Comment by obstacle1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by obstacle1 | Hacker News Reader

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Is this a troll? I don't know your history, but I've heard that you have one, so... If this is a troll, someone let me know, please. Otherwise...

>It's designed in a way that makes it very difficult for women to fit in, in any stable and reliable way. Additionally

You can't just make a statement, not provide evidence, and then say "additionally...". You haven't proven your first point.

What sexist assumptions is white-collar Work [sic] culture based on?

And how is it designed such that it is difficult for women to fit in?

>the reason there are fewer women in technology than the more defective culture of banking, is that technology's appeal is to risk-seekers and idealists

This is such a ridiculous claim I don't even know where to begin. First off, I can tell you've never been anywhere near a trading floor, or a commercial bank for that matter. The entire industry is based on risk. What do you think trading is? The calculated harnessing of risk. You make bets. That is all. Pure risk. FAR more risky than technology. And further the proportion of people who are taking risks in finance is MUCH higher than the proportion who are taking risks in technology. There's only one founder per company in tech; there are 100 traders for every founder in a bank.

>To the extent that technology has problems, most of that comes from tech executives who swoop in to take advantage of idealistic (and socially awkward) tech people, then encourage an imbalanced and nasty culture.

Take advantage HOW?

And HOW does that create the problems we're currently seeing in tech?

I don't like the way you speak in platitudes. Completely devoid of content. I don't know who you are, I know you have a reputation, though, and I am ready to weather a storm in the name of truth.

>Is this a troll?

Wow. After reading both of your contributions to this thread you stand our far more as the troll to my eyes.

>What sexist assumptions is white-collar Work [sic] culture based on?

Are you seriously saying "white-collar work culture" isn't sexist?

Pop quiz: how many female CEOs are there in the fortune 100? If you're guess was closer to 8 (the actual number) than 50 would you mind explaining why you would guess that?

>The calculated harnessing of risk.

You're talking about over all risk, he was talking about personal risk of which trading has very little compared to other career options.

>Take advantage HOW?

Must one recount the total sum of all knowledge in every post for you? It's pretty well established how and why tech people are exploited. If you haven't been keeping up then that's your responsibility to educate yourself. Not every poster from now until the sun burns out to keep reiterating our collective accumulated knowledge and experience.

>Pop quiz: how many female CEOs are there in the fortune 100? If you're guess was closer to 8 (the actual number) than 50 would you mind explaining why you would guess that?

You know what's sexist? Assuming that a certain demographic makeup for a role in an industry is makes the culture sexist. The fact that 8% of F100 CEOs are male doesn't indicate sexism without further evidence, just like the fact that only 5% of nurses are male[1] doesn't indicate sexism without further evidence. Where is your further evidence?

And BTW, it's "your", not "you're".

> It's pretty well established how and why tech people are exploited

No it isn't. Nobody even agrees on what constitutes exploitation. I'm not satisfied with the intellectual laziness you're advocating for, sorry.

[1] - http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-statistics

I don't know your history, but I've heard that you have one

Only one? I have, like, at least five or six, my friend.

What sexist assumptions is white-collar Work [sic] culture based on? And how is it designed such that it is difficult for women to fit in?

Dedication and ability are assessed, in most corporations, based on antiquated, counterproductive, and fascistic reliability measures that disfavor, for one example, taking maternity (or paternity) leave or dedicating substantial energy to childcare. For a variety of reasons, some cultural, reproduction and child-raising ends up taking more of a woman's time than a man's.

It's almost impossible to take 5 years out of the career game and come back in with the standing you had when you left. While that's not sexist per se, it's incredibly fucking inhumane, and happens to inflict more harm on women.

First off, I can tell you've never been anywhere near a trading floor, or a commercial bank for that matter. The entire industry is based on risk. What do you think trading is? The calculated harnessing of risk. You make bets. That is all. Pure risk. FAR more risky than technology.

Oh, come on. You really think making $250,000 plus commission is "risky"? Yes, if you have a bad year and the firm isn't doing well, you might get fired. Here, "fired" means you get a shit bonus, and 4 months to find another job, usually a promotion. Yeah, that's risk all right.

I know enough about finance to know what I'm talking about here. I'm not denigrating financial professionals. I've worked in a few Wall Street jobs, and liked most of the people. But it's not risky to work there. Risk (with others' funds) is part of the operational calculus but it's not personally risky to be an employee.

