Why I don’t usually meet startups in person (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Why I don’t usually meet startups in person (2019)

elizabethyin.com

128 pointsluu93 comments

I feel about this the same way I feel about interviewing eng, PM, and particularly sales candidates.

Before you pull the trigger on investing, hiring, whatever, you should meet with candidates at least once in the way they'll be performing the job. If you're hiring a cold calling salesperson, you should not interview them in person — ever. Their performance is going to be determined – on the job — over the phone, so you should interview them over the phone.

If you're hiring a remote developer, you should interview them remotely. The inverse is true as well: if you're hiring someone to be in the office every day, interview them in the office.

Same goes for investing. How are are you going to be primarily interacting with this team? If you're interacting primarily remotely (e.g., not in the context of a shared-workspace startup incubator), you should feel comfortable interviewing remotely as well. It'll give you a better sense of how your interactions will go in the day-to-day running of the business.

The author's view on using in-person meetings as a way to get a 'feel' for a person resonates with me: it sounds appealing, but it introduces an additional opportunity for bias relative to talking on the phone or even over VC.

You can find black swans when meeting in person

Where is the evidence for your approach outperforming the alternatives? Hiring is highly subject to confirmation bias. And the false negative results are never quantified.

In the venture community today, we reward “visionaries” much more than executors. And a big reason for this is that we make investment decisions based on pitches rather than on execution (aka working) in our decision-making.

Another reason is everyone wants to back the next Steve Jobs, and if you don't have those Jobsian traits, you fail the investor pattern-matching test.

Some startup CEOs know this, and have really perfected the VC signaling down to choices of clothing, speaking styles, and shitty treatment of (some) employees.

I heard something similar from an older advisor at the MIT Venture Mentoring Service. He said something to the effect of, "if you're not raring to go" and "your board has to practically hold you back" then investors wouldn't fund you. He was probably right.

> "have really perfected the VC signaling down to choices of clothing, speaking styles, and shitty treatment of (some) employees"

Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos comes to mind...

One of the more funny aspects of human psychology is that when someone perfectly matched their signals to a very specific audience, it looks ridiculous to anyone not a member of the target audience.

Holmes is possibly one of the most perfect example of this. To any non-VC it’s obvious that wearing a black turtleneck is not a necessary precondition to being the next Steve Jobs, but the VC and media commentators fell for it hook line and sinker.

It has little to do with the turtle neck. Read the book or watch the documentary.

Elizabeth Holmes was born into money. Her family had connections. One of her first investors was a well known VC and neighbor. All you need is a couple of connections like that to get credibility.

The point about it looking ridiculous to outside observers still stands. Connections buy you credibility within the connected groups.

So she could have ripped everyone off including kissinenger with acting ridiculous? She should have saved the act.

You are right: her turtle neck (and fake voice) were both ridiculous.

Elizabeth Holmes was not supported by any well-known VCs.

Which is a great signal by the way in itself.

Jobs never wore a turtleneck, so it’s worse than that. He wore a black low collar long sleeve t-shirt. People can’t even look closely enough to tell if someone is a good copy.

It was often described as a mock turtleneck. Real turtleneck sweaters are... ridiculous.

Real turtlenecks are extremely climate specific. If you’re a north sea fisherman, you’re going to want a real turtleneck. In a climate controlled office? Not so much.

They are comfortable and keep throat warm without me having to bother with scarf. I like to wear them.

Also great when office is overusing climatizstion.

I think turtlenecks are amazing. I am incredibly slender with a long neck and I am almost always cold.

"In the venture community today, we reward “visionaries” much more than executors."

The former CEO of Better Place comes to mind. Blew through most of a billion dollars, accomplished very little, went bankrupt. But he's tall, very good looking, and a great speaker.

Probably not the best example. He did have a track record including having been a senior exec at SAP.

Better Place was almost certainly ill-conceived from the start but it was probably the only way to make electric cars work at the time.

I'm not sure.

They did sell cars in Israel. They did have battery replacement centers.

They failed because they we're too expensive.

That's mainly because they had really large fixed costs - cars, selling them , deploying charging centers through the country and holding all that battery inventory.

