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We can’t expect more women to succeed in the startup world until we’re able to talk honestly about how much harder startups are for those who want to spend a lo

We can’t expect more women to succeed in the startup world until we’re able to talk honestly about how much harder startups are for those who want to spend a lot of time with their kids. I think the expectation of being able to do both is quite unfair, at least the expectation of being able to do both well. There are many things that aren't compatible with being a cofounder. For example, you're not going to start a successful SaaS company while being a deployed Marine rifleman, or an NFL quarterback, or EMT, or solo truck driver. We need to stop telling people they can not only do anything they want, but everything they want.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
You can be a Marine rifleman, NFL quarterback or EMT _and then be_ a successful startup founder. You can also be a parent _and then_ start a startup. There's no age limit and kids eventually grow up and move out. Unless we're relegating/gatekeeping 50+ year olds from starting startups? Especially during retirement, there's still a lot of time to do stuff.
- hellbannedguy 6y ago
  I don't think you can join the armed forces after a certain age. (I don't think any field should have an age limit, especially if you can pass tests.)
- concordDance 6y ago
  Time? Yes. Energy and mental agility? Probably not. The vast majority of people seem to live in denial that ageing is a fact of life and that you get slower and less energetic as you age and that you start ageing immediately (at 20 you're already losing somethings you had when you were younger), not when you're 65.
  - lazyant 6y ago
    https://hollandfintech.com/2020/06/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45/ https://hollandfintech.com/2020/06/research-the-average-age-...
dexterdog 6y ago
Part of that is because we hear so many successful business people portrayed as also being great parents. I have seen so many of those that I knew first-hand to be fabrications that I just assume them to be false now.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  Or they have a spouse doing all the heavy lifting at home.
  - bonestamp2 6y ago
    Exactly. My boss's wife is at home doing all the kid stuff while both my wife and I work. Yet he talks to me like he has the exact same challenges. Just because someone has kids doesn't mean they're spending the same time with them... also age of the kids matter. High school kids don't need as much help with things as little kids.
    - scientismer 6y ago
      You have the exact same challenges. He just was able to overcome them better than you, by having/picking/convincing a wife who takes care of the home. You all made your choices.
      - bonestamp2 6y ago
        I guess so. I mean, he's from a generation when most women didn't work and I'm from a generation when most women do work. He bought his house long before prices skyrocketed, I wasn't in the workforce until long after they did. So, I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, but you're not wrong either.
        scientismer 6y ago
        So your wife has to work because your house was so expensive? I wonder about the place where you live. When your boss bought his home, was it cheap everywhere, or did he pick an affordable location that now has become expensive? It's not a must that woman work in this day and age.
c22 6y ago
Can you be an EMT and spend a lot of time with your kids though? Startup founder is a particularly hairy role to solve this for, since it is self-directed, but in general this is a real problem that exists across our whole society. Jobs should be flexible enough for people to spend a lot of time with their kids--even high availability/stress jobs--because it is a huge benefit to society when kids are able to spend a lot of time with their parents. Especially at the beginning.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  What’s wrong with some roles just not being compatible with being a parent of small children? It’s not like anyone spends their entire life as a parent of young children. Just do that role before, after, or both. Take something less demanding for the years in between. To the extent that’s impossible because you “fall off the track,” I agree that’s an problem.
  - c22 6y ago
    Sure, some roles, like "startup founder" or "astronaut" may be fundamentally incompatible with small children. However, a lot of roles, like "cashier at Target", are pretty low hanging fruit (and it looks like they've been working on it[0]). Even for the roles that are incompatible we should strive to give the humans who specialize in those roles (and most such roles are highly specialized) as many opportunities as we can to take extended breaks from their duties to raise small kids if they wish without fearing for their financial security. I believe we will be very thankful for such policies once all those kids reach adulthood. [0]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-real-reason-companies-like-target-are-offering-paid-parental-leave-and-child-care-2019-06-13 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-real-reason-companies-...
dundercoder 6y ago
My wife went out of town for 5 days and I _tried_ to take care of my 4 kids while working my FT job. I somehow managed to work 3/4 time just barely by working before they woke up and after they went to bed, and was mostly able to keep the kids fed, clean, and semi-entertained. It was not sustainable, not by a long shot, and I'm not a founder or co-founder.
hinkley 6y ago
I see these conversations go off the rails often because what should be seen as a call to common cause comes across as whataboutism, so let me try to be transparent about that: I think prospective mothers in tech should find common cause with other groups of people who suffer because the expectation is that everything in a startup is event driven and that each event is automatically the highest priority. When a plane crashes, we expect the NTSB to be 'responsive'. The meaning we use here is a quality we generally expect large organizations to lose - the ability to notice problems, take them seriously, and aggressively work to do something about them. That's not the same definition that I see people apply to startups. Startups are instead chronically run like a Skinner box, only you're the box. If my career has a thesis it's that we have tools, literal and figurative, that let us "move fast and not break things". For some developers these tools seem like nice to have or a distraction (the White Knuckle Crew), for others they only see the value during an incident or a crunch, but to others they're essential for sanity, be you remote, a night owl, easily distracted, disabled, long commute, a caregiver, or prospective parent/pet owner. From my knothole it seems like a lot of the infrastructure people build up in order to become an 'adult' organization is presumed to be something that you develop in-house shortly after the Last Responsible Moment, instead of something we expect from our tools out of the box. But that's probably more a consequence of the fact that few people demand it, so it hasn't gotten done. If everyone has to be a hero, then you get mostly unattached bachelors in moderate to perfect health. Do you want an Old Boy's Network? Because that's how you get an Old Boy's Network.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago

