10 ms·

What to say when someone is being an asshole

90 points by karenxcheng 13y ago

mrkurt 13y ago
This is a good thing to do when you think someone is being an asshole. It gives them a chance to recognize if they are, and you a chance to recognize if they're not.
- re_todd 13y ago
  Great point. In the past, I've often been too willing to take offense and taken things the wrong way. Then when I get home, I realize they didn't mean it the way I initially thought they did, and it was too late to take back my negative response.
- pelario 13y ago
  The point is to calmly verify if the person was aware that he is behaving as an asshole. If he was not, not only the communication improves; you also make the guy a favor.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - makomk 13y ago
    The only downside is that, if he was doing it deliberately, it's going to make him even more unbearable to deal with.
cheery 13y ago
Does it work if everyone is being an asshole?
chomp 13y ago
But having a child is a -huge- commitment- I don't think I'd be able to have one, and run a business at the same time. Sleepless nights devoted to the baby, medical concerns, etc. all of those are large factors that weigh on the effectiveness of a leader. I do agree that most of this stuff is ingrained behavior that most people know is wrong, asking for a clarification usually can snap them out of it.
- eli 13y ago
  I can't believe this needs saying, but discriminating against mothers is wrong (and likely illegal!) no matter how hard you might imagine it would be to be one.
  - argumentum 13y ago
    It's certainly not illegal to decline an investment opportunity because a founder is pregnant or just had a child. No one can force you to invest in something if you don't want to. It may be stupid to turn down a great founder for this reason, it may be ass-holish, but it's not illegal.
    - eli 13y ago
      You seem very certain about that. IANAL, but I would not be so sure. It's true that no one can force a bank to offer a loan to a female-owned business but I don't think they are allowed to consider the founder's gender anywhere in the process.
      - jsmeaton 13y ago
        What about a bank offering a home loan? The bank needs to verify your capacity to pay, and if a single income isn't going to cover the loan then a pregnancy probably does come into it. I'm just speculating though, and rules/laws in your area may vary.
        eli 13y ago
        That's an easy one: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2013/HUDNo.13-155 http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_release...
        jsmeaton 13y ago
        So it is. I couldn't find a specific law from Australia, but many lending institutions offer a 6 month deferral of payments for parental leave. I would also assume that if the second parent plans to return to work, then the second income would be included to calculate serviceability.
brador 13y ago
Question is, does pregnancy affect viability of an investment? In my opinion, yes. Sleepless nights, days off taking the child to medical appointments. This isn't magic and you can't wish these things away. It's hard to run a startup, it's even harder when you're not sleeping well. Just my opinion. Edit - I covered post-pregnancy here, which also applies to fathers, my bad. The women only part would be the hormones and lack of sleep from around t-6 months.
- eli 13y ago
  What do you mean?
  - maxharris 13y ago
    You shouldn't use this phrase as a way to shut down arguments you don't agree with, without any attempt at explaining yourself further. He gave several reasons in his explanation, and you're not challenging any specific aspect of his response. Try again with a detailed query or argument, not an ad hominem.
    - fru2013 13y ago
      What do you mean?
    - eli 13y ago
      Although admittedly tongue-in-cheek, it was a genuine invitation for the author to expand on their point (and hopefully in the process realize how bad it sounds), in the spirit of the original article.
      - tempestn 13y ago
        I'm both a father and a startup founder, and I fully agree with his comment and don't think it sounds bad at all. Being a parent takes a good chunk of your time and energy, at least if you want to do a good job of it. That leaves less time and energy for other things, making it more difficult to do things that require a ton of both, like start a company. As gizmo686 says above, these challenges can of course be overcome, and obviously I feel it was worth doing so. But the statements are still true, and I don't see how acknowledging them makes one a bad person. This is a tricky area of ethics though. Ideally everyone would have equal opportunity to do anything they want to do, including start a company and/or have a family. It is generally culturally accepted that it would be unfair for one's marital or parental status to have an effect on their career prospects. And I agree that that's a noble ideal. But imagine you're an investor with two hypothetical identical investments to choose from. They are identical in every way except that you know one of the founders is single and plans to remain so at least while getting the company off the ground, and the other is a parent with six children (to use an extreme example). It seems reasonable to expect that the former would be more likely to succeed, all else being equal. As much as you would like both to have equal opportunities, is it fair to force you to ignore this piece of evidence when making your choice? (What if you're investing others' money and have a fiduciary responsibility?) There are two conflicting ideals here as I see it, and no perfect way to reconcile them fairly. At least with my hypothetical above, you could say that the "family founder" chose to make family a priority, so in some way it is fair that they sacrifice some potential to receive investment in their startup. Even