4 ms·

Google is reportedly over 30% women, too. I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, highe

by crassus 13y ago

Google is reportedly over 30% women, too. I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure. The startup world compares well to the original California gold rush - a risk for a small shot at a high reward - and that was mostly male, too. Also, keep in mind that it's a zero-sum game. If Google and IBM each hire 1,000 female engineers from top schools, that means that startups get less diverse.

x0x0 13y ago
google may be 30% women overall but I would be shocked if that where true of engineering; Rachel of rachel by the bay definitely didn't have that experience
jfarmer 13y ago
> I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure. This is explained equally well by inexperienced managers hiring people similar to themselves culturally, racially, and socioeconomically. Likewise, if I were a woman, I wouldn't want to work on a team with five dudes oblivious to their dude-dom.
- hacker789 13y ago
  Across all cultures (perhaps across all of history), women are more risk averse. In fact, feminist activists didn't push to get more women into tech until tech was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor. Only then did it become scandalous that young women were choosing different career paths (but interestingly, the fact that young women are earning more than young men and graduating from college in far greater rates than young men isn't scandalous).
  - jmagoon 13y ago
    Do you have any evidence to back up your broad-brushed claims? And who are these "feminist activist" strawmen(straw-women?) you have set up?
    - newnewnew 13y ago
      5 minutes of googling: "MEN, WOMEN AND RISK AVERSION:EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE" - http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf "Sex Differences in Everyday Risk-Taking Behavior in Humans" - http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep062942.pdf http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep062942.pdf Reality fits egalitarian beliefs quite poorly.
      - jfarmer 13y ago
        You've obviously made a serious study of this and that's why you have such justifiably strong opinions on the matter. Can you do 10 minutes of googling next time and share more? Or maybe 20?! Think of how informed you'd be after 20 minutes!
        mistermann 13y ago
        If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully define and prove every single piece of content in a comment. Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.
        jfarmer 13y ago
        > If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. There's plenty of room between "justify everything from first principles" and "perform an ad hoc 5-minute search of the web for research that confirms what I already believe." I'd also say, the closer one is to the former, the more justified one is in feeling certain about their beliefs. > It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully define and prove every single piece of content in a comment. That's good, because nobody here is advocating that! > Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here. Well, as they say, "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen." What's "common sense," here? That women are more risk-averse? I disagree, at the very least until one defines "risk" and "risk-averse" very precisely. My "common sense" tells me otherwise. Shucks. Ain't that the problem with "common sense?"
  - 001sky 13y ago
    women are more risk averse I think this is misleading. Men and women face different risks, and heterodox strategies are not indicative of very much. First, you need to be careful how you infer "risk taking" from "not taking the same bets", because the actual riks taken is a portfolio riks calculation which is blind. Second, you don't have any data to infer anyrthing about the quality of the risk taking they are in fact taking; that is in terms of actual/realize and even provability weighted expected returns. To give one crass example, a women could take a strategy of legal ownership of "high risk realized assets" through marriage. This is a "high-risk strategy", but it is also empirically true that many rich men are married.[1] Of course, the odds of success in this strategy are also not evenly distributed amongst women as a group, either. Another person could look at that and say that marriage to a rich person is a "risk avoidance" strategy...and again, this may or may not be true. Because wealth and genetic fitness need not correlate, and so your frame of reference on the purpose of strategy quickly turns into quite a bit more complex calculation. [1] Marriage as a legal contract has a financial value; a derivative, with contingent claims on of the underlying (asset) value of couple's cumulative/aggregate incomes.
    - jfarmer 13y ago
      You and your complexifyin' aren't welcome around here, friend! All that nuance just makes our arguments much harder to make. You'd best take it elsewhere.
      - alexmat 13y ago
        I agree, "he talks like a fag and all his shit is retarded."
  - rodgerd 13y ago
    > women are more risk averse. When was the last time you did something as risky as get pregnant?
- tonecluster 13y ago
  Who in their right mind would want to work on a team of highly-intelligent, socially-challenged, culturally-homogeneous young men whose experience to date is primarily steeped in the casual misogyny, homophobia, and racism of MMORPG chat-channels; dorm-room bike-shedding; and adolescent dude-bro jokes?
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    The irony of being sexist in this HN thread is breaking my mind man.
  - lmm 13y ago
    If they're good coders, sure. I can ignore work-unrelated stupidity, but if I have to work with someone incompetent at their job that becomes very unpleasant very quickly.
    - tonecluster 13y ago
      It becomes unpleasant very quickly regardless of the quality of the skills of the programmers.
    - webmaven 13y ago
      I'll just note that coding is actually more a collaborative activity than a solitary one, so the 'socially challenged' are not very likely to be 'good coders'.
judk 13y ago
30% is probably including sales org, it is high for engineering. Anyway, consider the difference between 2-3 women of 12 people in an startup, vs 200 of 1000 in a big company, where women may cluster on some teams, or have "dotted line" relationships outside their official hierarchy.

