8 ms·

I wish there were a clear bad guy here, but most of the hardship seems to have been caused by more diffuse social pressures. What could we have done as an indus

I wish there were a clear bad guy here, but most of the hardship seems to have been caused by more diffuse social pressures. What could we have done as an industry to improve the author's experience? Maybe just having more female founders around in general (by removing any barriers) would make some of these circumstances more commonplace.

belorn 6y ago
Many times in the article she perceive male founders as stoic machines that regardless of health or mental state would go to work and operate as if nothing is wrong, and then goes to copy that. That is a stereotype that is hurting both men and women, and removing that would resolve a lot of the hardship.
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  So if I want to push myself in pursuit of my dreams, I need to sandbag because working hard sets bad precedent for others? Edit: why is this flagged? Is it not a valid point? If you claim that there is a problem in tech because men are stoic and work long hours even during times of personal hardship, you're effectively shaming these men for working too hard. This is something that needs to be discussed before you start setting policy.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Treat it as a marathon, not a sprint. Making time for your mental health is not a cultural priority, and that results in a high rate of burnout across the industry. I think I'd have made it a lot further in my career, and faster, if I'd avoided that in my 20s.
    - silvat 6y ago
      I think pursuing an idea or project with wreckless abandon can be a beautiful thing. The risk of getting injured in the attempt to push limits is the cost of doing business.
      - notkaiho 6y ago
        Can be; more often it's destructive, and to what end?
      - klyrs 6y ago
        You mean reckless. Wrecklessness is the opposite optimization ;)
    - econcon 6y ago
      They can do that but then there are people like me, who need no weekend off, no vacations, can work more than 60 hours a week - I am ready to take all leadership It has infact opposite effect on me, the more I work the more I am escaped from normal day to life problems and emotional setbacks (caused mostly by other people and being aware myself, I can't do anything but just to blame myself) I choose work as my escapism.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Postmortems often happen because someone ignored a pain point prior to the failure, rather than taking stock and doing some preventative work. The general pattern of pretending everything is ok is one of my least favorite things about tech culture. I was going to say 'tech people' but it's clear that there are people who don't like this pattern either. They tend to self-identify (sometimes privately) when I buck the trend and do something sane instead.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    This is probably also true of ACTUAL postmortems....
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    Well, the root cause is probably that raising VC depends on keeping up appearances.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      Why is it that everyone wants to be manipulated. "Shooting the messenger" may looks like it hurts the other guy more but I've seen it screw up entire reporting hierarchies. By the time things go off the rails nobody higher than a level 1 manager has any damn clue what really happened, although they think they do based on the misinformation they've been fed.
      - closeparen 6y ago
        Keynesian beauty contest? A VC may personally appreciate a member of his portfolio showing weakness, but also assume that his peers won't.
        hinkley 6y ago
        I've had bosses who loved hearing bad news. And bosses who were great about bad news as long as they were the first to hear about it. Nobody likes to get called out in a meeting about a problem they are responsible for but know nothing about. That's probably the weakness thing again.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Is it really hurting them? Seems like both she and the people she sees succeeding as leaders act that way. Being indomitable and regulating your emotions seems to be part of the formula for effective leadership; why would we expect otherwise?
  - belorn 6y ago
    Pretending that physical and mental health problems does not exist is a problem. It is sad aspect of human life that we reward social status and monetary rewards to those who are successful at hiding it, and punish those that either refuse or fail. It seems worth to ask if there is a better way. It also seems that in a time where we care about inclusivity and diversity we need to let go of the perception that only people with perfect health should be allowed to lead.
    - dpoochieni 6y ago
      I think it is even innate to look up to those kind of leaders. Obviously there are exceptions but they inspire confidence (at least in me, n=1)
      - jbay808 6y ago
        For what it's worth as a counterexample, many people attribute Dr. Bonnie Henry's display of emotional honesty and vulnerability at a live press conference as a masterclass in communication, an excellent example of leadership, and as having played an important role in British Columbia's (so far) successful coronavirus response. (Citations for the above are easy to find but I'm on mobile so I don't feel like digging up the links).
    - logarhythmic 6y ago
      Maybe it's unfortunate, but nobody said being a leader is easy. It's why most (including myself) are not capable of such a role
      - pm90 6y ago
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  And hope the stereotype is working for at least someone, or maybe we are completely irrational
- jojobas 6y ago