Sure, there's financial risk (again, with others' money) involved, but you have much bigger risks as a technology founder. Like losing your savings (bootstrapping failure) or risking 3 years of your career on something that turns into a no-name dud. Or you could do a great job, get screwed over by partners or investors or management, get fired with no severance and your stock diluted in some perverse way. Shit like that happens.

Playing games with other peoples' money (and getting a resume/credibility boost no matter what happens) isn't nearly as risky as putting 3 years of your life into something that might wreck your career for reasons that aren't your fault.

Take advantage HOW?

There's a set of very talented people who have no sense of their real worth, crappy negotiation skills, and an idealistic willingness to work long hours. Most of VC-istan is about turning them into pure gold for well-connected investors and useless executive implants (read: VCs' well-connected, underachieving friends). Who do you think is paying $2 million for small houses in Silicon Valley? Not programmers with their 0.03% slices of things that got beaten to shit by multiple liquidation preferences.

I know you have a reputation, though, and I am ready to weather a storm in the name of truth.

Good for you.

You write in such a protracted, drawn-out fashion that it is hard to understand what you are saying. Please permit me to clarify.

>Dedication and ability are assessed, in most corporations, based on antiquated, counterproductive, and fascistic reliability measures that disfavor, for one example, taking maternity (or paternity) leave or dedicating substantial energy to childcare

White-collar work inherently discriminates against women because they could possibly get pregnant. Is this what you are saying?

>You really think making $250,000 plus commission is "risky"

Yes, that is why people are hired at such high salaries. Because they do well for a couple of years and then flame out, never to work in the industry again. Again, you are clearly far removed from the industry so I don't fault you for not knowing how compensation works in said industry. But it isn't like you're walking into a golden ticket. If you don't meet bar, you don't get your bonus, which is more often than not the bulk of your "salary". And then you get canned. No remorse. that is risk.

>it's not personally risky to be an employee.

I don't understand how you can say this if you've actually worked for Wall Street firms.

>Like losing your savings (bootstrapping failure)

Smart founders don't tap their savings dry on an unsure bet.

>Playing games with other peoples' money (and getting a resume/credibility boost no matter what happens) isn't nearly as risky as putting 3 years of your life into something that might wreck your career for reasons that aren't your fault.

Except that it is way MORE risky. If you start a company and fail, at least you can say "I started a company and failed" and the Silicon Valley Brigade will give you a job as a Rails programmer. If you fail slinging options, you're never working in that field again. Literally.

I agree with your assessment of VCistan, now that you've expanded on it.

"If you start a company and fail, at least you can say "I started a company and failed" and the Silicon Valley Brigade will give you a job as a Rails programmer."

Haha, this happened to me exactly. I didn't even know Ruby. Or Rails!

Your point about the fate of failed options traders does not gel with what I've seen. Yes, you get canned if you do poorly. Sometimes, just for being unlucky. (Startups work that way, too. Every job, these days, does that.) Also, it's correct that bonus is most of total compensation for top people-- sometimes over 90%-- which means not getting one really blows, but Wall Street salaries aren't exactly bad. If you were expecting a $3 million bonus, on top of your $250,000 salary, and got a Goose Egg during Comp, then are canned a month later with 6 months' severance, well... my heart bleeds for you. You've got half a year to get another job and, unless the market's completely fucked (cf. 2008) you'll get a promotion. Failed trading options? You'll trade something else if you want to trade, or you can move elsewhere. VCs will fund anyone with the Finance Stamp of Approval, at least in New York. Foursquare for ostrich farm? Here's your rocket fuel, now hire some ninjas and move the needle.

Personally, though, I wouldn't want to be a trader. Quant is as close to that game as I'd want to go. I've seen what traders do and it doesn't look fun. It's not professionally risky, but it's still very stressful. I'll give you that.

Sure, you can get another job after a failed startup, but usually as a subordinate, and that's viewed as dishonorable after 35 and untenable past 40. If you fail as a derivatives trader, VC-istan will let you be a founder. Sure, you're going from $250k plus a possible 1000% bonus to $200k and 15% of a startup. Again, my heart bleeds.

>>Dedication and ability are assessed, in most corporations, based on antiquated, counterproductive, and fascistic reliability measures that disfavor, for one example, taking maternity (or paternity) leave or dedicating substantial energy to childcare

>White-collar work inherently discriminates against women because they could possibly get pregnant. Is this what you are saying?