Maybe if they'd target a single city and instead of manufacturing cars with citroen , put some effort into converting, cheaply, pickup trucks to taxis(who will replace batteries every day and spend a lot on fuel and maintenance) they could have had a working business model and go from there.

But for that, one has be humble. I wonder, what's the correlation between humility and startup sucsess rate ?

>But he's tall, very good looking, and a great speaker.

Never heard of the guy before.Googled to see how well he does public speaking and landed on some TED talk. If I'd talk like him,I would have became a millionaire quite some years ago. However, some of the stuff he says,may have sounded smart in 2010 but today it sounds like complete tosh.

That's him, all right.

I'm not sure if anyone could have executed that idea.

Even Elon Musk couldn't make it work

I had never heard of the CEO or the company before. Really striking how a way less charismatic leader is now leading the EV revolution.

I like the idea of taking notes and then making your decision based on the notes. That's how the Google interviewing process worked, and I think it emphasizes the things that matter and lets you filter through the things that don't. People have a laundry list of things to do in an interview to hack the system: what you wear, what kinds of follow-up questions you ask, etc. None of those things ever make it into the notes. Only your thought process as it applies to software engineering ends up in there.

To some extent, this really mirrors how we buy consumer products. We read a bunch of experiences and data collected by other people, then make a decision based only on those written notes. Meanwhile, enterprise products are sold by who buys you the best golf outing or who sends you the nicest holiday present. If you remove that source of bias, only the facts stand out. Could be a good technique to apply more widely. Do you want the product that has the best experience from other users, or do you want the one that buys you stuff every few months? As the purchasing manager, of course you want the kickbacks. But the company itself probably wants the one with the best user experience. Something to think about.

> making your decision based on the notes

And can wait some days in between too, to better forget the in person impression

Yep, it doesn't matter in the slightest how charismatic the founder is if their product isn't going to get traction.

I mean, rate founder charisma versus these things:

* Chaos in product - whenever consumers try the product, it bites them

* Packaging misfit - founder drove an IOS app out when market really needs a web experience

* Product lacks rarity - Founder is driving a new iKnockoff when there are scaled competitors already penetrating the market

The list of things that are more important than the founder's charisma goes on and on.

Frankly the charisma at the helm is really more applicable when the company is fully established and has a fan base. For a startup, if the product needs someone charismatic to get traction, hire someone charismatic to sell it.

One person’s charisma is another person’s irritation!

Charisma doesn’t scale. But it does work on low volume high leverage audiences; e.g. VCs.

If you think it doesn't matter, you've never been around someone with real charisma. They can BS their way into anything, especially investor wallets. This charisma is actually most useful before the startup has a product. Once the rubber meets the road, those lofty forecasts and powerpoints full of fiction are less useful.

Visionaries get other people to act, and that's important.

WeWork is not a real company, built on Koolaid. This is the paradox. Without the founder's BS it likely would not have happened. Though his forecasts were rubbish, there was (and is) a material, underlying business.

It doesn't take an extrovert to pump the Koolaid a lot of awkward people have kind of a stubborn/lack-of-self-awareness kind of focus, and their own self-belief gives confidence to others.

I think it's rare that successful companies are built without a little bit of 'stupid confidence'. Which at first glance is a paradox, but not once you think about it.

> Visionaries get other people to act, and that's important.

Good visionaries can certainly get people to act in good ways.

It appears that there are other kinds of visionaries who get (good?) people to act in bad ways.

>This top female VC, however, realized that, although she was more excited about the male founder’s pitch, when she objectively thought about what he had accomplished, she realized it wasn’t much. And that the female founder had knocked it out of the park although her storytelling wasn’t as amazing. This story is a true story and this happens all the time in venture.

Aren't VCs also investing in companies that they are betting can raise more money down the road? If you invest in someone who persuades you at a "gut" level, you're taking into account that they will also persuade others at a gut level.

But if their product is mediocre then it doesn't matter how many investors they pull in. In the long term, would they actually make a significant amount of money when customers aren't that attracted or satisfied?

We met with Elizabeth virtually (didn't like the idea but wanted to invest if we pivoted.) Very fair process & a sharp person to boot- I don't think we lost anything over an in-person meeting.