if we accept that though, it gets trickier if you instead consider male and female founders, both planning to have families. For simple biological reasons, even aside from cultural ones, the female time will probably have less time to focus on the startup, to some extent at least, but obviously she didn't choose to be female. So again you have this conflict, where we would certainly like to treat everyone equally, especially in areas they have no control over, but at the same time it is unfair to force people to make less optimal investments all else being equal. You could draw parallels to favoring more attractive applicants to hospitality jobs, or even more intelligent applicants to programming jobs say. You don't control your intelligence, so it's not really fair that it affects your prospects. On the other hand, it's certainly not fair to force an employer to hire a less intelligent applicant. It seems like the general rule in cases like this is that if the difference materially affects a one's ability to do the job, generally it is ok to 'discriminate' based on it. So it's ok to discriminate based on weight or skin colour for an actor, but obviously not for a programmer. The contentious areas seem to be ones where the (potential) impact on performance is less direct. The parenthood debate would seem to fall under that category. A more obvious one would be something like physical appearance of waiters and waitresses. It's not as clear cut as an actor, where it's obvious that matching the part matters, but at the same time it's fairly obvious that having attractive waitstaff could be beneficial for a restaurant. It seems to me that the average societal reaction in these grey areas is a sort of subconscious group decision that the benefits to one side outweigh the detriments to the other. So if we say it's wrong to discriminate based on parental status, what we're really saying is that we as a society value parenthood sufficiently that it takes precedence to some extent over other rights. These kinds of tradeoffs are made all the time; for example, we value free speech sufficiently that in many cases we allow it to override people's right not to be subjected to material they find objectionable. We value a basic standard of living such that we 'forcibly' deprive wealthier members of society of their property (via taxes) in order to redistribute a portion of it to the less fortunate. (In fact, we force people to contribute to many things that they may not personally support via taxes.) Anyway, this ended up being far more than I had planned to write, but I guess my basic point is that few things are black and white. Usually some sort of compromise is necessary, and the goal is to find the one that best matches our societal values. Often our instinctive reactions to these grey areas are representative of a personal or societal value that we haven't fully consciously expressed.
taspeotis 13y ago
What to say when someone is being sexist^ If someone's being a dick to piss you off saying these magic words might inflame the situation. Best to keep them to examples of sexism.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jgrahamc 13y ago
I've seen a co-founder get pregnant and have a baby while running a successful start-up. I think people take an unnecessarily negative view of pregnancy and child rearing. Sure you can enumerate distractions (such as sleepless nights). But how about enumerating positives: for example, what if having a baby made a founder, man or woman, happier and more fulfilled? That would have a positive effect on the start-up.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  The question you are asking is "what will make Founder A more productive". You are hypothesizing that a baby will (I find this unlikely, but it's irrelevant). That's not the question the investor was asking. He was asking whether to invest in Founder A or Founder B. Suppose A gets their happiness from a baby - this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours/week. Founder B gets their happiness from marketing - this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours, plus they spend 20 extra hours on marketing. All else held equal, B is a better investment than A, even if A+baby is a better investment than A sans baby.
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    Actually, there seems to be no correlation between working hard and becoming the next Airbnb. Working hard is necessary the same way intelligence is necessary: past a certain threshold, other things matter more. And if a metric has no correlation with mega-success, then investing based on that metric is a mistake. (If working harder was correlated with mega success, then the winners would be easy to pick out: invest in anyone whose team spends all their time on the startup. But many startups do that yet still fail, so it must be true that those extra 20 hours per week shouldn't factor into any any investor's decision making process, counterintuitively.)
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      Your first and second sentences contradict each other - if hard work is necessary up to a certain threshold, then hard work is correlated with success. If working harder was correlated with mega success, then the winners would be easy to pick out The fact that a predictor is correlated with outcomes does not mean it is the sole predictor.
bifrost 13y ago
As someone who's recently had a child, and who's been through several startups; I think this is excellent. I've made the offhand comparason of having a child to working for a variety of 1990's startups, I'm an ops guy and craptastic perl code made my sleep schedule less than ideal. I optimized and my life got easier. The training from that made dealing with the wakeups a lot easier, and my wife and I worked out a schedule. Working for a startup, like having a baby, requires good partners. If you don't have a good partner(s), life becomes significantly more complicated and I am not sure I'd recommend it. Ask me about my ops strategy, stuff I design generally can do 99.999 uptime.
