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If you want to think forward about solving the challenges women face here, companies would do well to start taking a hard look in the mirror about how much they

If you want to think forward about solving the challenges women face here, companies would do well to start taking a hard look in the mirror about how much they pay operations staff. Operations keeps the company humming along while it's simultaneously trying to fly off the rails of the rocket sled that is a startup. Unfortunately, a large quantity of dicks (literally) in SV think that operations positions are cookie cutter and can be filled by anyone hungry for a job. I can assure you from first hand experience that's not the case, and have seen many a company encounter additional struggles because they lacked (or lost) the operations support to keep the team together in hard times. Operation's positions are primarily filled by women. Women who work their asses off to keep the rest of the company fed when they are in crunch time. Women who ensure the office is warm, friendly and receptive to creative work. Women who make sure the ADD CEO is where they need to be on time to make deals happen. Women who understand the business better than most of the executives, because that's what's required to be good at helping the executives to get their shit together and get stuff done. And, sadly, these women doing operations are paid a fraction of what men are in other equally critical roles. Personally, I think it's time to fix this discrepancy. (Literally downvoted 2 minutes into posting this. Nice.)

Kalium 12y ago
Is it as hard to find a suitable operations person as it is a suitable engineer?
hkmurakami 12y ago
I'm genuinely curious -- does the women in tech movement advocate for improvements in the treatment of such operational staff (HR, admin, etc.) or is the narrative mostly limited to engineering (and maybe including product and marketing)?
- Kalium 12y ago
  That will vary wildly depending on who you ask. A lot of attention and people are focused mainly on engineering, and we probably hear about those the most, but there is certainly a broader spread of attention too.
- geofft 12y ago
  Yes. Model View Culture, which is as good a sample of tech feminism as any, published this good piece on exactly the subject: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-myth-of-the-non-technical-startup-employee https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-myth-of-the-non-tech...
  - Kalium 12y ago
    If Shanley is the touchstone of good tech feminism, then it's time to give up and pack it all in.
    - geofft 12y ago
      I chose my words carefully. :) The topics in Model View Culture are a good representative sample of the topics popular in tech feminism, the article isn't by her, and it was published while Amelia Greenhall was still involved in the publication, for whatever that's worth. (Also, if your impression of Shanley is her Twitter feed, it's worth being aware that MVC is pretty different.)
      - Kalium 12y ago
        I gather my impressions of Shanley from the parts of herself she chooses to show the world, both on Twitter and otherwise. I found her extremely hostile reaction to a journalist writing a profile of her very interesting.
webehere 12y ago
The problem with all this talk is that the scale is weird. Silicon Valley is what? LinkedIn, or a 2015 YC summer intake company? At the scale of LinkedIn, maybe this argument is inconsequential in many ways. At the scale of a 2015 YC summer intake company, it is irrelevant. Where between those two is this argument relevant? Should a growing company desperate for talent spend seed money while unprofitable on "operations staff"? Or should they minimise that pay and try to get great devs? Great sales people? That's the issue with these kind of sweeping statements - there are so many companies in a labour market, and very few arguments can ever apply to all of them, or even most of them.
jongraehl 12y ago
Is this a joke? Jobs pay what they pay. You don't fix things for other people based on your personal version of fairness, although you're free to pay employees in your own company whatever you like and they'll accept. You're also advancing a "behind every great tech dick is a great female fluffer" narrative, which isn't helpful.

Kalium 12y ago

Is it as hard to find a suitable operations person as it is a suitable engineer?

hkmurakami 12y ago

I'm genuinely curious -- does the women in tech movement advocate for improvements in the treatment of such operational staff (HR, admin, etc.) or is the narrative mostly limited to engineering (and maybe including product and marketing)?

Kalium 12y ago
That will vary wildly depending on who you ask. A lot of attention and people are focused mainly on engineering, and we probably hear about those the most, but there is certainly a broader spread of attention too.
geofft 12y ago
Yes. Model View Culture, which is as good a sample of tech feminism as any, published this good piece on exactly the subject: https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-myth-of-the-non-technical-startup-employee https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-myth-of-the-non-tech...
- Kalium 12y ago
  If Shanley is the touchstone of good tech feminism, then it's time to give up and pack it all in.
  - geofft 12y ago
    I chose my words carefully. :) The topics in Model View Culture are a good representative sample of the topics popular in tech feminism, the article isn't by her, and it was published while Amelia Greenhall was still involved in the publication, for whatever that's worth. (Also, if your impression of Shanley is her Twitter feed, it's worth being aware that MVC is pretty different.)
    - Kalium 12y ago
      I gather my impressions of Shanley from the parts of herself she chooses to show the world, both on Twitter and otherwise. I found her extremely hostile reaction to a journalist writing a profile of her very interesting.

webehere 12y ago

The problem with all this talk is that the scale is weird. Silicon Valley is what? LinkedIn, or a 2015 YC summer intake company? At the scale of LinkedIn, maybe this argument is inconsequential in many ways. At the scale of a 2015 YC summer intake company, it is irrelevant. Where between those two is this argument relevant? Should a growing company desperate for talent spend seed money while unprofitable on "operations staff"? Or should they minimise that pay and try to get great devs? Great sales people? That's the issue with these kind of sweeping statements - there are so many companies in a labour market, and very few arguments can ever apply to all of them, or even most of them.

jongraehl 12y ago

Is this a joke? Jobs pay what they pay. You don't fix things for other people based on your personal version of fairness, although you're free to pay employees in your own company whatever you like and they'll accept. You're also advancing a "behind every great tech dick is a great female fluffer" narrative, which isn't helpful.