If I had the money I'd secretly get employed at startups I was interested in to see if they were just a bunch of jokers or not.

I'd do this is because if I were that rich then I probably won the lottery and stupidly quit my job without thinking and would probably be very bored.

maybe you can start a business to provide this kind of undercover intelligence to VCs, e.g. you get paid a monthly retainer by some prospective investors to work undercover at a sequence of maybe-joking-startups and write dispatches reporting on what you see really going on.

i know a person who did this. he wanted to acquire a company and asked to be hired on for 3 months before it was announced. This way he had time to figure out who was good, who was awesome and who was toxic.

Sounds a great way to make employees to perceive you as dishonest from the start.

Unpopular opinion: it really doesn't matter what VCs do or don't do. Most VCs dreadfully under-perform the market. The rate of VC success is mostly related to chance or some unfair advantage in getting into early winners. Most VCs are awful. Meet with them in person, not in person, it doesn't matter. I treat advice from VCs pretty much the same as a random money manager. Maybe what they're saying makes sense, maybe not, but it doesn't deserve any heavy weight.

The 80/20 rule applies heavily to VCs. A very small number of VCs are responsible for the majority of returns. The rest are just chasing deals around. Chase in person. Chase not in person. It really doesn't matter.

*most VCs dreadfully underperform. Even the top performers don't do so well once you factor in fees and everything else.

Do VCs charge themselves fees?

VCs invest money raised from LPs (limited partners) and usually charge an annual fee on assets under management and also get a share of any profits.

If its anything like private equity (bigger company VC's), they charge their limited partners an annual fee. Around 1 or 2%

You should read this: https://hbr.org/2013/05/six-myths-about-venture-capitalists

"the standard VC fund charges an annual fee of 2% on committed capital over the life of the fund—usually 10 years—plus a percentage of the profits when firms successfully exit, usually by being acquired or going public. So a firm that raised a $1 billion fund and charged a 2% fee would receive a fixed fee stream of $20 million a year to cover expenses and compensation. VC firms raise new funds about every three or four years, so let’s say that three years into the first fund, the firm raised a second $1 billion fund. That would generate an additional $20 million in fees, for a total of $40 million annually. These cumulative and guaranteed management fees insulate VC partners from poor returns because much of their compensation comes from fees. Many partners take home compensation in the seven figures regardless of the fund’s investment performance. Most entrepreneurs have no such safety net. "

Yup, those high-flying VCs? making money the same way money managers too - taking a cut of assets under management (AUM). Nothing to do with their investment prowess -- just gather lots of money, take a cut of that gathering, and whether or not the investors make money won't impact your paycheck. yes there's a nice bonus if you make it, but that's not necessary.

That's how the 80% of VCs that don't generate substantial returns are making a living.

I mean, it matters to the people trying to get funding from them.

But it really doesn't. You'll meet with an investor if they want to meet with you in person. You'll meet with an investor virtually if they want to meet with you virtually. What one investor does vs. another doesn't matter. So the advice given here is meaningful for... who? I guess it's for other VCs that give the OP a hard time about not meeting in person. But really, it doesn't matter because they'll all do a relatively crappy job of giving returns to their investors anyways.

The only time it really matters is when you're meeting with the VCs that are actually making big returns. For them, take the meeting any way they want to have it. In person or not.

This insight is somewhat echoed in the post itself:

"At the end of the day, doing VC right is actually much more about portfolio construction and modeling than picking."

(with a link to https://medium.com/ulu-ventures/successful-vcs-need-at-least...)

Do you have any source for "Most VCs dreadfully under-perform the market".

A few places talk about the returns of most VC firms

* https://blog.wealthfront.com/venture-capital-economics/ "Over the past 10 years, venture capital in general has been a lousy place to invest. According to Cambridge Associates the average annual venture capital return over the past 10 years has only been 8.1% as compared to 5.7% for the S&P 500. That clearly does not compensate the limited partner for taking the increased risk associated with venture capital. However the top quartile (25%) generated an annual rate of return of 22.9%. The top 20 firms have done even better."