cgriswald 13y ago
This is a very useful and adult tool for dealing with these types of situations, but the child in me will always want a witty retort, usually in the form of a quote from The Princess Bride.
wavefunction 13y ago
Don't finance people (at least Wall Street) pride themselves on being big swinging dicks? I'd give them a chance in private to fix things, then I'd put them on public blast. By that I mean go to their partners or whatever. I don't know, I'm just a simple country programmer, your big city ways frighten and confuse me!
millstone 13y ago
Was the first investor an asshole for thinking what he did, or for voicing that thought? If it was for voicing the thought, is there a more delicate way he should have phrased it? Or should he have just kept his mouth shut, denying her useful (if insensitive) feedback?
- eli 13y ago
  There is no delicate or acceptable way of providing blatantly sexist feedback.
peteforde 13y ago
I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard. Warren Buffett figured out that hiring women was all-win long before most. Kudos to him.
- argumentum 13y ago
  Why do you say no one would question that logic? If a founder ended his pitch claiming that his startup would succeed because he prayed all the time, I'm pretty sure questions would be in order (along with a polite decline).
  - peteforde 13y ago
    Fair point; I don't think we disagree. Essentially I was trying to make the point that as a non-religious individual, it's always wild to me how people can find the time to ponder whether a woman would have the audacity to start a family while building a company, but nobody questions a founder that worships a paranormal creator entity. Lots of people do both, yet somehow it's becoming a mother that is considered crazy. And, I was trying to say it without being an asshole myself.
    - chris_wot 13y ago
      Yeah, you are assuming that the question was asked by a religious person. There are atheists who would ask the same question. As an example, Dawkins has been called out as a sexist numerous times - often by other atheists like Rebecca Watson and Jen McReight [1][2]. 1. http://gawker.com/5818993/richard-dawkins-torn-limb-from-limbby-atheists http://gawker.com/5818993/richard-dawkins-torn-limb-from-lim... 2. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/not-your-average-read/2011/jul/16/sexism-atheism-Dawkins-Watson-feminists-Skepchick/ http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/not-your...
      - peteforde 13y ago
abalone 13y ago
I'm a founder with a young child. It's awesome. You can't do it alone obviously but with a partner and a support system it's totally doable. Even the sleepless night thing is mostly contained to the first couple months. "What do you mean" is a nice easy response. I like it. It's not going to stop all assholes but it will filter out the ones are are ashamed of themselves, which is probably a lot. What it won't stop is the ones with pernicious superficial rationalizations for excluding women.. the "short people shouldn't be firefighters" crowd.
nipponese 13y ago
She knows what they mean...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gcb0 13y ago
the only difference is that male founders can try to hide their "pregnancy". an investor would shun both a male if he knew a baby was on the way. of course not saying said investor is right, but that is probably what happen. not really a sexist thing though.
DanBC 13y ago
I'm always surprised in threads like these that people express ideas that leave them open to legal action in the future. I hope those people have rigorous documentation for hiring people and that reasons for rejection are kept on record.
angelortega 13y ago
tl;dr Stop being an asshole.
lazyjones 13y ago
Perfect example of a dumb investor who thinks he has a better idea of how to run the company than the founders themselves. I'm quite certain that bad influences of such investors have broken more startups' backs than pregnancies. Founders, please choose your investors well.
Mz 13y ago
I am not a fan of the framing here. This is not about someone "being an asshole." This is about someone opening mouth and inserting foot. Okay, so when men unthinkingly default to stupid assumptions and phrasing, it can seriously hurt women. The fact that women get hurt doesn't mean the harm was intentional, malicious, etc. What the investor said was probably just the uncomfortable truth coming out. IIRC, Paul Graham has made remarks not terribly unlike that. A lot of investors are leery of investing a woman of child-bearing age. Is that "unfair" to women? Perhaps. But I don't think saying it after the fact is "being an asshole." He did invest in her company. Now she needs to preform, baby or no baby. This piece is not about "people being assholes." It is about men opening mouth and inserting foot, probably fairly innocently in both cases cited. A lot of remarks of that ilk are not intended as hostile. I think the phrase "what do you mean?" is probably a good one to use in such situations but I really think this article with this ugly title rooted in ugly assumptions does women more harm than good.
rstevenson542 13y ago
I’m tired of this of all of this PC bullshit. I wouldn’t invest in a company run by a pregnant woman either. It takes unbridled commitment to a vision to become a successful entrepreneur. By definition, a pregnant woman has other (more important) obligations. To add the mental, physical, and emotional stressors of birthing a child on top of the already enormous burden of entrepreneurship is a lot to handle. VC’s bet enormous sums of money on entrepreneurs. And for the circumstances of the entire situation to drastically change, I think he’s rightfully disappointed.

