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Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

> This is perhaps why women may be more likely to feel like impostors, because they typically do not see themselves reflected and reinforced—in some sense, validated—in the same way that men do.

For some reason, I was irked by this comment which seems to be completely unsubstantiated.

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The author says you can feel like an imposter when you're a minority, whether gender or race. I think there's much evidence out there about women that are not being validated in the tech and startup space the same way as men... Just look at female founder statistics.

I just find it best to keep those kinds of complaints extremely specific. Maybe the founder validation statistics you're talking about have changed since the last study was done. Imagine we'd fixed all race and sex discrimination problems (bear with me for a moment). By leaving unfounded statements like the above littered across the internet, we'd be ensuring that future generations of minorities also feel a vague sense of inferiority. This causes the exact kind of uncertainty the author is concerned about.

I interpreted that you could feel imposter syndrome simply from the fact that you don't look like you belong and thus minorities have a more difficult time because they can't hide because their difference is literally visible.

When it comes to women or minorities in tech or female founders, if the statistics aren't good enough I believe it's easily visible. Even Google has an atrocious amount of Hispanic or African American engineers. If you work in tech look around your office or at the next tech conference. The lack of visibility is a big problem because it gives the subtle message that you don't belong.

Future generations of minorities won't feel a vague sense of inferiority from reading comments like these, they will have the benefit of seeing who was right or wrong. In fact they might be more amazed by the amount of ignorance...

People ride to the level of their expectations. If you expect them to feel isolated and alone because others "don't look like them", it's more likely they will. If you expect them to not work about it and do good work, they're more likely to do that. And the end result is more diversity, just like when East Asian and Indian engineers started working in tech, did good work, and continued to be gainfully employed.

I'm not denying there are systemic problems that affect different ethnic groups differently, but I'm very confident that moaning about visible diversity in tech is not the best way to fix it.

Subtly sexist comments mixed in with otherwise compelling information tend to be irksome.

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