  That approach gets you to do most you can, weeding out those unwilling in a Darwinian matter. Successful CEOs are outside 6 sigma freaks in a certain respect.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Honestly though, I feel like some of the higher-up men have serious psychopathic issues; if they do show empathy, it comes across as pretended, as a trained tactic to pursue their goals. I've worked with driven managers who didn't have this and in the high-pressure environment they operated in (mostly high pressure to sell and make money, it was in software dev consultancy) ended up overworked and lost 6-12 months of their professional life because of it, plus whatever long term issues they developed because of it. Have people like Zucc, Bezos, or Trump ever taken an extended period of time off because of stress or giving too much of a shit? No, they just fuck off to their resorts, private islands and yachts, do some cocaine or whatever vice they have and shrug it off. And those are the public figures; behind them are the more shady characters that have a lot of money and power without the personality and fame. It's the investors that tell a good-willing CEO or founder that they need to sack people, to make the hard decisions, while they reap the rewards, earning ridiculous money without doing the work for it or having to deal with the emotional or moral consequences of their decisions / votes themselves. TL;DR I think people who care cannot reach the 'heights' that the super-rich, super-successful do. I also believe a trait / condition of psychopathy is a lot more prevalent in men. I believe this is a big factor in the gender representation in the upper echelons.
  - afarrell 6y ago
    > I feel like some of the higher-up men have serious psychopathic issues; if they do show empathy, it comes across as pretended, as a trained tactic to pursue their goals. Some people need to deliberately practice social skills in order to successfully communicate what they really mean. > Have people like Zucc, Bezos, or Trump ever taken an extended period of time off because of stress or giving too much of a shit? No, they just fuck off to their resorts, private islands and yachts, do some cocaine or whatever vice they have and shrug it off. This seems like a statement that would require stronger evidence before I'd build any conclusions on top of it.
Alex3917 6y ago
> I wish there were a clear bad guy here, but most of the hardship seems to have been caused by more diffuse social pressures. Unchecked tech monopolies artificially driving up the cost of capital for startups seems like a large contributing factor. For sure VCs shouldn’t be engaging in sexist or predatory behavior, but that’s not really the root issue, just one of the more salient and proximate manifestations of larger industry-specific and broader societal issues.
analyst74 6y ago
The bad person here is the social norms and expectations formed due to the field being male-dominated. Author mostly forced herself to live by those norms, despite facing different challenges. i.e. no male founders have to worry about pumping breastmilk between meetings, so asking to do that feels awkward. If she chose to embrace her differences, and break more social norms (like taking longer maternity leave), her life will be easier. However, there is also the risk that the company could have failed by a thousand cuts that are difficult to attribute, she wouldn't have known at the time.
roenxi 6y ago
I'll be even worse and note that this is a story that is fundamentally about a woman achieving reproductive success - and it sounds pretty miserable. The male version of this story is something like how much easier it is to sleep with an attractive women because a CEO title is perceived as high status. Most people shape their lives around having a family - the incentives here are not favourable for females seeking out these sort of positions. Men get a lot more out of being powerful than women - having power is nearly the end of the game for a man. For Tracy it sounds like it was the beginning of a process of disillusionment. She's obviously robust enough that it didn't really matter to her, but somewhere along the bell curve of personalities that incentive gap will make a difference.
- dpoochieni 6y ago
  This so much! I had a girlfriend, now friend, which is terribly successful and attractive and she regrets it all saying maybe it would have been better to focus on a family early on. She still has a very good chance in doing so, but clearly thinks it would have been better to use her 20s doing that and didn't do it because of the pressure to be a career woman in her circles and educational experiences.
  - Moru 6y ago
    On the other hand she has enough experience and skin on the nose to be a great and stable mother now.
    - cutemonster 6y ago
      @dpoochieni > [She] clearly thinks it would have been better to use her 20s is it okay if I ask what was her age when she said that?
      - dpoochieni 6y ago
        28, almost 29
CalRobert 6y ago
If the industry lacked vc's and businesses were forced by the market to be sustainable, a well run business wouldn't need to deal with sexist vc's. Instead a few guys show up, pour _oceans_ of cash on tall fit white dudes copying your idea, and now you're forced to compete with tall white dudes with oceans of cash they can waste undercutting you.
Cactus2018 6y ago
> I wish there were a clear bad guy here, Clearly this is the bad guy: "one of our own VC's caller her a "little girl" while doing a fireside chat with her at PlanGrid" Bonus bad guys from the comments: "...potential investors take female founders out for dinner, ostensibly to talk over the potential investment but in reality as an attempt to sleep with them. ..."
- satyrnein 6y ago
  Just to be clear, I did not mean to imply in any way that bad actors do not exist, only that the article didn't focus on any.

