8 ms·

The second paragraph amounts to a sexist version of "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Actually by pointing out the degree to which women run things at YC

• parfe 13y ago
  As written, the first paragraph lays out the situation of you being personally accused of sexism and the second paragraph starts with defending yourself against those accusations. I do not think you set the proper context to use the fact YC has a woman cofounder to defend yourself against accusations of sexism.
  • Tycho 13y ago
    The 'Some of my best friends are black...' cliche is only actually a problem if it is used to justify a racist statement. Otherwise it's a perfectly valid indicator of having non-racist character.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• zorpner 13y ago
  > And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. That... is not an argument? There's ample evidence to show that members of underrepresented groups within individual companies/industries experience unconscious biases in hiring/ranking/etc, even towards groups of which they're a member.
  • saraid216 13y ago
    Arguments are for little people. When you're at the upper end of the power structure, you give statements, because they're fact. Because you said so.
    • jedmeyers 13y ago
      Care to provide some arguments to support your statement?
  • lancewiggs 13y ago
    In this case are clearly not under represented if you reflect that PG also says they wield genuine power at YC.
    • pyrocat 13y ago
      Uh, pg straight up states that they are under represented. "While 3 out of 12 is not 50-50,"
      • jedmeyers 13y ago
        It only works if you consider quantity to be the only measure of representation.
      • msandford 13y ago
        And men are under-represented in nursing (at 6%). Human beings bias themselves in addition to the biases that society puts on them. http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing http://www.discovernursing.com/men-in-nursing As long as the ratio isn't much worse than 3:1 (men or women are at least 25% of the workforce) either way I'd argue that it's a pretty balanced work environment all things considered. Shooting for 50/50 equality would potentially make more inequality problems than it solves, just for a different subset of the population. In other words in nursing if you paid men 2x what women make you'd sort that shit out it quite a hurry and get a bunch of dudes helping take care of people. I'm not sure you could find anyone who would agree that it's an equitable or desirable way to achieve the "right" outcome, though.
• pyrocat 13y ago
  I'd say it's more like "I'm not racist! I adopted a black kid." The second paragraph was mostly fine but it did come off a little... unhumble. And humility is usually the tone you want when talking about how your company is doing good for X cause, but it could be doing more.
  • noblethrasher 13y ago
    It would be more like saying "I'm not racist because my spouse is black".
    • cgore 13y ago
      I'm not sexist because my wife is a woman?
      • Crito 13y ago
        That does not work due to fundamental differences in how racism and sexism typically manifest. Up until about the 70s or so, racists campaigned heavily against interracial marriage. Most racists likely still hold these views, though after 1967 they are no longer relevant so you don't hear about it very often. I do not recall any sexist groups ever campaigning against heterosexual marriage. Now, sexists have campaigned against laws that would equalize the rights that people in marriages have. Therefore "I am not sexist because I believe that my wife and I are equals and should be treated as equals by the law" would be an analogous statement.
    • Mikeb85 13y ago
      Odds are good if you're married to someone of a different race, your in-laws are of a different race, and you know your kids are going to be mixed, that you're probably not racist.
      • noblethrasher 13y ago
        Precisely.
  • deleted 13y ago
• larrys 13y ago
  While it's great that you took the time to write that essay, from what I have learned over the years about human nature (not from what I've read but from a large amount of real life experience) you can't use logic and intelligence to change the opinion of those who feel particularly strong about something that is emotional to them (think middle east conflicts). [1] Because emotion and rationality are two different things. [1] The most important thing about any relationship is that the other party will at least listen and consider what you have to say. People online (and spouses or girlfriends) who cut off without even considering are persona non grata to me. I wouldn't marry or date them and I wouldn't invest in them.
• EricaJoy 13y ago
  > And I do know something about groups working on getting girls and women interested in programming. In fact we've funded two that are partially focused on that: Hacker School and one of the nonprofits in the current batch. Can you share more about what Hacker School is doing to get girls and women interested in programming? "Hacker School is currently only for people who already know how to code," according to their FAQ, which seems counterintuitive to getting people (women or otherwise) interested in programming.