90 points by karenxcheng 13y ago

This is a good thing to do when you think someone is being an asshole. It gives them a chance to recognize if they are, and you a chance to recognize if they're not.

re_todd 13y ago
Great point. In the past, I've often been too willing to take offense and taken things the wrong way. Then when I get home, I realize they didn't mean it the way I initially thought they did, and it was too late to take back my negative response.
pelario 13y ago
The point is to calmly verify if the person was aware that he is behaving as an asshole. If he was not, not only the communication improves; you also make the guy a favor.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- makomk 13y ago
  The only downside is that, if he was doing it deliberately, it's going to make him even more unbearable to deal with.

cheery 13y ago

Does it work if everyone is being an asshole?

chomp 13y ago

But having a child is a -huge- commitment- I don't think I'd be able to have one, and run a business at the same time. Sleepless nights devoted to the baby, medical concerns, etc. all of those are large factors that weigh on the effectiveness of a leader. I do agree that most of this stuff is ingrained behavior that most people know is wrong, asking for a clarification usually can snap them out of it.

eli 13y ago
I can't believe this needs saying, but discriminating against mothers is wrong (and likely illegal!) no matter how hard you might imagine it would be to be one.
- argumentum 13y ago
  It's certainly not illegal to decline an investment opportunity because a founder is pregnant or just had a child. No one can force you to invest in something if you don't want to. It may be stupid to turn down a great founder for this reason, it may be ass-holish, but it's not illegal.
  - eli 13y ago
    You seem very certain about that. IANAL, but I would not be so sure. It's true that no one can force a bank to offer a loan to a female-owned business but I don't think they are allowed to consider the founder's gender anywhere in the process.
    - jsmeaton 13y ago
      What about a bank offering a home loan? The bank needs to verify your capacity to pay, and if a single income isn't going to cover the loan then a pregnancy probably does come into it. I'm just speculating though, and rules/laws in your area may vary.
      - eli 13y ago
        That's an easy one: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2013/HUDNo.13-155 http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_release...
        jsmeaton 13y ago
        So it is. I couldn't find a specific law from Australia, but many lending institutions offer a 6 month deferral of payments for parental leave. I would also assume that if the second parent plans to return to work, then the second income would be included to calculate serviceability.