belorn 6y ago

Many times in the article she perceive male founders as stoic machines that regardless of health or mental state would go to work and operate as if nothing is wrong, and then goes to copy that. That is a stereotype that is hurting both men and women, and removing that would resolve a lot of the hardship.

mtgp1000 6y ago
So if I want to push myself in pursuit of my dreams, I need to sandbag because working hard sets bad precedent for others? Edit: why is this flagged? Is it not a valid point? If you claim that there is a problem in tech because men are stoic and work long hours even during times of personal hardship, you're effectively shaming these men for working too hard. This is something that needs to be discussed before you start setting policy.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Treat it as a marathon, not a sprint. Making time for your mental health is not a cultural priority, and that results in a high rate of burnout across the industry. I think I'd have made it a lot further in my career, and faster, if I'd avoided that in my 20s.
  - silvat 6y ago
    I think pursuing an idea or project with wreckless abandon can be a beautiful thing. The risk of getting injured in the attempt to push limits is the cost of doing business.
    - notkaiho 6y ago
      Can be; more often it's destructive, and to what end?
    - klyrs 6y ago
      You mean reckless. Wrecklessness is the opposite optimization ;)
  - econcon 6y ago
    They can do that but then there are people like me, who need no weekend off, no vacations, can work more than 60 hours a week - I am ready to take all leadership It has infact opposite effect on me, the more I work the more I am escaped from normal day to life problems and emotional setbacks (caused mostly by other people and being aware myself, I can't do anything but just to blame myself) I choose work as my escapism.
hinkley 6y ago
Postmortems often happen because someone ignored a pain point prior to the failure, rather than taking stock and doing some preventative work. The general pattern of pretending everything is ok is one of my least favorite things about tech culture. I was going to say 'tech people' but it's clear that there are people who don't like this pattern either. They tend to self-identify (sometimes privately) when I buck the trend and do something sane instead.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  This is probably also true of ACTUAL postmortems....
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Well, the root cause is probably that raising VC depends on keeping up appearances.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Why is it that everyone wants to be manipulated. "Shooting the messenger" may looks like it hurts the other guy more but I've seen it screw up entire reporting hierarchies. By the time things go off the rails nobody higher than a level 1 manager has any damn clue what really happened, although they think they do based on the misinformation they've been fed.
    - closeparen 6y ago
      Keynesian beauty contest? A VC may personally appreciate a member of his portfolio showing weakness, but also assume that his peers won't.
      - hinkley 6y ago
        I've had bosses who loved hearing bad news. And bosses who were great about bad news as long as they were the first to hear about it. Nobody likes to get called out in a meeting about a problem they are responsible for but know nothing about. That's probably the weakness thing again.
microcolonel 6y ago
Is it really hurting them? Seems like both she and the people she sees succeeding as leaders act that way. Being indomitable and regulating your emotions seems to be part of the formula for effective leadership; why would we expect otherwise?
- belorn 6y ago
  Pretending that physical and mental health problems does not exist is a problem. It is sad aspect of human life that we reward social status and monetary rewards to those who are successful at hiding it, and punish those that either refuse or fail. It seems worth to ask if there is a better way. It also seems that in a time where we care about inclusivity and diversity we need to let go of the perception that only people with perfect health should be allowed to lead.
  - dpoochieni 6y ago
    I think it is even innate to look up to those kind of leaders. Obviously there are exceptions but they inspire confidence (at least in me, n=1)
    - jbay808 6y ago
      For what it's worth as a counterexample, many people attribute Dr. Bonnie Henry's display of emotional honesty and vulnerability at a live press conference as a masterclass in communication, an excellent example of leadership, and as having played an important role in British Columbia's (so far) successful coronavirus response. (Citations for the above are easy to find but I'm on mobile so I don't feel like digging up the links).
  - logarhythmic 6y ago
    Maybe it's unfortunate, but nobody said being a leader is easy. It's why most (including myself) are not capable of such a role
    - pm90 6y ago
dpoochieni 6y ago
And hope the stereotype is working for at least someone, or maybe we are completely irrational
jojobas 6y ago
That approach gets you to do most you can, weeding out those unwilling in a Darwinian matter. Successful CEOs are outside 6 sigma freaks in a certain respect.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Honestly though, I feel like some of the higher-up men have serious psychopathic issues; if they do show empathy, it comes across as pretended, as a trained tactic to pursue their goals. I've worked with driven managers who didn't have this and in the high-pressure environment they operated in (mostly high pressure to sell and make money, it was in software dev consultancy) ended up overworked and lost 6-12 months of their professional life because of it, plus whatever long term issues they developed because of it. Have people like Zucc, Bezos, or Trump ever taken an extended period of time off because of stress or giving too much of a shit? No, they just fuck off to their resorts, private islands and yachts, do some cocaine or whatever vice they have and shrug it off. And those are the public figures; behind them are the more shady characters that have a lot of money and power without the personality and fame. It's the investors that tell a good-willing CEO or founder that they need to sack people, to make the hard decisions, while they reap the rewards, earning ridiculous money without doing the work for it or having to deal with the emotional or moral consequences of their decisions / votes themselves. TL;DR I think people who care cannot reach the 'heights' that the super-rich, super-successful do. I also believe a trait / condition of psychopathy is a lot more prevalent in men. I believe this is a big factor in the gender representation in the upper echelons.
- afarrell 6y ago
  > I feel like some of the higher-up men have serious psychopathic issues; if they do show empathy, it comes across as pretended, as a trained tactic to pursue their goals. Some people need to deliberately practice social skills in order to successfully communicate what they really mean. > Have people like Zucc, Bezos, or Trump ever taken an extended period of time off because of stress or giving too much of a shit? No, they just fuck off to their resorts, private islands and yachts, do some cocaine or whatever vice they have and shrug it off. This seems like a statement that would require stronger evidence before I'd build any conclusions on top of it.

