5 ms·

Anyone who accuses PG/YC of being xenophobic is laughable. It's especially laughable coming from the press -- they've been at YC offices many times, and the she

Anyone who accuses PG/YC of being xenophobic is laughable. It's especially laughable coming from the press -- they've been at YC offices many times, and the sheer number of founders with accents is staggering. YC even got involved in the political process to make getting founder visas easier! I have a really strong Russian accent that (hopefully) doesn't border too much on being not understandable, and I've never felt discriminated against at YC or elsewhere in SV, not for a millisecond. This is corroborated by dozens upon dozens of founders whose accents are even stronger than mine. If you want to do business in a country and raise millions of dollars from people, you have to be understandable. If someone made this claim in France, or Germany, or Japan, nobody would even blink. The very fact that PG is getting criticized for it is almost indicative of how meritocratic Silicon Valley (and YC in particular) is.

toyg 13y ago
... or just indicative of a very delicate and typically American rule: thou shall not speak ill of ethnic communities you don't belong to. It's a very civilized norm (which I also follow), and I'm sure it helps keeping together the most multi-ethnic cities in the world, but occasionally it gets in the way of honest discourse.
- swamp40 13y ago
  You've been hoisted with your own petard.
- ableal 13y ago
  That politeness extends to omitting the very real fact that listening to a foreign accent is somewhat tiring - it's like running error-correction that consumes extra processing power ;-) (Not a native English speaker, but I noticed that with accents from other non-native speakers ...)
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    No kidding. I had a couple professors in college with accents truly as thick as molasses. I would leave every lecture mentally drained, and during the lecture my brain would run anywhere from 1-3 sentences behind realtime as it struggled to comprehend what had been said. It took me weeks to get used to "wahriable" (variable). (Not complaining, just agreeing)
    - markdown 13y ago
      > "wahriable" Indian (dot, not feather), right?
  - gbog 13y ago
    Yes, for me listening to some west coast US accent is extremely tiring and even plain painful. I started playing some Google videos about topics I'm interested in and stopped after two sentences. Just to add some relativism to this highly relative topic. I'm French by the way, and enjoy British, German, Indian, black American, Chinese accents, for example.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  I wouldn't say that was typically American by any means. I would say that hyper political correctness is a reaction by a subset of the population to the overt ethnic discrimination of much American dialogue, policy, and action. A quarter of the country belongs to an evangelical church. Those people discriminate against anyone that isn't Christian, because that's what being evangelical means. A third of black males born today will go to prison. There is a war on anybody that is vaguely middle eastern, even at home. The Jews controlling Hollywood and Wall Street are reviled. It goes on and on and on.
  - MrMan 13y ago
    What's all that about Hollywood and Wall Street?
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+hollywood https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+hollywood https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+wall+street https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+wall+street
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  I read that extra politeness as fake, and indicative of phobic behaviour. If you treat black people as equals, then you don't see anything bad about describing someone as black. Instead, for politeness you have to say "individual of color". Newspeak that tells a lot about the society as a whole.
  - graeme 13y ago
    I don't love the term, but people of color is broader than black. It's a replacement for "visible minority".
jacoblyles 13y ago
Anyone who accuses anyone of being X-phobic is laughable. Rational people ought to be able to debate - sparring through facts, hypotheses, and argument - without walking on eggshells. Dispassionate debate is a far better mechanism to find truth than name-calling. If you're right, then why do you have to resort to attacking the motivations of the other speaker to win? Correct opinions ought to be able to walk on their own without relying on such crutches.
- coffeemug 13y ago
  If you're right, then why do you have to resort to attacking the motivations of the other speaker to win? Because in this case I happen to actually know the motivations of both parties. PG's motivation is to help founders. The press's motivation is to drive traffic.
  - jacoblyles 13y ago
    I'm criticizing the people claiming that PG is xenophobic. I'm on your side on this one. I hate argument by insult - it shrinks the range of acceptable thought, thereby enstupidating the public mind. It's straight out of the 1984 playbook. Language becomes vaguer and mushier, less communicative. We can no longer tell founders that "thick foreign accents will hurt your startup", instead we must say "have good communication skills", which is a far less useful statement. It is like the substitution of "ungood" for "bad" and "plusgood" for anything more extreme than "good". Why should we talk to each other anymore, when a tiny handbook can contain all the thoughts we are allowed to express?
    - LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
      I think you overreact. He made a great point.
    - coffeemug 13y ago
      Ah, I see.
- ktom 13y ago
ktom 13y ago
you've got a perfectly understandable accent, i still remember one of your rehearsal presentations for demo day, it was something along the lines of "this graph is bad" "this graph is good" i even thought you were playing up your accent for added comedic value. (for context, he was showing a performance graph of rethinkDB vs. mySQL, and the graphs were practically inverted. rethinkDB was performing so much better it was comical how much throughput it was doing)
- coffeemug 13y ago
  i even thought you were playing up your accent for added comedic value. Hehe, I wasn't playing it up since I don't have to! :)
coolsunglasses 13y ago
Your accent is moderately strong, but as long as the room isn't noisy, I haven't had any trouble understanding you. If anything, you just need to project your voice better and speak louder. :)

toyg 13y ago

... or just indicative of a very delicate and typically American rule: thou shall not speak ill of ethnic communities you don't belong to. It's a very civilized norm (which I also follow), and I'm sure it helps keeping together the most multi-ethnic cities in the world, but occasionally it gets in the way of honest discourse.