* https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me... "A VC fund needs a 3x return to achieve a “venture rate of return” and be considered a good investment ($100 million fund => 3x => $300 million return). The graph below shows what percentage of VC firms accomplish this. As we can see, only the small green slice is bringing it home. The other 95 percent are juggling somewhere between breaking even and downright losing money (remember to adjust for inflation)."

[See chart which shows that only 5% of VC firms return more than 3x, and a full 50% of firms return LESS than the money invested in them.]

Also see Slide 14 in deck in comment posted above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435889)

Basically both articles said that VCs generate more returns than the S&P.

As a group. But not individually. That's the point. It would be like saying that mutual funds in a category might outperform the market but individually 80% of them don't.

Unfortunately you can't invest in VCs as a group. There's no index fund of VCs. So you have to pick individual ones. 95% of those underperform the S&P.

23% is a very good return. So just invest in VC's that are in the top quartile. It's probably not that hard to find that information , with reasonable accuracy.

This page has a chart comparing S&P 500 to other modes. Looks like VC tracks it rather closely.

https://www.toptal.com/finance/venture-capital-consultants/s...

Sorry, couldn't find a chart giving just the bottom 80% of VCs :-)

This chart shows that only 5% of the VCs are generating most of the returns, and 50% of VC firms can't even return the capital that's invested in them: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/the-meeting-that-showed-me...

From the article: "“Ninety-five percent of VCs aren’t profitable,” he said. It took me a while to understand what this really means."

Basically, the default mode for VCs is to either lose the money investors put in them or modest returns, which isn't particularly good given the risk of the investment class. 80%+ of the VCs you'll talk to underperform the S&P. Those general returns you see? They come from a handful of VCs, who will be much more selective. Basically you can't approach them, they'll approach you since they know they are the kingmakers in the industry.

* Also, check Slide 14 in this deck: https://www.slideshare.net/gilbenartzy/money-talks-things-yo...

- The Top 20 VC funds, which represent 2% of all VC Funds, generate 95% of all VC returns - 50% of VC firms return less than 1x of invested capital - An additional 35% of VC firms return less than 2x of invested capital

So yeah, it's even worse than 80/20 rule. 9 out of every 10 VC firms you talk to will most likely be loser funds that don't generate substantial returns. Focus on the top 20 VC funds if you want to be in with the real winners. For everyone else, they're just money managers, mostly losing their investor's money, but pretending like they're kingmakers.

Do you feel it's the VC's responsibility to carry you and make your startup successful? Or is their role to provide funds, and possibly some introductions and guidance, and let the chips fall where they may?

I think he meant “don’t give money to VCs, not “don’t take money from VCs”.

That assumes the top VC firms are stable over time. I suspect individual funds are largely random with occasional massive win goosing a firms returns for years.

You might be right. I'm trying to find the list of those 20 VCs that generate the top returns on a year by year basis to see if there is consistency.

But there are some repeat winners: a18z, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, index ventures, and a few others that have some name recognition.

Notably 500 Startups is not in this list. Their spray and pray approach didn't really work.

I would think that an in-person meeting could be substituted by videos calls in the current circumstances, but that phones calls/emails are inferior given the information bandwidth is a lot narrower.

There are lots of different kinds of charisma and they interact differently with a company's potential depending on the business models. For example, a highly technically competent founder may in itself be very charismatic to engineers.

I was curious, after seeing this in the article:

> “Contrarian perspective here – it’s ok to not meet a founder in person before deciding to invest.”

> This set off a tweet firestorm — mostly with people telling me in some form or fashion that I was wrong.

I decided to look on Twitter to see more about the controversy, and while I couldn't find as many VC's discussing it as I remembered (maybe some are shy, maybe some use different words than I used in my search), you can see the varied responses below.

It seems like Andreesen's investment in Clubhouse may have been a watershed moment also - legitimizing remote investing for everyone else.

https://www.mediazed.com/vc-not-meet-in-person.html

When you create a corporation, you're essentially creating a society (remember: culture is the foundation of society and society is the foundation of civilization)

You can model your society in any way you wish but the intention ought to be to make your society more competitive and capable than the default (i.e. society at large)

The socialist system is something along the lines of 'from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs' but that has never worked out in practice.

There are other systems but the capitalist system ('to each according to his investment, from the collective pot') is close but we mistake what investment is and we drastically misunderstand how to maximize the collective pot.

