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Comment by draugadrotten | Hacker News Reader

> “Women are incapable of making the tough decisions necessary to run a profitable company on low margins.” - CEO of a Women’s Product Retailer

Frankly, I think the CEO was pulling this guys leg and wanted to see how he reacted when his buttons are pushed. That is a situation that frequently occurs in customer meetings and you don't want your rep to blow up in the customer's face.

That said, did you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit? SOURCE: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art...

> You should know this about me. I don’t do well around alpha males.

Yeah, so the blogger can't deal with CEOs and other authority figures. Wouldn't hire him/her either.

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> That said, did you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit?

Proved is a strong word, especially when evidence to the contrary also exists: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2438150/More-female-...

> that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit?

Correlation != Causation. What if women are more likely to start companies in fields where profit margins are lower?

Even if correlation is not causation, that's not evidence that causation is not an explanatory factor.

Okay well...go ahead and prove it then.

Acting like a total asshole but not being one is a silly way to interview someone, but if true the interviewer should have made the deception clear before letting the interviewee leave. Anything else reflects too poorly on the interviewer and the company.

Yeah, so the blogger can't deal with CEOs and other authority figures

You've mistaken "hyper-competitive dickhead" for "CEO" and "authority figure".

Pretty funny, because "Google For Entrepreneurs" has spammed my G+ timeline all week with studies on women led companies making more money. Well actually not studies, just infographics making that claim. Glad to see some counterexample - I think it is always naive to assume "just put a woman on top and the company will do x% better/worse".

Both claims might be true, it could very well be the case that women-led companies have higher revenues than average, but re-invest more of their profit margin in the workforce than average.

Maybe - I actually don't think it's very interesting, because I doubt "women" are the deciding factor. It seems more likely to me that women prefer certain types businesses, that for random chance did well in recent years (ie Social Networks vs mining or car manufacturing).

I dug up one of those papers, by Credit Suisse, and it was exactly as I thought: counting from 2006 onwards women led companies performed better than others. But if women were the factor, why didn't that effect show before 2006? (Not sure if it was exactly 2006, but some recent year). It's well known that if you are allowed to pick the time frame, you can make any investment look good ("if you bought stock x in year y, you would have tripled your investment in 10 years" - but you would have lost everything in year 11...).

It's actually not that easy to distinguish "test" from "jerk/idiot" in an interview ...

> you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved

Just a minor nitpick, studies don't prove anything. Even experiments (in Physics) don't prove anything unless different people can reproduce them repeatedly. But (statistical) studies prove nothing at all, they merely hint at a correlation.

Minor nitpick of your minor nitpick:

Statistical studies do measure something. The parent comment didn't claim the study proved causation, just correlation.

> that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit

If this quote doesn't claim causation to the common person, then I don't know what does...

What if I told you there are standard meanings of "prove" that aren't so strict?

At the risk of jumping into a flame-pool...

That study is interesting, since it seems similar to studies indicating women don't negotiate for higher salaries as often as men do.

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