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Comment by grinich | Hacker News Reader

I don't really care about what was said and what wasn't. PG was probably misquoted. Whatever.

What bothers me more is that damaging PG's public image is seemingly what it takes for him to prioritize writing an article about female founders.

I don't think YC needs to have affirmative action for gender; it would neither be fair or that effective. However, I think they're in the perfect position to inspire younger generations to start hacking. And this must specifically include girls.

My cofounder is a woman, who was contributing to Debian at age 15. Our first employee is a woman, with a MS from the operating systems group at MIT CSAIL.

There are lots of women hackers out there, but none of them are partners at YC. This press is disappointing, but not unexpected.

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YC has 3 female partners.

http://ycombinator.com/people.html

Sure, but none of them are "hackers" in the current context.

Carolynn is a lawyer, with a bachelors is in political science.

Jessica previously worked at an investment bank, and has a BA in English.

Kirsty is an accountant, and although she holds an MEng in electrical and information sciences, it's not clear that she ever worked as an engineer.

This discussion is about young girls hacking with computers, which (I'm assuming, given their bios) none of these women did at that age.

I'm just disappointed that YC doesn't have a woman partner with a CS degree of any sort.

I think it's unfair to describe those women as non-hackers without knowing them well.

FWIW, pg can be described in a similar (limited) manner to argue that he's not a hacker: a venture capitalist with a degree in philosophy.

And I don't think pg meant that you have to be hacking since age 13 to be a "hacker" (it was an extreme example), but that you have to be passionate about it.

From his essay:

> What I was talking about here is the idea that to do something well you have to be interested in it for its own sake, not just because you had to pick something as a major.

What's with all the Academic credentialism? I've just read the entire thread and there are an incredible number of people who seem to think whether a person should be taken seriously or not is largely determined by if, what and where they studied in college.

http://paulgraham.com/colleges.html

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