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May be more necessary than usual – I got the feeling that women were overrepresented in the "Founder-does-something-terrible" articles, at least on HN. Some wa

May be more necessary than usual – I got the feeling that women were overrepresented in the "Founder-does-something-terrible" articles, at least on HN. Some was certainly deserved, although I'm not sure about the proportionality of the 20th "No, seriously, Elizabeth Holmes is a terrible terrible person!" - article. Some was offensive, misogynistic, backwards bullshit that I can only hope is highly correlated with the writer's chances at next year's Darwin awards – like about 90% of anything ever written about Ellen Pao. Some was in between – Marissa Meyer comes to mind. I have no idea why about a third of men feel threatened by the whole idea, but I believe those are problems that need to be addressed offline. I've seen a few cases where some measures to reduce discrimination succeeded even with some initial scepticism. 1:1 talks seem to work quite well, as does starting with something blatantly obvious (dropping the photo requirement for applicants and blinding the names are two common options in my country). Once you get a team above a certain threshold (around 35% women I'd say) the whole dynamic shifts. Suddenly there's picnics and Tuesday morning runs and journal clubs etc. That's something that everyone notices and I believe it has dramatic impact. The effects continue with any other measure of diversity you can introduce: having a few different nationalities around is an improvement, having someone with a completely different background can be a plus (met a 75-year old office manager once who was beloved at her startup) etc.

cbeach 10y ago
I suspect if there is a bias toward criticising women who fail in technology, this might be a direct backlash to the many articles that fetishise women in technology. That's not to condone the backlash, of course. But perhaps we ought to stop focusing on identity politics - and start treating women as people, not tokens in our social engineering project.
parennoob 10y ago
> as does starting with something blatantly obvious (dropping the photo requirement for applicants and blinding the names are two common options in my country Unfortunately, very few efforts seem to focus on immediately applicable solutions like this that solve the problem (if there is one) fundamentally. None of the Big Tech companies for example (Google / Facebook / Apple / Microsoft come to mind) currently do application blinding where possible, as far as I know. All of them however are very eager to promote movements like Girls Who Code because it's generally good PR and (I think) because it increases the available labor pool for them.
- facepalm 10y ago
  There has also been a study showing tech interviews went less favorable for women when their voices were masked as male voices. As for "Girls Who Code" as PR - does it increase the popularity of these firms with male coders, too? My personal impression with Google is that they are not interested in hiring male coders anymore...
  - tomlock 10y ago
    >>My personal impression with Google is that they are not interested in hiring male coders anymore... I can't think of many scenarios that would give you that impression. Did google personally reject you for being a man?
    - facepalm 10y ago
      For the last two years I have only seen ads with exclusively female engineers from Google, for example the "I look like an engineer" series. I haven't seen any effort to attract male talent. Of course having more women on the team will probably make a company more attractive to men, but I doubt that is the only thing they should bank on to attract men.
      - tomlock 10y ago
        I think over the past two years I've seen a sum total of one video about working at Google, and it featured a woman and a man. From what you're saying I can only assume I stumbled on a super rare video. Is that accurate?
        facepalm 10y ago
        I'll include a link to my paper where I use the method of autoethnography to show how Google has turned into a misandryst megacorporation. Just kidding - I didn't write a paper about it, nor did I conduct a rigorous study. Most of the Google Ads I have seen came via various Google Twitter accounts, like https://twitter.com/lifeatgoogle https://twitter.com/lifeatgoogle (Life at Google seems to be dedicated to hiring people for Google). So my filter bubble might be to blame. I haven't seen the video you mentioned which features a man. (Edit: I just scrolled through the first several dozen tweets from "Life At Google - I think there is definitely a bias to only show female engineers there.... However, it is of course only one Google Twitter account dedicated to hiring, I don't know how many others exist. Maybe it was created explicitly to target women and minorities, but then maybe they should somehow say so).
Joeboy 10y ago
> I'm not sure about the proportionality of the 20th "No, seriously, Elizabeth Holmes is a terrible terrible person!" - article. Out of interest I googled the hits on HN for Holmes and 2016's other medical industry bête noir, Martin Shkreli. Holmes wins by 325 to 141, although I'd personally be hard pressed to say which of them was more terrible.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Not the same kind of story at all. Holmes first became famous (As a unicorn), then fell from grace. Shkreli never was admired, or was he? He was just scorned right from the start.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    While that's factually true fail to see the causality. It's like: "These are completely different stories, she was born in Canada and he is an excellent tennis player".
    - facepalm 10y ago
      One grabs peoples anttention more than the other. The original claim was because they are both in pharma, they should receive the same attention. But being in pharma is not the only aspect of their stories. It's like arguing apples should be the same as oranges because they are both fruits.
pokemongoaway 10y ago
You're either lucky or inexperienced to have never been in a professional environment by 2016 where you and/or other men had to grit their teeth because they couldn't criticise a woman's ideas because of your gender (and her's). We all know the tactic of emasculation you're using: "are you not man enough to handle competitor from women?!" As you can see by the other comments in this thread, you can see most men have learned to ignore the ad hominem in these cases and focused on rational cause-and-effect approaches.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

