Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

I always cringe slightly when I see a headline like this on HN, imagining it feeding unfair prejudices about protected groups, to some nonempty subset of tech industry founders and interviewers.

Also problematic are HN comments like (exaggerated here) "Shucks, on the day I turned 30, I lost 100 IQ points, and now have trouble remembering not to pick my nose at the same time I'm eating paste."

You be you, but please remember that prejudices and confirmation bias are problems, and try not to tar an entire group with your paste.

View on HN

Sorry but how is an article about physiological changes in men becoming fathers possibly feeding into prejudice? Because we might try to be a founder someday? We’re fine, thanks.

If some halfwit VC seriously passes on my company because he sees this one headline and concludes fathers are stupid then he’s terrible at his job and remind me to short everything he touches.

For example, anecdotally, the percentage of founders I've heard say that they only want to hire early-20s engineers, is... high.

(PG might've started it, with influential essays about why he wanted college students as founders, perhaps making it socially acceptable. Then people like Zuckerberg reinforced it, with public comments. Many companies structure their interviews around tests/rituals that arguably start from "How, uh, fresh in mind are your undergrad CS classes, even though that probably has little-to-no relevance to the actual work you'd be doing here?")

That's only ageism. There's also sexism, racism, classism, genderism(?), etc.

There's enough of those biases going around, and we're in/hitting a recession. Not everyone can afford to decide "I don't want to work for a company where anyone who could influence my opportunities has some ill-informed bias against some group.".

Some scientific finding of X is fine, if the science is solid. But being aware of ongoing bias problems can affect how we communicate and think around that.

>For example, anecdotally, the percentage of founders I've heard say that they only want to hire early-20s engineers, is... high.

Maybe that's because early-20s people are willing to work for less, easier to manipulate to work long hours and don't understand red flags like founders who say things like that.

Bingo. In my experience, young employees are hoping desperately for a lottery win, because owning their own home some day is starting to seem impossible. They want to believe that the magic beans (pre-IPO options) are real and are usually willing to hang on at a bad job, desperately trying to make it work, because they've spent a year of their life believing that their options would be worth megabucks in 5-8 years. It's extremely difficult to walk away from that. If it is successful, they find out too late that their options aren't worth nearly as much as they'd been led to believe. Older engineers, especially those who already have a home, or have been burned by the dream once or twice, are more likely to think of pre-IPO stock like an actual lottery ticket.

They’re also looking for repeat successes. If they give money to a founder early on and they have a hit - there’s a good chance they’ll want to found another company and they’ll have another hit.

> Sorry but...

Perhaps you don't understand how science or the aegis of science have been historically used to justify discrimination. You can look to phrenology as a good example of this. It was touted at some point as a biological justification for white-black racism. So here we have a class of people who suffer discrimination (parents) and a "scientific" justification.

> If some halfwit VC...

You won't know that this happened. There will be plenty of other reasons which can be explicitly stated for not funding you (or passing you over for a promotion or whatever). You will only learn that you are suffering from discrimination if you get lucky and catch the oppressor on a hot mike or they fat finger the reply all.

> Sorry but how is an article about physiological changes in men becoming fathers possibly feeding into prejudice?

It’s noted above the paywall in the article too. I won’t comment further than noting that you’re demonstrating the biases other comment warned about very well.

Men with kids are at the top of the power structure in nearly every industry. Anybody who has a negative stereotype about dads almost certainly isn’t in a position to do anything about it other than utter under their breath. In practice the opposite stereotype exists: childless men make less money, live shorter lives, and are seen as less responsible and trustworthy.

This is true until you try to actually raise your kids. "Men with kids" may poll high with bosses, but the third or fourth time you need reasonable accommodations for a school pickup, you're suddenly not the type of go-getter this company values.

I would go so far as to argue that there is a single cohort "at the top of the power structure" comprised of men with no kids and men who have kids but do not actively parent. Men who have significant childcare commitments are in a lower cohort.

As I understand the article, and the response, it’s talking about changes to mens’ brains caused by fatherhood. “Men who have kids are dumber” isn’t a prejudice anyone meaningfully has to worry about. Your point is fair—fathers definitely face headwinds if they try and take on more caregiving roles—but that’s directed to a different thing.

I recall an Amazon director 10 years ago commenting during a mixer about how having kids was a limiting factor for career progression. It wasn’t possible to be serious about your career and be a parent.

Yes, managing lawyers accidentally say this out loud all the time.

>I always cringe slightly when I see a headline like this on HN, imagining it feeding unfair prejudices about protected groups

"Protected" by and from who? Whose "unfair prejudices" are really at issue here? I always cringe when scientific studies or other bits of objective reality are suppressed or downplayed because of the prejudices of people who believe that arbitrarily cobbled together groups of people by those who think they know better need to somehow "be protected".

>You be you, but please remember that prejudices and confirmation bias are problems

If someone has a problem with science and objective reality, that is a personal problem they should deal with, not a problem with science and objective reality. Unfortunately there is an ever-growing mentality (especially among younger people) that if objective reality is somehow offensive to one's sensibilities then objective reality should be ignored or explicitly rejected all together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group

Reply on news.ycombinator.com