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Very fair point. I pointed them out mostly because these are "celebrities" in the tech world that you could easily find giving talks at various venues. Real p

Very fair point. I pointed them out mostly because these are "celebrities" in the tech world that you could easily find giving talks at various venues. Real people who get real work done tend to not have time for such nonsense :) I could/should have noted Mayer only because I consider her to be one of the most influential people in the (FTSE equivalent mentioned by Parmer) NASDAQ. While the jury is still out on her tenure at Yahoo!, several of Google's recent missteps _could_ be attributed to her absence at Big G.

VLM 13y ago
I think you're still missing my point. A management drone, or at least a more or less non-techie, prognosticating about cultural issues in tech, is almost meaningless other than maybe simple P.R. "we care about diversity" and such. Unless you have techies in the executive suite, the answer to techie problems is not going to come from the executive suite, or at least not any more likely than any other random unqualified group. Its not enough for one's subordinates 8 times removed be techies, or to have a PR campaign aimed at techies. There's an impedance mismatch. It would be like sending me as a missionary to encourage young black men to enter the religious seminary, and then being surprised at my remarkable ineffectiveness. Why, VLM has a lot of karma on HN, how could he not have been effective?
- ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
  I don't disagree and I think the only fair balance is to have stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table for balance to be achieved. I think without engineers or at the very least representatives that can be the true voice of the engineers any company is doomed to produce waste and a disconnect between what is, what can be, and what isn't. My point is management drones love to talk, and techies by a large majority are much more comfortable staying out of the executive suite and staying in the labs. Until a balance occurs, the mismatch will always be present. I think this is more of a cultural divide issue than a gender one, however.
  - VLM 13y ago
    "stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table" Women Techies dream team version 0.001: Limor Fried, Jeri Ellsworth, Radia Perlman (noobs probably don't know who she is... hint... Spanning Tree Protocol and a epic 90s book titled "Interconnections"). "the table" needs techies like those three women, not some famous bean counters. I would much rather have my daughter look up to those three (or about a bazillion others) than, say, "Job Destroyer Carly"

VLM 13y ago

I think you're still missing my point. A management drone, or at least a more or less non-techie, prognosticating about cultural issues in tech, is almost meaningless other than maybe simple P.R. "we care about diversity" and such. Unless you have techies in the executive suite, the answer to techie problems is not going to come from the executive suite, or at least not any more likely than any other random unqualified group. Its not enough for one's subordinates 8 times removed be techies, or to have a PR campaign aimed at techies. There's an impedance mismatch. It would be like sending me as a missionary to encourage young black men to enter the religious seminary, and then being surprised at my remarkable ineffectiveness. Why, VLM has a lot of karma on HN, how could he not have been effective?

ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
I don't disagree and I think the only fair balance is to have stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table for balance to be achieved. I think without engineers or at the very least representatives that can be the true voice of the engineers any company is doomed to produce waste and a disconnect between what is, what can be, and what isn't. My point is management drones love to talk, and techies by a large majority are much more comfortable staying out of the executive suite and staying in the labs. Until a balance occurs, the mismatch will always be present. I think this is more of a cultural divide issue than a gender one, however.
- VLM 13y ago
  "stronger technology-oriented personalities at the table" Women Techies dream team version 0.001: Limor Fried, Jeri Ellsworth, Radia Perlman (noobs probably don't know who she is... hint... Spanning Tree Protocol and a epic 90s book titled "Interconnections"). "the table" needs techies like those three women, not some famous bean counters. I would much rather have my daughter look up to those three (or about a bazillion others) than, say, "Job Destroyer Carly"