The whole VC system as it currently stands is a symptom of our distorted view of what investment is and the breakdown of trust required for people to truly maximize their returns, nothing more.

VC's bring money to the table and it seems that this buys them enhanced privilege compared to people who bring other sorts of investment. The minute you begin the VC conversation you begin devaluing the investments of people who bring other sorts of investment (i.e. faith, effort, opportunity costs) and create a sort of toxic feedback bubble whereby the entire system goes off the rails because apart from the money the VC's are hardly invested in your vision, innit

hence the term 'vulture capitalists' -- how are VC's any different from tech recruiters anyway?.

The only way to make any money is to sell something somebody else makes.

> culture is the foundation of society and society is the foundation of civilization

That’s a terrible analogy because it’s trivial for the culture to change without civilization being put at risk. Foundations can’t be substantially changed without risking everything on top.

What are you saying? the minute culture shifts so does civilization. Look at where we are now compared to where we were in the industrial age.

This whole techbro culture has destroyed corporate society and brought about drastic shifts in the entire world civilization and not for the better.

What is this wishful thinking?

Edit: and by the way the word 'culture' comes from the latin for 'core' it's by definition the foundation. I can't believe we're arguing the semantics of well-known words look up culture and society for yourself.

Edit 2: think of your culture like a potluck dinner. Everyone brings their carefully prepared dishes. Some latecomer shows up to the door with a wad of cash and says I didn't prepare anything but suddenly the money they brought entitles them to be first in line. What kind of civilization can exist under these cultural manners?

A culture can be destroyed without taking out civilization though. It happens all of the time. Comparing it to a foundation is absolutely terrible.

I think I can understand what you're saying but you obviously can't understand what I'm saying.

You're objecting to my use of the word foundation for some reason and all I'm getting out of it is why even bother.

But here goes anyway as you may have heard words have multiple meanings and not everyone uses them the same way.

I'm referring to the second meaning of foundation: an underlying basis or principle.

Culture -> society -> civilization

These three things are built on each other.

When one changes all the others are affected without necessarily being destroyed but yes if one is destroyed the others will suffer too.

You're also probably referring to an alternate definition of civilization as in all of humanity whereas if you ask Siri the definition of civilization is literally what I've written so like why all the hate bub?

"The society, culture and way of life in a particular area" i.e inside a corporation.

Mess with the culture and it has outward ripples to the entire way of life duh

I understand what you’re saying and I’m suggesting it’s a bad model.

You can’t have culture without a society and culture is heavily impacted by civilization as well.

“Culture -> society -> civilization” is too rudimentary to be useful and it’s just plain wrong in many cases. Changes in technology (e.g. smartphones) or massive events (e.g. pandemics) flow backwards through the chain eventually forcing the culture to change to adapt (social distancing, etiquette for texting at the table, etc).

Along these same lines, I've heard from clients that during the pandemic they started to magically hit their diversity hiring numbers now that they judge applicants on their performance rather than how much they "like" them.

Remote interviews have leveled the playing field and forced them to make more objective decisions about who to hire. Suddenly there is no "pipeline problem"...

I'm glad to hear that. It makes perfect sense that reducing the subjective "culture fit" factor reduces hiring bias.

But I would also say that as someone who has experience at the highest levels of open source organizations and who has witnessed the extraordinary extent to which entrenched parties will fight to keep structural discrimination in place: Don't underestimate people's ability to discriminate based on identity alone, without having met in person.

Yeah, some of that behavior is constrained given the paper trail that is left when interviewers have to communicate through collaboration tools. People are on their best behavior if they know they might get caught.

Absolutely. At open source orgs, the internal communication channels are way worse than the public ones. People advocate for positions all the time which would negatively impact their careers if made public.

I'm not sure what you mean by "open source orgs" or why you felt you needed to create a throwaway account to leave the comment. But, in general, "internal communications channels" on open source projects are something of an anti-pattern. Certainly, private board member (or other person-to-person) communications can be necessary but what you're describing sounds like an unhealthy atmosphere in general if there's a lot of contentious backchannel comms.

By "open source orgs" I mean entities such as all the non-profits which host/support open source projects.

