in any way to discuss startups - having started a startup or working for one, does. Nobody would think anything of it so long as the information was well presented, and it certainly wouldn't attract all the negative attention this thread has started off with.
  - vcarl 10y ago
    But this isn't a post written by a women nor is it part of a walled garden, it's a question posed to several women, with their longform responses. If it were titled "Ask an engineer" and all the people asked were women, I wonder what the response would be? I ask that without any snark or presupposition, I'm not sure and I'm curious.

chris_7 10y ago

> When my kids were small, I used to do 4 to 6 hours a day of very focused work and would produce the same amount of work as others during an 8-hour shift. I'd be amazed to find this at a startup - I find that it's usually the opposite. It's impossible to focus in an open-plan with dogs running around, music blaring, and people swilling beer, so everyone has to work 10-12 hours to get 4-6 hours of work done. I'm also surprised there's no mention of rape/abuse culture as it relates to the startup culture of "drinks, bro!": https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/ https://annelibby.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/beer/

linkregister 10y ago
Is that representative of most startups? The only common elements I've seen in the startups I've been acquainted with is long working hours and below-market pay.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
facepalm 10y ago
Any indication that women are more put off by beer than men? At the last startup I have seen, the women were much more predatory than the men during beer nights. Not that I like beer nights, but I dislike one sided blaming. Besides, if people want to have beer nights, why shouldn't they have them? Maybe my main motivation to start my own company is that I get to have beer nights. Why shouldn't I be allowed to create company with a work atmosphere I like?
- chris_7 10y ago
  Well, if your main motivation for starting a company is having beer nights, seems like the company you should start is a bar. > Besides, if people want to have beer nights, why shouldn't they have them? They might unknowingly (or worse, knowingly) employ: - recovering alcoholics - people with religious restrictions - people that were abused by someone under the influence of alcohol - people that were abused whilst under the influence of alcohol - people that just don't like alcohol - people that want to actually go home after work (drinking is not work unless you're a beer taster) Yes, you can make these outings "optional", but then it's all "we missed you last night!" and "you should come out next time!" guilting-type social pressure. There's no need for that in the workplace, so let's stick to building great things! Go drink with your bros, no one minds if you do that!

merb 10y ago

I don't get it. Why these gender, race, whatever posts. Aren't we all equal? Changing our language and adding a sign for gender / race whatever really doesn't help. I mean if woman don't want to work in the IT sector, than it doesn't help to highlight happy woman in this sector. I mean from our last hiring call we had like 90% male. We searched for Junior/Mid Level so I guess if other companies will compare their data they will also see that they have way more male people and that's possible not because they don't want to hire them. It's just that everybody in our "modern" world can choose what to do (at least in europe / america) with their life, so they can choose their jobs and I guess woman just have other preferences.

xenihn 10y ago
>We searched for Junior/Mid Level Just curious, but which specific engineering positions, languages/stack etc. were you looking to fill?
- merb 10y ago
  Java / Scala Web Development
zorpner 10y ago
Aren't we all equal? Not yet.

ExcelsiorDevice 10y ago

Are the aliases in this post used for the same people that were in the prior post, i.e., are the names globally unique?

cbcowans 10y ago
Correct. Ada in the first post is also Ada in the second post.

vcarl 10y ago

I absolutely relate to Klara's response. I joined as a "founding employee" of a startup, and over the next 3 years the team's biggest problem was being meddled with by the founder (just one, the second founder ducked out after about 8 months—with a sizable percentage of the company). Eventually I was spending a solid quarter of my time running interference between the founder and pretty much every other team member, and when he eventually fired me over our disagreements (there was nobody to run interference between him and I, when it came to that) the rest of the team quit within a month. Solo, first time founders are a big red flag to me now.