brador 13y ago

Question is, does pregnancy affect viability of an investment? In my opinion, yes. Sleepless nights, days off taking the child to medical appointments. This isn't magic and you can't wish these things away. It's hard to run a startup, it's even harder when you're not sleeping well. Just my opinion. Edit - I covered post-pregnancy here, which also applies to fathers, my bad. The women only part would be the hormones and lack of sleep from around t-6 months.

eli 13y ago
What do you mean?
- maxharris 13y ago
  You shouldn't use this phrase as a way to shut down arguments you don't agree with, without any attempt at explaining yourself further. He gave several reasons in his explanation, and you're not challenging any specific aspect of his response. Try again with a detailed query or argument, not an ad hominem.
  - fru2013 13y ago
    What do you mean?
  - eli 13y ago
    Although admittedly tongue-in-cheek, it was a genuine invitation for the author to expand on their point (and hopefully in the process realize how bad it sounds), in the spirit of the original article.
    - tempestn 13y ago
      I'm both a father and a startup founder, and I fully agree with his comment and don't think it sounds bad at all. Being a parent takes a good chunk of your time and energy, at least if you want to do a good job of it. That leaves less time and energy for other things, making it more difficult to do things that require a ton of both, like start a company. As gizmo686 says above, these challenges can of course be overcome, and obviously I feel it was worth doing so. But the statements are still true, and I don't see how acknowledging them makes one a bad person. This is a tricky area of ethics though. Ideally everyone would have equal opportunity to do anything they want to do, including start a company and/or have a family. It is generally culturally accepted that it would be unfair for one's marital or parental status to have an effect on their career prospects. And I agree that that's a noble ideal. But imagine you're an investor with two hypothetical identical investments to choose from. They are identical in every way except that you know one of the founders is single and plans to remain so at least while getting the company off the ground, and the other is a parent with six children (to use an extreme example). It seems reasonable to expect that the former would be more likely to succeed, all else being equal. As much as you would like both to have equal opportunities, is it fair to force you to ignore this piece of evidence when making your choice? (What if you're investing others' money and have a fiduciary responsibility?) There are two conflicting ideals here as I see it, and no perfect way to reconcile them fairly. At least with my hypothetical above, you could say that the "family founder" chose to make family a priority, so in some way it is fair that they sacrifice some potential to receive investment in their startup. Even if we accept that though, it gets trickier if you instead consider male and female founders, both planning to have families. For simple biological reasons, even aside from cultural ones, the female time will probably have less time to focus on the startup, to some extent at least, but obviously she didn't choose to be female. So again you have this conflict, where we would certainly like to treat everyone equally, especially in areas they have no control over, but at the same time it is unfair to force people to make less optimal investments all else being equal. You could draw parallels to favoring more attractive applicants to hospitality jobs, or even more intelligent applicants to programming jobs say. You don't control your intelligence, so it's not really fair that it affects your prospects. On the other hand, it's certainly not fair to force an employer to hire a less intelligent applicant. It seems like the general rule in cases like this is that if the difference materially affects a one's ability to do the job, generally it is ok to 'discriminate' based on it. So it's ok to discriminate based on weight or skin colour for an actor, but obviously not for a programmer. The contentious areas seem to be ones where the (potential) impact on performance is less direct. The parenthood debate would seem to fall under that category. A more obvious one would be something like physical appearance of waiters and waitresses. It's not as clear cut as an actor, where it's obvious that matching the part matters, but at the same time it's fairly obvious that having attractive waitstaff could be beneficial for a restaurant. It seems to me that the average societal reaction in these grey areas is a sort of subconscious group decision that the benefits to one side outweigh the detriments to the other. So if we say it's wrong to discriminate based on parental status, what we're really saying is that we as a society value parenthood sufficiently that it takes precedence to some extent over other rights. These kinds of tradeoffs are made all the time; for example, we value free speech sufficiently that in many cases we allow it to override people's right not to be subjected to material they find objectionable. We value a basic standard of living such that we 'forcibly' deprive wealthier members of society of their property (via taxes) in order to redistribute a portion of it to the less fortunate. (In fact, we force people to contribute to many things that they may not personally support via taxes.) Anyway, this ended up being far more than I had planned to write, but I guess my basic point is that few things are black and white. Usually some sort of compromise is necessary, and the goal is to find the one that best matches our societal values. Often our instinctive reactions to these grey areas are representative of a personal or societal value that we haven't fully consciously expressed.