You're right about it being unhealthy, unfortunately. It might be for the best if it dies and is replaced by something else.

I think this is especially true for large companies. Whereas a tiny startup may be given some leeway because people interact constantly and have a more defined culture, larger companies' culture are generally amorphous blobs that are more easily an excuse for bias based on common background/age/class/gender/ethnicity.

Any company that has diversity hiring numbers that they are supposed to hit is discriminating based on factors outside of performance if it influences their hiring process at all.

I would assume that diversity hiring numbers are based on demographics, if not they would be almost impossible to meet.

Diversity numbers are measured after the fact. Diversity hiring is done by filling the front of the pipeline with a diverse set of candidates (i.e. getting the interview) but hiring decisions are made independently.

> Diversity hiring is done by filling the front of the pipeline with a diverse set of candidates (i.e. getting the interview) but hiring decisions are made independently.

I don't think people realize how important this is. I certainly didn't until I had a random meeting with the recruiting team at $OLDJOB.

It's basic statistics, when you think about it. By the definition of "under-represented group", you know that there is a much higher likelihood that the over-represented group will make up the majority of the first X resumes you receive. This means that even if you're completely unbiased and will hire based on merit (whatever that means), simply choosing the best of the first X applications will lead you to fail at diversity hiring anyway.

Companies say they want to hire the best person but this is subject to reality and part of reality is wanting to hire this person as quick as possible. So it really is paramount that the pipeline is front-loaded, or you'll be thwarted by the reality of statistical majority.

The hypothetical you’re clearly referring to here is a high-performing white or Asian applicant who regrettably has to be rejected to make room for a mediocre black applicant. This concern is 1% based in reality and 99% based in racist resentment.

Companies make hiring decisions based on all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with performance. Two extremely problematic ones are:

1) soft “skills” like charisma, rapport, etc, which are much more about social identity than social ability, and in particular discriminate against nonwhites, women, and many LGBT people

2) Unvarnished and criminal Klan-style racism, such as turning down a well-qualified job applicant because his name is Jamal, or assuming a black woman must have lied about her 3.9 GPA, which is still rampant in all 50 United States, and an enormous reason for the black-white wealth and income disparity. This sort of blatant discrimination has been repeatedly observed in the 21st century and is a plain fact.

These two practices are not only widespread and illegal, they also deprive companies of good talent. The reason for diversity quotas isn’t to distort a (nonexistent) meritocratic hiring process, but instead to correct grotesque violations in actually existing hiring practices.

Do you have any sources to back this up? I figured that may have been the case a few decades ago but I imagined nowadays the affirmative action outweighs those factors on a macro scale.

Coming from someone who used to be seen as a white man and is now seen as a white woman, it matters. Noticing that it mattered for me made me take notice when it happens to others. Spoiler: it happens a lot. I shut it down real fast when it happens in front of me, but I used to be part of the problem as well. It's (usually) not malice; people genuinely don't realize that "cultural fit" is usually code for "like me". That ability to be blind to things like that is essentially the nature of what people call "privilege". Doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you should probably listen to other perspectives before you interject your own.

"Affirmative action" isn't a thing. It never really was. All it ever meant was ensuring that opportunities were offered to minorities to interview, but those opportunities still paid out at a below-average rate relative to straight / white / male people. Your company won't share diversity numbers outside of HR, but if you have a friend you can usually get them off the record. They don't share them because the numbers are bad.

I am sorry to keep being uncharitable about this but I am angry and frustrated: the reason you “figured” it may have been the case a long time ago but you “imagine” that nowadays we have the reverse problem is because you are an ignorant racist who is filling your gaps in knowledge with white resentment. I will try to alleviate some of the ignorant side of this:

March 2020, results from a field experiment demonstrating persistent unambiguous racist discrimination: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26861

This is a recent example of a famous series of experiments, where otherwise identical fictitious resumes are given “black-sounding” or “white-sounding” names (or addresses, alma maters, etc), and the researchers count how many callbacks the resumes get. If the black resumes get significantly less callbacks there is no alternative explanation than illegal racism. The classic experiment is “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” from 2003: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