You can be a Marine rifleman, NFL quarterback or EMT _and then be_ a successful startup founder. You can also be a parent _and then_ start a startup. There's no age limit and kids eventually grow up and move out. Unless we're relegating/gatekeeping 50+ year olds from starting startups? Especially during retirement, there's still a lot of time to do stuff.

hellbannedguy 6y ago
I don't think you can join the armed forces after a certain age. (I don't think any field should have an age limit, especially if you can pass tests.)
concordDance 6y ago
Time? Yes. Energy and mental agility? Probably not. The vast majority of people seem to live in denial that ageing is a fact of life and that you get slower and less energetic as you age and that you start ageing immediately (at 20 you're already losing somethings you had when you were younger), not when you're 65.
- lazyant 6y ago
  https://hollandfintech.com/2020/06/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45/ https://hollandfintech.com/2020/06/research-the-average-age-...

dexterdog 6y ago

Part of that is because we hear so many successful business people portrayed as also being great parents. I have seen so many of those that I knew first-hand to be fabrications that I just assume them to be false now.

jonny_eh 6y ago
Or they have a spouse doing all the heavy lifting at home.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  Exactly. My boss's wife is at home doing all the kid stuff while both my wife and I work. Yet he talks to me like he has the exact same challenges. Just because someone has kids doesn't mean they're spending the same time with them... also age of the kids matter. High school kids don't need as much help with things as little kids.
  - scientismer 6y ago
    You have the exact same challenges. He just was able to overcome them better than you, by having/picking/convincing a wife who takes care of the home. You all made your choices.
    - bonestamp2 6y ago
      I guess so. I mean, he's from a generation when most women didn't work and I'm from a generation when most women do work. He bought his house long before prices skyrocketed, I wasn't in the workforce until long after they did. So, I'm not sure it's a fair comparison, but you're not wrong either.
      - scientismer 6y ago
        So your wife has to work because your house was so expensive? I wonder about the place where you live. When your boss bought his home, was it cheap everywhere, or did he pick an affordable location that now has become expensive? It's not a must that woman work in this day and age.

c22 6y ago

Can you be an EMT and spend a lot of time with your kids though? Startup founder is a particularly hairy role to solve this for, since it is self-directed, but in general this is a real problem that exists across our whole society. Jobs should be flexible enough for people to spend a lot of time with their kids--even high availability/stress jobs--because it is a huge benefit to society when kids are able to spend a lot of time with their parents. Especially at the beginning.

bradleyjg 6y ago
What’s wrong with some roles just not being compatible with being a parent of small children? It’s not like anyone spends their entire life as a parent of young children. Just do that role before, after, or both. Take something less demanding for the years in between. To the extent that’s impossible because you “fall off the track,” I agree that’s an problem.
- c22 6y ago
  Sure, some roles, like "startup founder" or "astronaut" may be fundamentally incompatible with small children. However, a lot of roles, like "cashier at Target", are pretty low hanging fruit (and it looks like they've been working on it[0]). Even for the roles that are incompatible we should strive to give the humans who specialize in those roles (and most such roles are highly specialized) as many opportunities as we can to take extended breaks from their duties to raise small kids if they wish without fearing for their financial security. I believe we will be very thankful for such policies once all those kids reach adulthood. [0]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-real-reason-companies-like-target-are-offering-paid-parental-leave-and-child-care-2019-06-13 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-real-reason-companies-...

dundercoder 6y ago

My wife went out of town for 5 days and I _tried_ to take care of my 4 kids while working my FT job. I somehow managed to work 3/4 time just barely by working before they woke up and after they went to bed, and was mostly able to keep the kids fed, clean, and semi-entertained. It was not sustainable, not by a long shot, and I'm not a founder or co-founder.

hinkley 6y ago

I see these conversations go off the rails often because what should be seen as a call to common cause comes across as whataboutism, so let me try to be transparent about that: I think prospective mothers in tech should find common cause with other groups of people who suffer because the expectation is that everything in a startup is event driven and that each event is automatically the highest priority. When a plane crashes, we expect the NTSB to be 'responsive'. The meaning we use here is a quality we generally expect large organizations to lose - the ability to notice problems, take them seriously, and aggressively work to do something about them. That's not the same definition that I see people apply to startups. Startups are instead chronically run like a Skinner box, only you're the box. If my career has a thesis it's that we have tools, literal and figurative, that let us "move fast and not break things". For some developers these tools seem like nice to have or a distraction (the White Knuckle Crew), for others they only see the value during an incident or a crunch, but to others they're essential for sanity, be you remote, a night owl, easily distracted, disabled, long commute, a caregiver, or prospective parent/pet owner. From my knothole it seems like a lot of the infrastructure people build up in order to become an 'adult' organization is presumed to be something that you develop in-house shortly after the Last Responsible Moment, instead of something we expect from our tools out of the box. But that's probably more a consequence of the fact that few people demand it, so it hasn't gotten done. If everyone has to be a hero, then you get mostly unattached bachelors in moderate to perfect health. Do you want an Old Boy's Network? Because that's how you get an Old Boy's Network.