tenkabuto 10y ago
Have any tips for us solo, first time founders, besides "no needless meddling"?
- jbattle 10y ago
  make sure you have someone close by who feels comfortable telling you when you are wrong
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Also, don't found companies with friends (unless you've successfully worked with them before), because people tend to let things slide with friends longer than they would with an average co-worker.
- vcarl 10y ago
  In our case, the goalposts for what the product should be kept moving every 3 months, which was probably the largest single problem, it caused most of the friction imo. It didn't help that we were a hardware startup, so changes couldn't be made as easily. A solution to that would be to agree upon (and document) what the MVP is, and not change course until you've validated that the idea doesn't meet the market's needs. We had a single client/partner, their desires ended up driving a lot of changes late in development that ended up being incompatible with earlier engineering decisions, but the founder pushed them through. We ended up not being able to do environmental testing because of the time those changes took, and the first time it rained the cases for our electronics filled with water. I'm also now a solo-ish founder and I only have technical/team management experience, so I'm learning too :)

neom 10y ago

I just wanted to say I really enjoy these and thank you for doing them, it's very enlightened.

baybal2 10y ago

>leaving me looking for a new job while on a work permit as a single mother of three Uh...

cloudjacker 10y ago

Do more like these! I like how the questions and responses weren't about being women in tech while raising unique experiences We would all love to get to the point where it isn't a noteworthy discussion, but for now allot of people need the SEO of women in tech so they can find something relatable

DelaneyM 10y ago

It's curious/disappointing that none of the respondents suggested that a good criteria for joining a startup is being on the founding team. That may not be in the spirit of the question, but I've found that the best way of finding a culture & mission which really matches what I want/need from a job is to create it.

klara_engineer 10y ago

Hello, Klara here. I should have probably put in my answer that I would not join a startup without healthcare. I was recently offered a job that I was seriously considering. The caveat was that I'd be paid as a contractor and they would pay me the extra money for me to buy my own healthcare. Healthcare for my husband and I would be $700-1000 a month. If we had a child, it would be closer to $1500 a month. Husband works at an early startup and doesn't have healthcare. ($1500 * 12) / (1 - 0.4) = $30k of extra income I would need to break even. I cannot just buy Aetna insurance (in NY) because they don't sell individual plans. I'm not convinced that my other choices are good coverage (Oscar, NYS MetroPlus, etc). Someday, we'll start a family and I want the best coverage possible.

chris_7 10y ago
Definitely feeling that, I had to switch to a much-less-effective asthma med because my bad startup company insurance doesn't cover the one I've used for almost my entire post-childhood life. Then, couple that with the typical startup office dogs, and... wheeze.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Having office dogs at the cost of employee heath should be as unacceptable as builders without hard hats.
mrkurt 10y ago
It's so easy to provide healthcare now, that's a good criteria. Just send them to Gusto. Also 1099 / contractor is shady unless there's a really good reason.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  It's easy, it's not however usually affordable for anything but the best funded startups. Consider that the average cost of employee heath care would add 2-3k per employee per year. Very significant. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cost-employee-benefits-employer-2694.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cost-employee-benefits-employ...

generic_user 10y ago

I have a question for the anonymous Woman, Do you feel that tech companies that pander to misandrist Third Wave Feminist entryists and try to incorporate there ideology will be harmed in the mid to long term As Men move to organisations that do not Discriminate against there gender and treat them as people rather then accomplices of the patriarch who need to be marginalized? In my observations both Men who want to enter the tech industry and those who have established careers have become aware of the misandrist intentions of Feminist entryism in the tech industry and are steering there careers away from companies that may limit there growth within the organisation and place less value on them simply because the are Men.

gjolund 10y ago

I recently left a startup that had 3 female first time founders. They forced me on several occasions to pass by qualified candidates for unqualified ones in the name of "diversity". They were constantly complaining about how they weren't taken seriously by other founders, but then proceeded to schedule interviews with forbes about "Mom's in tech" and "running a startup from their kitchen". They unilaterally decided to remove all males from the platform (a child care service), because some customers had the impression that a male child care provider was more likely to molest their child. At the end of the day I ended up leaving, and the rest of the tech team within about a month. They replaced us with the tech team from a recently folded competitor, which was led by another "mom". Last I heard they were floundering and are somewhat of a laughing stock in the LA startup community, and have a reputation with recruiters as a dead end.

ujalashanker 10y ago

I like Ada'a response. It's very important to make sure that the startup team members get along and care for each other. Also if you detect BS in the vision or idea, its better to stay away.