A 2016 retrospective of similar labor discrimination field experiments: https://www.nber.org/papers/w22022

Evidence of improving but ongoing racist discrimination against black business owners seeking credit: https://www.nber.org/papers/w13972

2011 paper estimating that 1/3rd of the black-white wage gap is due solely to employment discrimination: https://www.nber.org/papers/w17462 (it has been established elsewhere that about ~1/2 the wage gap is due to the education/credentials gap)

An interesting 2019 paper finding virtually no discrimination against Native Americans and Hawaiians: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25849 (this is relevant to the sociological view that American racial stratification is anti-black more than pro-white, or rather that “white” really means “not black”)

This is just from one google search of the NBER archives on my phone. This evidence exists in spades.

I wish I could upvote this comment 1000 times.

Hey, I agree with everything that is being said here but I think it might be unnecessary here to be making personal attacks such as calling somebody racist or implying white resentment because somebody is mis-informed. Especially because -- growing up in a racist society -- we all have internalized racism in some way, which we're just slowly trying to unlearn.

Just based on current events, even many dense non-Whites (myself included) have just started to realize how deep the problem goes when it goes to both conscious and unconscious bias.

We can definitely do better, and I hope the trends do indeed show that we're heading that way.

In my view a huge part of the problem is that we keep giving bad people a benefit of the doubt they don't deserve, and keep treating bad faith nonsense as arguments worthy of consideration. In my view I am not making a "personal attack" so much as calling a spade a spade.

To be clear: I believe OP is not just ignorant, but is being a bad person. OP's point was not simply that anti-black discrimination is no big deal - which would be reprehensible enough - but that the opposite is happening, to the detriment of whites. It doesn't matter if OP is parroting racist propaganda or creating it themselves: it is highly potent racist propaganda, designed to convert whites into overt racists by playing on their resentment.

OP isn't "less racist" if they sincerely believe the propaganda due to misinformation: racism is racism and OP is perpetuating it. "Just because he's repeating a racist lie does NOT mean he is a racist" is unfortunately a common line of thought in the US. But this only assuages the feelings of whites, and does not accurately describe racism in America.

Ah, I see what you mean. You're saying that intent does not excuse action, and if somebody is repeating things that are racist then they are engaging in racism, and a racist is someone who carries out the act of racism. Therefore they are a racist.

I can't disagree with that. Thanks for making the effort to explain.

----

EDIT (5 minutes later): Man, now that you put it that way I can't stop thinking about how obvious that is.

"Just because they're repeating racist things doesn't mean they're a racist" Is a pretty weak line of thought, since that's quite literally the definition of racist. It's alarming what you internalize living somewhere for long enough. Sorry ojnabieoot, I've got it now.

When you say 'OP', who are you talking about?

> Any company that has diversity hiring numbers that they are supposed to hit is discriminating based on factors outside of performance if it influences their hiring process at all.

> OP's point was not simply that anti-black discrimination is no big deal - which would be reprehensible enough - but that the opposite is happening, to the detriment of whites.

You.

You do realize I didn't say any of that and this person hallucinated a giant rant right?

One way to do better is to recognize that the onus is by default put on minorities to explain discrimination. For example, black people in the US spend extraordinary amounts of time explaining racism to white people, an exhausting and neverending effort. It's like a DDOS.

> soft “skills” like charisma, rapport, etc, which are much more about social identity than social ability, and in particular discriminate against nonwhites, women, and many LGBT people

That sounds plenty racist to me*

* two can play this game

Stating which demographics beyond race the commenter believes is being significantly discriminated against is not racist. This is not discrimination against white people. It is not false either - lgbtq people have a higher chance of suicide, there's a signriciant wage gap between men and women across fields and industries, employers can also be racist. If you are uncertain of these well known facts, I have nothing to say.

Two can play a game indeed if both know what they're doing.

What I said was a generality, I was not alluding to any of this.

Hiring or not hiring based on a protected class in the US is illegal.

How do people use `soft “skills” like charisma, rapport etc' as the excuse for rejecting a woman in favor of a typical white male neckbeard with a straight face? It's weird that people who everybody agrees lack social skills can be so entrenched in society. Maybe we need more education at an early age as to what social ability is and isn't.

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