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Comment by victork2 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting point. Hard to discuss too, because as always with women-related issues the heat is pretty high.

However, let's play devil's advocate and extend it to the man's case too. If I put myself in the role of a VC I would think twice about hiring anybody who's going to have children soon. Children, from what I gathered, are emotionally and physically draining for both parents. If you add up the challenges of having a startup, which is like another child well that's a good damn reason to refuse investing.

The problem is that pregnancy and a child coming soon can be physically seen on a woman, but we can't ask a VC to be blind on that.

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What point do you draw the line? Say a woman entrepreneur got married a year ago and it's getting to be 'about that time'. The inlaws are asking when they're going to hear the patter of tiny feet? Or what if you hear a couple saying 'they're trying for a child'?

Do you want to hire someone at this age? What's the difference, they've got the same goals, one is pregnant, one isn't yet.

It rapidly turns into sexism. So she's going to have to take a while off. She'll have some hormone stuff to deal with. What do you know about that couple? Maybe Dad's going to be the one changing the diapers and getting up at 3. What right do you have to judge?

The whole point is that life goes on and constantly discriminating against women because of this is just wrong.

The point is that she thinks she can handle it, she thinks her team can handle the slack, she's putting her ass on the line. Fair enough, go for it.

victork2 mentioned "anybody" having children and "both parents". I think it's clear that anybody who will have to deal with a new baby is going to be under additional stress. And the party becoming pregnant is going to be under even more stress. It is reasonable for those stress factors to be taken into consideration if you're making a decision about a person's likelihood for success. You can't simply ignore those facts for fear of being labeled a sexist, or anti-family, or something like that. Reality has a way of ignoring what is politically correct.

> victork2 mentioned "anybody" having children and "both parents".

That's great, but the practical reality is that you're unlikely to see a male founder asked anything similar, or be judged based on it. There's still a societal conception that "the woman will take care of the kids," so the new-child flak that would potentially make a founder look worse doesn't necessarily affect potential male founders to the same degree. It still boils down to a male-privilege issue (I mean, like the story said, have you ever heard of somebody claiming that an expectant father being likely to cause his company to fail?).

(Aside: the story sucks and is misleading, however, because a VC did fund her project. Good for both of them. I hope they kick ass.)

It's difficult for men to breastfeed the kids, that is one of the problems... And why is it not a female-privilege issue? How many jobs are so great that they are preferable to taking care of your own kids?

I can say with absolute certainty that if my wife could bring home the same salary as I do, I would trade places with her in a heartbeat and be a stay-at-home dad. It's not even a ? in my mind.

Do you want to hire someone at this age? What's the difference, they've got the same goals, one is pregnant, one isn't yet.

The only difference is that with a hiring decision, the law demands the hiring manager should ignore the risks to the business. In aggregate, this is a transfer of wealth from shareholders to pregnant women (in practice, childless women are also harmed [1]).

What right do you have to judge?

The VC has not only the right to determine how his fund's money is spent, but also the responsibility to do so in order to maximize returns.

As long as P(big success | funds preggo) < P(big success | funds slightly less awesome non-preggo), it is the VC's responsibility to choose the non-pregnant person. He would be throwing away his client's money otherwise.

[1] In practice the biggest losers seem to be childless women since the market for hiring women becomes a lemon market. Employers are not able to differentiate lemons from cherries and wind up paying all sellers less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

> The VC has not only the right to determine how his fund's money is spent, but also the responsibility to do so in order to maximize returns.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that societies that tolerate an ethos that maximizes return on financial capital at the cost of burning human capital, are going to end up in evolution's recycle bin, to be replaced by societies that don't. And part of the point of ethics is to find solutions less cruel and drastic than waiting for evolution to solve problems for us.

How is human capital burned by funding the person most likely to succeed?

It's burned by creating an atmosphere in which people get to thinking they need to start a company instead of having children. (Or thinking they'll have children "later" which typically amounts to the same thing - "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans".)

A right to discriminate? What you're advocating is a right to discriminate based on your unfounded feelings that a pregnant woman can't handle it.

You're basically a sexist but you don't want to admit it. That's what all this boils down to. Let's tell the women they're not good enough because popping out a sprog makes their brains go mushy.

Sounds harsh? Take a good look in the mirror.

What is your real problem with the women founder?

EDIT: I get angry at this shit as my sister, one of the most driven and talented people I know is at nearing this stage in life and I would bet on her a thousand times over other people. She's an amazing woman and I would happily bet on her founding a successful company in a heartbeat regardless of whether she was having a child or not.

>As long as P(big success | funds preggo) < P(big success | funds slightly less awesome non-preggo), it is the VC's responsibility to choose the non-pregnant person. He would be throwing away his client's money otherwise.

With that line of logic, where do you stop? Is there any variable on which its not OK to condition?

I actually think its fair enough to say that there are certain factors that we all agree, as a society, that we should ignore, when it comes to decisions like this.

Sometimes we might codify that agreement to ignore into law, like the hiring law you mention which prevents discrimination on certain grounds. But the reason it has been so codified, is because we agree that type of discrimination is globally bad, right?

Would you really argue that VCs are supposed to absolutely anything to maximise returns, within the law, even something we all know is bad?

I don't see any compelling reason why the choices of an entrepreneur are a variable that the VC should ignore. Could you explain why you believe this?

(As a side note, I also see no reason why shareholders of corporations should have any special obligation to subsidize parents. But that's a separate debate.)

> I don't see any compelling reason why the choices of an entrepreneur are a variable that the VC should ignore.

Many people agree that e.g. the entrepreneur's religion and sexual preferences are variables the VC should ignore, even if they were statistically correlated to success. Do you disagree with that position?

> I also see no reason why shareholders of corporations should have any special obligation to subsidize parents.

I do: the parents are subsidizing the future. The shareholders' money is going to be pretty worthless to them in the long run if there is no next generation of workforce from whom to purchase goods and services.

Do you disagree with that position?

Yes.

But lets ignore my position, I'd like to extend your logic. You want VCs to make suboptimal investments for political reasons. Should you also be obligated to invest some fraction of your 401k in businesses you think are a suboptimal investment? If not, why not?

This argument is far more broad than you realize.

For example: "parents are subsidizing the future. The childless career woman's money is going to be pretty worthless to her in the long run if there is no next generation of workforce...".

Therefore, we should force childless career women to subsidize parents.

Do you believe the latter as well? If not, why not? What distinguishes childless career women from shareholders?

I believe childless people of both sexes should have to pay their share of the cost of raising the next generation, yes.

Do you believe all investors (including Joe 401k) should be forced to make bad bets for political purposes, or only some? If so, which ones?

I don't think it is sexism at all to take basic statistics about people's lives into account.

It's sexist to put aside those considerations due to gender politics.

I don't follow?

> The point is that she thinks she can handle it, she thinks her team can handle the slack, she's putting her ass on the line. Fair enough, go for it.

There's no obligation for anybody else to put their ass on the line along with her.

If she thinks she can do it, then more power to her.

But if I think she's unlikely to succeed, she's not getting my money, pregnant or not.

So you're just going to disregard the entire point of the article in your comment?

Most of the article seemed to be pointing out that she could do it, regardless of what the VC thinks.

Or did you mean the "nobody questions an expecting father's ability to work" part?

I just don't think it's true. If I were going to invest money in a small business run by a man expecting a child, I'd question whether he'd be able to handle both running a business and having a baby.

Unless I missed it, there's actually no evidence showing the VC from the article wouldn't do the same thing.

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