  • nicholasjbs 13y ago
    Hacker School founder here. You're correct that Hacker School is not for people who have never programmed before. We are not directly working on helping people write their first line of code. But we do help people, including many women, take the next step (e.g., we've had women come to HS as little as eight weeks after they wrote their first lines of code). Learning to code is a continuum (and something that takes place over many years), not a binary thing, and we help at just about every point except the first month or two. We've also put a lot of work into fixing the leaky-pipeline problem. For instance, a female Stanford CS grad told us that Hacker School is why she decided to take a job as a programmer (she was planning not to go into programming after her experience at Stanford). A few ways we've worked to support female programmers: - We've built an environment that we think is more human-friendly (and therefore also more female-friendly) by having explicit social rules and norms that work to fight impostor syndrome and other fears and insecurities that get in the way of people's education (see: https://www.hackerschool.com/manual#sec-environment https://www.hackerschool.com/manual#sec-environment). - We've awarded over $500,000 in grants for female programmers, which were generously funded by numerous companies including GitHub, Etsy, Dropbox, Palantir, Jane Street, Tapad, Tumblr, and others (note that Hacker School is 100% free for all students, so these grants are purely used for living expenses). - As a result, Hacker School has been 30-45% women for our past five batches. - We've helped numerous women (and men) move from being very beginner programmers working in other fields to being employed as programmers at excellent companies. - We've helped experienced female programmers become even more awesome and progress personally and professionally. Towards this last point, we're working on visibility and gender equality on the higher end. Here's a testimonial from a recent alumna who was already a pretty accomplished programmer when she came to Hacker School: "Hacker School gave me a lot more confidence in my programming abilities. I wouldn't have even considered proposing a conference talk before Hacker School, but now I've spoken at LambdaJam, Strange Loop, and Strata this year! I had previously believed that contributing to open source was just too hard for me to do (big unfamiliar code base with no help!), but now I don't hesitate to make pull requests when I find minor bugs in software I use. The most important thing to me about attending is that you become part of this network of supportive, technical people. They connect you to interesting opportunities, help you when you ask, and support you when you're stretching to do something new." I think increasing the number of female role models for women who don't yet code indirectly helps bring more women into the field. And additionally, many of our alumnae volunteer and mentor new female programmers outside of Hacker School, and many of them would not have been in a position to do so without the confidence, experience, and skills they acquired at Hacker School. (Sorry if my response is all over the place; I'm supposed to be in a meeting now so this is a little rushed.) Edit: Typos and formatting
• baddox 13y ago
  > And while it's possible for women to be sexist too, if you think Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn are sexist, I'd like to see you say it to their faces. While I don't agree (really, I know virtually nothing about those women and haven't met them), I think you would find that many of your critics from the original controversy do think they are sexist and would say it to their faces.
  • deleted 13y ago
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• eaurouge 13y ago
  I may be the public face of the company, but it's impossible to imagine YC doing something that Jessica, Kirsty, and Carolynn were against. So effectively they have veto powers. This sounds a bit like "my wife runs the house, I'm only allowed to do what she lets me do." I know that's not what you mean, but you come off sounding too defensive in most of the essay. Stop playing defense with words, let your actions (or YC results speak for themselves). More importantly, take a step back to truly understand the problem and perhaps study some solutions that have worked in other industries. Why do I think you should do some more studying? Because you still make comments like this: "You can tell what the pool of potential startup founders looks like. There’s a bunch of ways you can do it. You can go on Google and search for audience photos of PyCon." You made a similar comment two years ago [1]. Because of statements in your essay like the ones highlighted by parfe in the parent post and by me in this post. These statements don't mean anything, they carry no weight, and I'm surprised you would think they do. All your best friends could be Martians and you could be actively trying to destroy every Martian on Mars, except your friends of course. One does not preclude the other. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3256052
  • argonaut 13y ago
    My guess is that any full-time partner at YC has veto power.
• stephp 13y ago
  I've been considering what interested my 11-year-old {female} self about programming. The question keeps popping up, and the only answers I've seen are so vague that I feel something of a moral obligation to offer my own specific insight. To put my experience in context, I didn't know a single soul interested in programming IRL. So the only way I could have come to it is from a deeply genuine place. In my adult life, I've heard many men talk about their excitement for coding/programming at a young age, and it is almost always about the love of simply building things. Because building is fun. Unfortunately, my experience could not have been more different. Reflecting on my thought processes at that age, I remember it being entirely about 2 things: 1. Expression. Nothing could have sounded more dull than building aimlessly-- I wanted to DESIGN. (My definition of this being "carrying out a specific communicative purpose through look and function.") I wanted to make a website that demonstrated my tastes and values to my friends. (Which is likely why I went straight to websites and not desktop software.) 2. Social dynamics. Similar but different to the aforementioned point, I wanted to actually affect other people with what I was making. As a young girl, that typically meant impressing potential friends and boyfriends. I had a poetry site at one point. I made sites for a fake band my girl friends and I talked about forming. I had tons of blogs. I really should have segued into games at that time, as that would have fallen in the same category, but sadly I did not. That said-- while I know every human being is different, I was what you'd consider a "girly girl." So I believe the difference between myself and a young boy was quite pronounced in a stereotypically feminine direction-- which is where one should be investigating a subject like this, in my opinion.
  • kaitai 13y ago
    This is an interesting and original comment. Thank you. And the linked article was also a fresh read.
• funthree 13y ago
  Good job.