by crassus 13y ago

x0x0 13y ago

google may be 30% women overall but I would be shocked if that where true of engineering; Rachel of rachel by the bay definitely didn't have that experience

jfarmer 13y ago

> I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure. This is explained equally well by inexperienced managers hiring people similar to themselves culturally, racially, and socioeconomically. Likewise, if I were a woman, I wouldn't want to work on a team with five dudes oblivious to their dude-dom.

hacker789 13y ago
Across all cultures (perhaps across all of history), women are more risk averse. In fact, feminist activists didn't push to get more women into tech until tech was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor. Only then did it become scandalous that young women were choosing different career paths (but interestingly, the fact that young women are earning more than young men and graduating from college in far greater rates than young men isn't scandalous).
- jmagoon 13y ago
  Do you have any evidence to back up your broad-brushed claims? And who are these "feminist activist" strawmen(straw-women?) you have set up?
  - newnewnew 13y ago
    5 minutes of googling: "MEN, WOMEN AND RISK AVERSION:EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE" - http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf "Sex Differences in Everyday Risk-Taking Behavior in Humans" - http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep062942.pdf http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep062942.pdf Reality fits egalitarian beliefs quite poorly.
    - jfarmer 13y ago
      You've obviously made a serious study of this and that's why you have such justifiably strong opinions on the matter. Can you do 10 minutes of googling next time and share more? Or maybe 20?! Think of how informed you'd be after 20 minutes!
      - mistermann 13y ago
        If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully define and prove every single piece of content in a comment. Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.
        jfarmer 13y ago
        > If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. There's plenty of room between "justify everything from first principles" and "perform an ad hoc 5-minute search of the web for research that confirms what I already believe." I'd also say, the closer one is to the former, the more justified one is in feeling certain about their beliefs. > It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully define and prove every single piece of content in a comment. That's good, because nobody here is advocating that! > Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here. Well, as they say, "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen." What's "common sense," here? That women are more risk-averse? I disagree, at the very least until one defines "risk" and "risk-averse" very precisely. My "common sense" tells me otherwise. Shucks. Ain't that the problem with "common sense?"
- 001sky 13y ago
  women are more risk averse I think this is misleading. Men and women face different risks, and heterodox strategies are not indicative of very much. First, you need to be careful how you infer "risk taking" from "not taking the same bets", because the actual riks taken is a portfolio riks calculation which is blind. Second, you don't have any data to infer anyrthing about the quality of the risk taking they are in fact taking; that is in terms of actual/realize and even provability weighted expected returns. To give one crass example, a women could take a strategy of legal ownership of "high risk realized assets" through marriage. This is a "high-risk strategy", but it is also empirically true that many rich men are married.[1] Of course, the odds of success in this strategy are also not evenly distributed amongst women as a group, either. Another person could look at that and say that marriage to a rich person is a "risk avoidance" strategy...and again, this may or may not be true. Because wealth and genetic fitness need not correlate, and so your frame of reference on the purpose of strategy quickly turns into quite a bit more complex calculation. [1] Marriage as a legal contract has a financial value; a derivative, with contingent claims on of the underlying (asset) value of couple's cumulative/aggregate incomes.
  - jfarmer 13y ago
    You and your complexifyin' aren't welcome around here, friend! All that nuance just makes our arguments much harder to make. You'd best take it elsewhere.
    - alexmat 13y ago
      I agree, "he talks like a fag and all his shit is retarded."
- rodgerd 13y ago
  > women are more risk averse. When was the last time you did something as risky as get pregnant?
tonecluster 13y ago
Who in their right mind would want to work on a team of highly-intelligent, socially-challenged, culturally-homogeneous young men whose experience to date is primarily steeped in the casual misogyny, homophobia, and racism of MMORPG chat-channels; dorm-room bike-shedding; and adolescent dude-bro jokes?
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  The irony of being sexist in this HN thread is breaking my mind man.
- lmm 13y ago
  If they're good coders, sure. I can ignore work-unrelated stupidity, but if I have to work with someone incompetent at their job that becomes very unpleasant very quickly.
  - tonecluster 13y ago
    It becomes unpleasant very quickly regardless of the quality of the skills of the programmers.
  - webmaven 13y ago
    I'll just note that coding is actually more a collaborative activity than a solitary one, so the 'socially challenged' are not very likely to be 'good coders'.

judk 13y ago

30% is probably including sales org, it is high for engineering. Anyway, consider the difference between 2-3 women of 12 people in an startup, vs 200 of 1000 in a big company, where women may cluster on some teams, or have "dotted line" relationships outside their official hierarchy.