taspeotis 13y ago

What to say when someone is being sexist^ If someone's being a dick to piss you off saying these magic words might inflame the situation. Best to keep them to examples of sexism.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jgrahamc 13y ago

I've seen a co-founder get pregnant and have a baby while running a successful start-up. I think people take an unnecessarily negative view of pregnancy and child rearing. Sure you can enumerate distractions (such as sleepless nights). But how about enumerating positives: for example, what if having a baby made a founder, man or woman, happier and more fulfilled? That would have a positive effect on the start-up.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
The question you are asking is "what will make Founder A more productive". You are hypothesizing that a baby will (I find this unlikely, but it's irrelevant). That's not the question the investor was asking. He was asking whether to invest in Founder A or Founder B. Suppose A gets their happiness from a baby - this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours/week. Founder B gets their happiness from marketing - this makes them happier and more fulfilled in their remaining 50-60 hours, plus they spend 20 extra hours on marketing. All else held equal, B is a better investment than A, even if A+baby is a better investment than A sans baby.
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  Actually, there seems to be no correlation between working hard and becoming the next Airbnb. Working hard is necessary the same way intelligence is necessary: past a certain threshold, other things matter more. And if a metric has no correlation with mega-success, then investing based on that metric is a mistake. (If working harder was correlated with mega success, then the winners would be easy to pick out: invest in anyone whose team spends all their time on the startup. But many startups do that yet still fail, so it must be true that those extra 20 hours per week shouldn't factor into any any investor's decision making process, counterintuitively.)
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    Your first and second sentences contradict each other - if hard work is necessary up to a certain threshold, then hard work is correlated with success. If working harder was correlated with mega success, then the winners would be easy to pick out The fact that a predictor is correlated with outcomes does not mean it is the sole predictor.

bifrost 13y ago

As someone who's recently had a child, and who's been through several startups; I think this is excellent. I've made the offhand comparason of having a child to working for a variety of 1990's startups, I'm an ops guy and craptastic perl code made my sleep schedule less than ideal. I optimized and my life got easier. The training from that made dealing with the wakeups a lot easier, and my wife and I worked out a schedule. Working for a startup, like having a baby, requires good partners. If you don't have a good partner(s), life becomes significantly more complicated and I am not sure I'd recommend it. Ask me about my ops strategy, stuff I design generally can do 99.999 uptime.

cgriswald 13y ago

This is a very useful and adult tool for dealing with these types of situations, but the child in me will always want a witty retort, usually in the form of a quote from The Princess Bride.

wavefunction 13y ago

Don't finance people (at least Wall Street) pride themselves on being big swinging dicks? I'd give them a chance in private to fix things, then I'd put them on public blast. By that I mean go to their partners or whatever. I don't know, I'm just a simple country programmer, your big city ways frighten and confuse me!

millstone 13y ago

Was the first investor an asshole for thinking what he did, or for voicing that thought? If it was for voicing the thought, is there a more delicate way he should have phrased it? Or should he have just kept his mouth shut, denying her useful (if insensitive) feedback?

eli 13y ago
There is no delicate or acceptable way of providing blatantly sexist feedback.