cbeach 10y ago

I suspect if there is a bias toward criticising women who fail in technology, this might be a direct backlash to the many articles that fetishise women in technology. That's not to condone the backlash, of course. But perhaps we ought to stop focusing on identity politics - and start treating women as people, not tokens in our social engineering project.

parennoob 10y ago

> as does starting with something blatantly obvious (dropping the photo requirement for applicants and blinding the names are two common options in my country Unfortunately, very few efforts seem to focus on immediately applicable solutions like this that solve the problem (if there is one) fundamentally. None of the Big Tech companies for example (Google / Facebook / Apple / Microsoft come to mind) currently do application blinding where possible, as far as I know. All of them however are very eager to promote movements like Girls Who Code because it's generally good PR and (I think) because it increases the available labor pool for them.

facepalm 10y ago
There has also been a study showing tech interviews went less favorable for women when their voices were masked as male voices. As for "Girls Who Code" as PR - does it increase the popularity of these firms with male coders, too? My personal impression with Google is that they are not interested in hiring male coders anymore...
- tomlock 10y ago
  >>My personal impression with Google is that they are not interested in hiring male coders anymore... I can't think of many scenarios that would give you that impression. Did google personally reject you for being a man?
  - facepalm 10y ago
    For the last two years I have only seen ads with exclusively female engineers from Google, for example the "I look like an engineer" series. I haven't seen any effort to attract male talent. Of course having more women on the team will probably make a company more attractive to men, but I doubt that is the only thing they should bank on to attract men.
    - tomlock 10y ago
      I think over the past two years I've seen a sum total of one video about working at Google, and it featured a woman and a man. From what you're saying I can only assume I stumbled on a super rare video. Is that accurate?
      - facepalm 10y ago
        I'll include a link to my paper where I use the method of autoethnography to show how Google has turned into a misandryst megacorporation. Just kidding - I didn't write a paper about it, nor did I conduct a rigorous study. Most of the Google Ads I have seen came via various Google Twitter accounts, like https://twitter.com/lifeatgoogle https://twitter.com/lifeatgoogle (Life at Google seems to be dedicated to hiring people for Google). So my filter bubble might be to blame. I haven't seen the video you mentioned which features a man. (Edit: I just scrolled through the first several dozen tweets from "Life At Google - I think there is definitely a bias to only show female engineers there.... However, it is of course only one Google Twitter account dedicated to hiring, I don't know how many others exist. Maybe it was created explicitly to target women and minorities, but then maybe they should somehow say so).

Joeboy 10y ago

> I'm not sure about the proportionality of the 20th "No, seriously, Elizabeth Holmes is a terrible terrible person!" - article. Out of interest I googled the hits on HN for Holmes and 2016's other medical industry bête noir, Martin Shkreli. Holmes wins by 325 to 141, although I'd personally be hard pressed to say which of them was more terrible.

facepalm 10y ago
Not the same kind of story at all. Holmes first became famous (As a unicorn), then fell from grace. Shkreli never was admired, or was he? He was just scorned right from the start.
- matt4077 10y ago
  While that's factually true fail to see the causality. It's like: "These are completely different stories, she was born in Canada and he is an excellent tennis player".
  - facepalm 10y ago
    One grabs peoples anttention more than the other. The original claim was because they are both in pharma, they should receive the same attention. But being in pharma is not the only aspect of their stories. It's like arguing apples should be the same as oranges because they are both fruits.

pokemongoaway 10y ago

You're either lucky or inexperienced to have never been in a professional environment by 2016 where you and/or other men had to grit their teeth because they couldn't criticise a woman's ideas because of your gender (and her's). We all know the tactic of emasculation you're using: "are you not man enough to handle competitor from women?!" As you can see by the other comments in this thread, you can see most men have learned to ignore the ad hominem in these cases and focused on rational cause-and-effect approaches.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]