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Comment by mwetzler | Hacker News Reader

tptacek, whenever I read your stuff, I think "he gets it".

I bet stable founders have more stable relationships with their SO's.

Dave Ramsey writes about how his company uses dinners with spouses as a part of their interview process. They won't hire anyone "married to crazy". They also fire anyone who cheats on their spouse. I found his book quite misogynistic and offensive (not to mention having the worst title ever), but I wonder if he's onto something.

The idea of YC (or any company) using personal relationships as part of their filtering process makes me extremely uncomfortable, but it's interesting to think about.

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Dave Ramsey probably either doesn't really do this or has never asked a lawyer about it, and is in any case offering incredibly bad advice. It is unlawful to discriminate against someone on the basis of marital status. When you invite a candidate out to dinner with their spouse and then later decline them, you've communicated two things:

* That you were serious enough about the candidate to take them and their spouse to dinner; in other words, that you were probably inclined to hire them.

* That it is possible that the dinner, which only could have been an issue for candidates with spouses, had something to do with the decision not to hire.

Investment decisions are very different from employment decisions. You can probably discriminate against investment opportunities for any reason whatsoever, including race or religion. But dinners with spouses as part of an interview process seems like a great way to get sued repeatedly.

IANAL but I don't believe marital status falls in the protected category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

Not federally, but yes, for purposes of employment, in many states including California, New York, Illinois, and Washington.

As tptacek says, many states do ban discrimination on the basis of marital status, and they have a good reason to - historically most businesses refused to employ married women at all on the rather sexist basis that they should be at home raising kids.

I suspect the more likely reason is that they didn't want to lose employees who decided to quit to go home and raise kids.

In my previous job I asked my dev lead from Mumbai to help me with interviewing candidates to join us on a project here in California. On a conference call with a female interviewee, he asked if she was married. He hadn't asked the previous two candidates (males) that we'd interviewed.

After the call I told him that was illegal here and he can't ask that question in an interview. He was shocked. He said Indian women are expected to devote time to their families once they are married. Single women have much more time to devote to the project and would be much better for our team.

I've known that women have been discriminated in this way for a long time, but I had never encountered it personally until then.

That was my first thought. "Isn't this illegal????"

Federal laws that prevent discrimination as an employer don't apply to investors.

I meant in the case of Dave Ramsey. That guy is crazy.

As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with marital status, ie married or single. It has to do if the person is crazy. You can hire or not hire people based on personality and fit with the company, so I'm not sure why the spouses personality and their relationship fit for the company would be off limits.

It obviously does discriminate against people by marital status, because if you're not married, you're not liable to be rejected based on the spouse-dinner filter.

It's a little like suggesting that you're not filtering based on religion if you ban yarmulkes.

I'd say its closer to finding out the single guy is in a gang and since he spends time with crazy people you don't want him. But I guess your point is at least a bit valid. That being said, it seems only a few states have a problem with using married status in hiring.

I was just thinking about this today. To interview a potential co-founder I'd have a meal with the person and their SO. Then I'd observe the dynamic between them. Does the potential co-founder treat the SO poorly? Or is it reversed? Ideally they treat each other well. But there's more subtle hints to observe. Do they interrupt each other? If so what's the fallout?

The point is to assess the person's "people skills." I think "people skills" or in general "emotional maturity" is by far the most important factor in someone you need to work with on an intense level. Be that co-founder, SO etc.

Or how they treat the staff at a dinner. Many other routes vs making some people uncomfortable that you may "require" a dinner with a SO. If they don't have a SO, what, invite a friend to an interview?

Good point. I wouldn't formally require the SO. I'd just phrase the invite to make it clear that my SO and I would like to have dinner. If they have an SO but don't bring them that's another potential signal (could be good or bad).

The whole idea some people have of meeting a cofounder a few times (especially in an artificial environment like a hackathon) and then making an all-of-nothing decision is flawed, IMO. The best process is to spend a LOT of time with the person, and work with him on progressively larger projects. Yes, how they interact with people is an important factor, but I'd try to spend many months (or years) on the process, not a few meals.

To sort of support this, I know a VC that won't work with any divorced person until two years after the divorce. He says it takes that long to get back on course. And he has been through one, so he knows.

I understand that investing in a person is very different from employing them, but this still creeps me out. It would be disturbing to see this become another valley meme (it is probably illegal to discriminate against employees based on marital status, for what it's worth).

For a place that exists because of an engineer field, the Valley seem pretty prone to cargo cult thinking, fads, and superstition.

I get your point, but there a lot of non-engineers in this business. I'm also not sure that engineers have that much of an edge in avoiding cargo cult behavior over other professions with a similar overall level of education and compensation. I'm talking about engineers as a class, not an idealized Engineer.

Was not in the valley; actually in the midwest.

And this was entirely in the context of a startup.

Wow. Getting divorced seems rough enough already; sucks to be judged unemployable on top of that.

Was only in the context of a startup.

I wouldn't take on a cofounder/exec hire/major investor without spending a little time with them and their partner. Not because I think I'll detect some red flag, but because my wife is great at reading people and might observe something important.

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