peteforde 13y ago

I think it's amazing that people would debate whether to fund a company led by a hard-working mother when nobody questions the logic of funding a company run by someone who worships a malevolent invisible sky wizard. Warren Buffett figured out that hiring women was all-win long before most. Kudos to him.

argumentum 13y ago
Why do you say no one would question that logic? If a founder ended his pitch claiming that his startup would succeed because he prayed all the time, I'm pretty sure questions would be in order (along with a polite decline).
- peteforde 13y ago
  Fair point; I don't think we disagree. Essentially I was trying to make the point that as a non-religious individual, it's always wild to me how people can find the time to ponder whether a woman would have the audacity to start a family while building a company, but nobody questions a founder that worships a paranormal creator entity. Lots of people do both, yet somehow it's becoming a mother that is considered crazy. And, I was trying to say it without being an asshole myself.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Yeah, you are assuming that the question was asked by a religious person. There are atheists who would ask the same question. As an example, Dawkins has been called out as a sexist numerous times - often by other atheists like Rebecca Watson and Jen McReight [1][2]. 1. http://gawker.com/5818993/richard-dawkins-torn-limb-from-limbby-atheists http://gawker.com/5818993/richard-dawkins-torn-limb-from-lim... 2. http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/not-your-average-read/2011/jul/16/sexism-atheism-Dawkins-Watson-feminists-Skepchick/ http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/not-your...
    - peteforde 13y ago

abalone 13y ago

I'm a founder with a young child. It's awesome. You can't do it alone obviously but with a partner and a support system it's totally doable. Even the sleepless night thing is mostly contained to the first couple months. "What do you mean" is a nice easy response. I like it. It's not going to stop all assholes but it will filter out the ones are are ashamed of themselves, which is probably a lot. What it won't stop is the ones with pernicious superficial rationalizations for excluding women.. the "short people shouldn't be firefighters" crowd.

nipponese 13y ago

She knows what they mean...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

gcb0 13y ago

the only difference is that male founders can try to hide their "pregnancy". an investor would shun both a male if he knew a baby was on the way. of course not saying said investor is right, but that is probably what happen. not really a sexist thing though.

DanBC 13y ago

I'm always surprised in threads like these that people express ideas that leave them open to legal action in the future. I hope those people have rigorous documentation for hiring people and that reasons for rejection are kept on record.

angelortega 13y ago

tl;dr Stop being an asshole.

lazyjones 13y ago

Perfect example of a dumb investor who thinks he has a better idea of how to run the company than the founders themselves. I'm quite certain that bad influences of such investors have broken more startups' backs than pregnancies. Founders, please choose your investors well.

Mz 13y ago

I am not a fan of the framing here. This is not about someone "being an asshole." This is about someone opening mouth and inserting foot. Okay, so when men unthinkingly default to stupid assumptions and phrasing, it can seriously hurt women. The fact that women get hurt doesn't mean the harm was intentional, malicious, etc. What the investor said was probably just the uncomfortable truth coming out. IIRC, Paul Graham has made remarks not terribly unlike that. A lot of investors are leery of investing a woman of child-bearing age. Is that "unfair" to women? Perhaps. But I don't think saying it after the fact is "being an asshole." He did invest in her company. Now she needs to preform, baby or no baby. This piece is not about "people being assholes." It is about men opening mouth and inserting foot, probably fairly innocently in both cases cited. A lot of remarks of that ilk are not intended as hostile. I think the phrase "what do you mean?" is probably a good one to use in such situations but I really think this article with this ugly title rooted in ugly assumptions does women more harm than good.

rstevenson542 13y ago

I’m tired of this of all of this PC bullshit. I wouldn’t invest in a company run by a pregnant woman either. It takes unbridled commitment to a vision to become a successful entrepreneur. By definition, a pregnant woman has other (more important) obligations. To add the mental, physical, and emotional stressors of birthing a child on top of the already enormous burden of entrepreneurship is a lot to handle. VC’s bet enormous sums of money on entrepreneurs. And for the circumstances of the entire situation to drastically change, I think he’s rightfully disappointed.