Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

We want to fund more women because it's the right thing to do, but we're not doing this for diversity's sake alone. We want to fund more women because we are greedy in the good way--we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women.

This is a huge thing that people seem to ignore when arguing "against diversity" (I put that in quotes because I don't think anyone actually argues against diversity -- they couch it in terms of meritocracy and egalitarianism, saying that the best people should succeed regardless of race and gender, it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.) I think Sam does a great job of presenting this as a thing of 'greed' -- or, more charitably, economic rationality.

In my mind, there are only two real possibilities (or, perhaps more realistically, two ends of a spectrum):

1. The VC ecosystem, as it stands, is almost completely unbiased and fair-minded with regards to gender and race. The massive disparities in terms of funding and founder backgrounds reflect that.

2. The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil; in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of founders, startups, and opportunities.

"it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male"

Yes, and? For example, best programmers are overwhelmingly white and male, because majority of programmers are white and male. (Not sure about race, but it's probably true in Western countries). The majority of people interested in founding technology startups are probably white and male, and therefore the best people for starting a technology startup are white and male. You comment implies that it's wrong to state that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male, if you don't imply that, please make it clear.

If women are as skilled as men in, say, programming, then majority of best programmers are male.

>2. The VC ecosystem has some pretty systemic biases and prejudices (this is not to say that startup people or programmers or anyone is particularly evil; in fact, almost everything has systemic biases and prejudices), and as a result the current landscape does not reflect the best possible set of founders, startups, and opportunities.

There's a third possibility: women and non-whites in Western countries are less interested in applying for venture capital. If that is the case, then in an equal world venture capitalists should invest less in startups founded by non-white women, because the majority of startups seeking venture capital are founded by white males.

The overall point is that you need to fix the root cause, not the effects of the cause. As long as women and non-whites are minorities in groups of people such as tech students, you should see less women and non-whites in tech student related phenomenon, such as technology startups.

This reminds me of all these communities like "AngularJS women", who try to get more women into AngularJS. I think that's pointless. Once 50% of software engineers are women, and once women have exactly the same interests and values and beliefs as men, you'll find that 50% of AngularJS developers will be female.

> "Yes, and? For example, best programmers are overwhelmingly white and male, because majority of programmers are white and male."

Understanding of this point is perhaps facilitated by also mentioning that the worst programmers are also overwhelmingly white and male, for the same reason.

You haven't seen bad programmers have you? Trust me they are not white :)

None of them are white? I have plenty of anecdata to the contrary!

Are they, though? I wish I could just agree, but inconveniently the three or four strikingly terrible programmers I've encountered don't conform to this. (And the worst of them, who I only knew as a name on an @author tag, I had assumed to be male (and felt a kind of relief about it - "I'm not being sexist, worst of all is x and he's a guy"), so this isn't a case of prejudices clouding the assessment).

My comment is more of a statement about what you should expect if competency is evenly distributed in both populations, but one population is larger than another.

More competent people and more incompetent people would be expected from the larger population, if competency is evenly distributed.

> The overall point is that you need to fix the root cause, not the effects of the cause.

Part of the reason why women are less likely to become programmers and strartup founders is because of the lack of role models. Successful role models serve both to change ingrained cultural biases, as well as to inspire and encourage underrepresented groups to consider participation in new fields. There is no clear cause and effect, but rather a feedback loop (what we see affects our biases which then become even more entrenched). This is exactly the reasoning behind affirmative action, and why any fight against cultural biases should be at all levels.

as a 3rd-generation minority female entrepreneur, i can attest to this. however, even with those powerful role models, i had (and have) to fight a fairly gruesome battle.

fortunately, i am a warrior and don't really know any other way. otherwise, i'd have given up long ago.

>Yes, and?

Yes, and it's not a good thing for the entire industry to be dominated by a certain group, because then the industry will end up only serving the needs of that group.

There's a huge gap in the market if no programs are coded for non-English non-males. You're argument is quite a silly one to me as clearly it's not that big of an issue, people can normally make things for a different target market to themselves by testing it with their target market.

If you truly believe that large sections of the the market are not being served then I'd recommend that you start targeting them, they are clearly under-tapped.

> Once 50% of software engineers are women, and once women have exactly the same interests and values and beliefs as men,

I'm struggling to interpret that sentence in a charitable manner. Could you clarify what you meant? Are you saying that, when it comes to development, male values/interests (whatever that could possibly mean anyway) are the only ones worth having and that women need to conform to them?

No. He's just making fun of the idea that men and women should be identical and should be 50/50 on everything.