swamp40 13y ago
You've been hoisted with your own petard.
ableal 13y ago
That politeness extends to omitting the very real fact that listening to a foreign accent is somewhat tiring - it's like running error-correction that consumes extra processing power ;-) (Not a native English speaker, but I noticed that with accents from other non-native speakers ...)
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  No kidding. I had a couple professors in college with accents truly as thick as molasses. I would leave every lecture mentally drained, and during the lecture my brain would run anywhere from 1-3 sentences behind realtime as it struggled to comprehend what had been said. It took me weeks to get used to "wahriable" (variable). (Not complaining, just agreeing)
  - markdown 13y ago
    > "wahriable" Indian (dot, not feather), right?
- gbog 13y ago
  Yes, for me listening to some west coast US accent is extremely tiring and even plain painful. I started playing some Google videos about topics I'm interested in and stopped after two sentences. Just to add some relativism to this highly relative topic. I'm French by the way, and enjoy British, German, Indian, black American, Chinese accents, for example.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
I wouldn't say that was typically American by any means. I would say that hyper political correctness is a reaction by a subset of the population to the overt ethnic discrimination of much American dialogue, policy, and action. A quarter of the country belongs to an evangelical church. Those people discriminate against anyone that isn't Christian, because that's what being evangelical means. A third of black males born today will go to prison. There is a war on anybody that is vaguely middle eastern, even at home. The Jews controlling Hollywood and Wall Street are reviled. It goes on and on and on.
- MrMan 13y ago
  What's all that about Hollywood and Wall Street?
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+hollywood https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+hollywood https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+wall+street https://www.google.com/search?q=jews+wall+street
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
sergiosgc 13y ago
I read that extra politeness as fake, and indicative of phobic behaviour. If you treat black people as equals, then you don't see anything bad about describing someone as black. Instead, for politeness you have to say "individual of color". Newspeak that tells a lot about the society as a whole.
- graeme 13y ago
  I don't love the term, but people of color is broader than black. It's a replacement for "visible minority".

jacoblyles 13y ago

Anyone who accuses anyone of being X-phobic is laughable. Rational people ought to be able to debate - sparring through facts, hypotheses, and argument - without walking on eggshells. Dispassionate debate is a far better mechanism to find truth than name-calling. If you're right, then why do you have to resort to attacking the motivations of the other speaker to win? Correct opinions ought to be able to walk on their own without relying on such crutches.

coffeemug 13y ago
If you're right, then why do you have to resort to attacking the motivations of the other speaker to win? Because in this case I happen to actually know the motivations of both parties. PG's motivation is to help founders. The press's motivation is to drive traffic.
- jacoblyles 13y ago
  I'm criticizing the people claiming that PG is xenophobic. I'm on your side on this one. I hate argument by insult - it shrinks the range of acceptable thought, thereby enstupidating the public mind. It's straight out of the 1984 playbook. Language becomes vaguer and mushier, less communicative. We can no longer tell founders that "thick foreign accents will hurt your startup", instead we must say "have good communication skills", which is a far less useful statement. It is like the substitution of "ungood" for "bad" and "plusgood" for anything more extreme than "good". Why should we talk to each other anymore, when a tiny handbook can contain all the thoughts we are allowed to express?
  - LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
    I think you overreact. He made a great point.
  - coffeemug 13y ago
    Ah, I see.
ktom 13y ago

ktom 13y ago

you've got a perfectly understandable accent, i still remember one of your rehearsal presentations for demo day, it was something along the lines of "this graph is bad" "this graph is good" i even thought you were playing up your accent for added comedic value. (for context, he was showing a performance graph of rethinkDB vs. mySQL, and the graphs were practically inverted. rethinkDB was performing so much better it was comical how much throughput it was doing)

coffeemug 13y ago
i even thought you were playing up your accent for added comedic value. Hehe, I wasn't playing it up since I don't have to! :)

coolsunglasses 13y ago

Your accent is moderately strong, but as long as the room isn't noisy, I haven't had any trouble understanding you. If anything, you just need to project your voice better and speak louder. :)