Comment by abefetterman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abefetterman | Hacker News Reader

I think journalists are snakes in general, but I don't see PG's argument that his statement is not sexist. His expanded argument seems to be:

1. A hacker ethos from a decade of programming is required to start a company like Facebook.

2. There are few women who have the hacker ethos already

3. YC can objectively determine who has a hacker ethos

4. YC cannot teach the hacker ethos in 3 months

5. This is the main reason YC does not accept many women

I think that there are a number of problems with this series of arguments, some of which are rooted in systemic sexism:

1. There are many great companies started by non-programmers. What PG calls a "hacker ethos" and his decision that it is necessary are both based on observing the output of a biased system that favors white males.

2. This doesn't seem to line up to me. >20% of CS grads are female yet <10% of YC founders are female (lower rate in early classes).

3. We know this is not true, as we all have cognitive biases. Some adjustment for this bias should be implemented if we want to have a fair system.

4. Maybe. But why not even try?

5. See #2. Maybe there is another reason, but this doesn't explain the very small number of female founders on its own.

You completely and utterly misrepresented what he was saying in this post which makes me question whether you read it in the first place.

Let me roughly refute your points (I don't have time to go more in depth right now, sorry):

1. He never said a hacker ethos is required.

2. He's saying he believes that development of a hacker ethos takes significant time and that may explain why there are few women at the time of his statement who seem to have it. Point being that cultivating it en masse is generational.

3. He never makes this claim, you seem to be extrapolating it heavily.

4. This point is accurate but you stripped the context.

5. He's saying the skewed funnel doesn't allow for YC to have a higher ratio of women. Phrasing matters, and I think yours is inaccurate. You also injected the phrase "main reason" which he never claims.

From The Information interview:

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, for example, which is this big Python conference.

That's a self-selected group of people. Anybody who wants to apply can go to that thing. They're not discriminating for or against anyone. If you want to see what a cross section of programmers looks like, just go look at that or any other conference, doesn't have to be PyCon specifically.

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