Alex3917 6y ago

> I wish there were a clear bad guy here, but most of the hardship seems to have been caused by more diffuse social pressures. Unchecked tech monopolies artificially driving up the cost of capital for startups seems like a large contributing factor. For sure VCs shouldn’t be engaging in sexist or predatory behavior, but that’s not really the root issue, just one of the more salient and proximate manifestations of larger industry-specific and broader societal issues.

analyst74 6y ago

The bad person here is the social norms and expectations formed due to the field being male-dominated. Author mostly forced herself to live by those norms, despite facing different challenges. i.e. no male founders have to worry about pumping breastmilk between meetings, so asking to do that feels awkward. If she chose to embrace her differences, and break more social norms (like taking longer maternity leave), her life will be easier. However, there is also the risk that the company could have failed by a thousand cuts that are difficult to attribute, she wouldn't have known at the time.

roenxi 6y ago

I'll be even worse and note that this is a story that is fundamentally about a woman achieving reproductive success - and it sounds pretty miserable. The male version of this story is something like how much easier it is to sleep with an attractive women because a CEO title is perceived as high status. Most people shape their lives around having a family - the incentives here are not favourable for females seeking out these sort of positions. Men get a lot more out of being powerful than women - having power is nearly the end of the game for a man. For Tracy it sounds like it was the beginning of a process of disillusionment. She's obviously robust enough that it didn't really matter to her, but somewhere along the bell curve of personalities that incentive gap will make a difference.

dpoochieni 6y ago
This so much! I had a girlfriend, now friend, which is terribly successful and attractive and she regrets it all saying maybe it would have been better to focus on a family early on. She still has a very good chance in doing so, but clearly thinks it would have been better to use her 20s doing that and didn't do it because of the pressure to be a career woman in her circles and educational experiences.
- Moru 6y ago
  On the other hand she has enough experience and skin on the nose to be a great and stable mother now.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    @dpoochieni > [She] clearly thinks it would have been better to use her 20s is it okay if I ask what was her age when she said that?
    - dpoochieni 6y ago
      28, almost 29

CalRobert 6y ago

If the industry lacked vc's and businesses were forced by the market to be sustainable, a well run business wouldn't need to deal with sexist vc's. Instead a few guys show up, pour _oceans_ of cash on tall fit white dudes copying your idea, and now you're forced to compete with tall white dudes with oceans of cash they can waste undercutting you.

Cactus2018 6y ago

> I wish there were a clear bad guy here, Clearly this is the bad guy: "one of our own VC's caller her a "little girl" while doing a fireside chat with her at PlanGrid" Bonus bad guys from the comments: "...potential investors take female founders out for dinner, ostensibly to talk over the potential investment but in reality as an attempt to sleep with them. ..."

satyrnein 6y ago
Just to be clear, I did not mean to imply in any way that bad actors do not exist, only that the article didn't focus on any.