I think what he's saying is, actual experience is worthless. The person that has performed an action 100 times is exactly as qualified as the person that has performed it 10,000 times.

Whether you were coding (or doing open heart surgery) for 20% vs 80% of the last 5 years is not relevant. If you have a computer science degree, or a medical degree, that is what really matters. The entire concept of estimating ability based on whether you have actually written a significant amount of code, or have actually performed a significant amount of medical operations, is a flawed concept.

I think that's the essence of what he's saying.

It's almost impossible to take 5 years out of the career game and come back in with the standing you had when you left. While that's not sexist per se, it's incredibly fucking inhumane, and happens to inflict more harm on women

This is not good, I agree with that, but how can it be different? After 5 years off, your lost track of everything that happened, you're 5 years older and 5 years rustier, and, most importantly, somebody else took care of those things you were taking care of - you're not needed as you were when you took off. Now, in big impersonal bureaucracies, this can be not so big a problem, but in most places it is.

IMHO the solution to the actual problem can't be in just saying "that's not a problem, it only is because of sexism/tradition/whatever". By the way, I don't have a solution.

> It's almost impossible to take 5 years out of the career game and come back in with the standing you had when you left. While that's not sexist per se, it's incredibly fucking inhumane, and happens to inflict more harm on women.

I couldn't hire someone who had five years without any practice in their trade to most of the positions I hire for.

You seem to be implying that I shouldn't even be considering that in the past 5 years, between two applicants, one has been in the trade, practicing and producing work, and the other hasn't.

That different life choices have different outcomes isn't sexist.

"Playing games with other peoples' money (and getting a resume/credibility boost no matter what happens) isn't nearly as risky ..."

Changing the subject a bit...

Having been a trader, I think that's a major problem with our system. A trader today rarely has his own skin in the game. Or even the firms skin in most cases. It's hella easier to make VERY risky bets with other people money.

"The entire industry is based on risk."

The entire industry is based on a business model which only a monkey could fuck up, yet the industry manages to fuck it up (as Taleb writes).

You do realize that all these risk computation are totally bogus and led to big trouble in 2008 right?

And that there's no risk because when the shit hit the fan bankster simply go say they're too big too fail and get bailed out.

And at that point they're effectively on life support and, still as Taleb is saying it, they should shut the fuck up.

Don't talk about risk when the only risk is being bailed out by public money once you, of course, miscomputed the risk.

Wanna talk about all the banks in the eurozone that needed a bail out in the recent years since Greece defaulted because they didn't correctly analyze the Greece state default risk?

Hint: it's far from over and far more fucked up than most people think and more banks will be bailed out again with public money (starting with Cyprus right now).

Yet in 1999 economists did warn about precisely that: about the euro that would lead to both Spain and Greece doing state default. Who listened?

Where in the financial world did anyone listen to that and take that risk into account? Nowhere.

Nobody.

Because public money is always here to bail out.

So please stop telling us there's risk. It's all a freakin' broken model and the entire financial system ain't there to provide liquidity anymore: it's become something out of control trying to shift as much money around as possible in order to generate as much "rake" as possible.

And if these monkeys didn't even correctly manage the risk on something as essential as state debt, when having all the information available to correctly compute such a risk (including warning from economists that defaults would be coming), what makes you think they'd be able to compute the risk on more complicated products, like CDS and all the crazy stuff that this industry simply makes up in order to take a bigger rake on all the money shifted around?

It's a bunch of quants who've lost it: they're out of touch with the real world and can't understand something as basic as the inevitability of a state defaulting when facing the facts.

And you're trying to tell us that they know what taking risk is?

Risk is entrepreneurs putting their personal belongings on the line. Not a bunch of sick gamblers using broken models to try to generate more and more money with the public money that is keeping their employers alive.

"The black swan" is a pretty good book. Of course it's not "nice" towards people like you. Sadly he was right and predicted correctly what would happen, contrarily to all the supposedly "risk takers" you seem to be so fond of because they'd be taking such amazing risks.

Yes, I have also read "the Black Swan". "Fooled by Randomness", too (which is much better), and "Antifragile" as well. Let's all go read some books. I am unsure of the point you are trying to make, largely because you don't make a point in this post.

I like this post.

Business sociopathy is a complex topic but the essence of it can be summed up in 6 words: Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.

So, simultaneously the banks too stupid to understand risks or perhaps tie their shoes, and at the same time the critics are so smart they would have been able to put the rest of the industry out of business with their prescience but didn't attempt such.

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