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Comment by kjs3 | Hacker News Reader

He also says people with strong accents are bad founders[1] and we shouldn't allow women to be founders today because they probably haven't been hackers for 10 years[2]. I dig Lisp, too...but maybe Paul isn't the best person to uncritically take advise from. And yes, I've read all of his "well that's what I said but really I'm not sexist" justifications.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/accents.html [2] http://valleywag.gawker.com/paul-graham-says-women-havent-be.... Key insight: "If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now."

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>He also says people with strong accents are bad founders

More accurately, he said that people who fail to improve their accent over time are likely to be bad founders. I don't have a strong belief about this hypothesis one way or another but I see no reason to dismiss it out of hand (expect for signaling).

>we shouldn't allow women to be founders today because they probably haven't been hackers for 10 years

That "we" shouldn't allow women to be founders is not just an uncharitable interpretation of PG's words, it's a downright implausible one.

> That "we" shouldn't allow women to be founders is not just an uncharitable interpretation of PG's words

It's not that uncharitable, but saying the issue is with women only is too narrow of a critique. He said anyone who is going to be worth it as a founder will find computers and be programming them by the time they enter their teens. Anyone else clearly isn't into it.

So it's not just women, it's poorer people too. Is people who grew up in a house without a computer or had luddite parents. Its people that didn't realize this was something they were interested in until later. They're all people who shouldn't be founders.

The context of the interview is important. From what I understand, he was asked how we can increase the number of female tech founders. I took his reply to mean that thhere isn't much we can do about increasing the numbers of female founders because the amount of females interested in computers from their teenage years has been extremely low compared to males in the field. It makes a lot more sense.

They're all people who shouldn't be founders.

I can't tell if this is satire.

Makes more sense if you include the full context, why are you manufacturing outrage?

" What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now.

It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that. "

How does your context not engender outrage? It's nothing more than "the boys, they'll be fine because boys are better than girls at technology and we're totally cool if they go on to start companies. But the girls, well, they're inferior so why would we encourage them."

But I'm sure you'll get props at your mens rights movement meeting for pretending overt "girls just aren't good at tech" messaging isn't sexism.

It's very simple; he's saying the problem goes back to elementary school. You need to plant the seed then to foster any meaningful amount of interest and engagement in computers and computer science. Since this is currently only really succeeding with boys, you need to re-examine what's being done and make sure that the seed is also planted for girls.

The boys will be fine because clearly what's being done is already working for them, but as a group girls are clearly not being drawn into computer science education and so that's where the problem lies.

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