In actuality women and men do different things and have different interests. It's kind of crazy to pass up a better person just to get more women/men hired or to do something.

If you have to hire 10 people for a coding position and you have 100 applicants (10 male and 90 female) but the 10 male applicants are better (more qualified and better for the job) than the 90 female applicants then you should hire the 10 male applicant. There is no reason you should try to force it to 5 males and 5 females or even 9 females and 1 male. Just hire whoever is best regardless of gender.

Unfortunately, this kind of attitude (with which I wholly agree) is being criticized more and more.

Through contempt for the concept of meritocracy (even as an asymptotic ideal), and growth in identity politics, more and more people seem to view diversity and social engineering goals as more important than getting the best team in place for the job.

Maybe that's fine for a sclerotic bureaucracy, but for a startup in which everyone's effort counts, a single marginal hire is like a cancer - you simply can't afford it. Hiring needs to be focused on getting the best people for the job - diversity will arise as a consequence.

It's worth considering bias though. Do the people in charge of hiring fairly assess the skills of an applicant? I suspect that orchestras in the 1970's would have claimed to be meritocratic in their audition practices, but the success rate of female auditionees quintupled with the introduction of blind auditions. [1]

In the case where you've hired 10 males out of a pool of 90 females and 10 males, it's not unreasonable to suspect that maybe something is wrong with your hiring practices, is it? It definitely could be that everything truly was based on merit, however there could be biases in the hiring process of which you're not aware. Could this be what most of the people that you see as having "contempt for the concept of meritocracy" are actually thinking?

That said, there are good and bad ways of dealing with these sorts of issues. I generally dislike affirmative action like solutions, much for the same reason that Justice Clarence Thomas dislikes affirmative action. Solutions like blind auditions, that attempt to remove the biases, rather than negate them, are far better.

[1] - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5903

The example was a pretty extreme one (deliberately, I suspect). In that case, where group "A" outnumbered group "B" substantially in the candidate pool, and yet ALL the people hired were from group "B", it would be perfectly reasonable to suspect bias or various other factors than pure merit, unless a perfectly objective and fair process were used. Obviously few real world examples are that clear cut.

If the "anti-meritocracy" people simply want people and organizations to be less arrogant about believing they have a perfect selection process, I think that's a good thing. The biggest issue I have with the "anti-meritocracy" teams is this: the language that many people use seems calibrated to shame people for even using the word, or thinking of meritocracy as a ideal or target to aim for.

Anyone who's ever had to hire people for a startup is unlikely to feel terribly arrogant about their process, though - in my experience, people try to make it as systematic as possible and then improvise within that. Certainly, any adjustment to process that makes it less susceptible to prejudice or bigotry is a good step.

Obviously, "merit" is a function of a person's innate ability, education, effectiveness and fit in a particular role, and a million other factors. It's not an exact science. But it's a good thing for an organization to decide, at minimum, what does "merit" look like for this particular role or hire? (And, more broadly, what traits of "merit" are shared across the whole organization?)

The dictionary definition seems benign enough: "A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement". I'm sure people would agree this is better this than racism, sexism, or straight up politics.

"...it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male."

So then why not also include some initiatives to encourage more Asian, Hispanic, and Black men?

Perhaps because woman are the fastest "big" gain they can do? There are lots of woman in the world (far more than any minority group), yet very few doing startups.

It's the biggest market inefficiency.

edit: You could also argue that the diversity in thinking and approach you'll get from woman could be very high. So perhaps they'll be more likely to start new kinds of companies in untapped markets.

There are more women in the world than pacific islanders, but if we only address the women aspect, are we not going to end up recruiting primarily white women? If the field is currently friendly to white men, and we make it more friendly to women, we wind up with white men & white women, not white men & all races of women. Right?

  > ... but if we only address the women aspect...

Who's arguing for this?

Do something about it then. The author of this article is seeing a way to help change the status for women. You could do something to help change the status for pacific islanders.

I'm not Sam. I haven't anywhere near his clout, nor am I even in that field. Nor are there more than even a tiny, tiny handful of pacific islanders in my town. I may have met two?

Sam didn't start this in a vacuum. He started it after women in the tech community laid a lot of groundwork educating the community about gender diversity problems.

Are there specific things the technology community could do to open the doors to the Pacific Islanders community? I'm sorry to say, I don't actually know the answer to that. If you do, write blog posts and meet with people and try to organize other people like yourself online and work to educate the rest of us on what we can do. I absolutely think there would be plenty of people who would be more than happy to help tackle these problems if someone led the way.

But if there's no one out there already leading the way on a cause that's important to you, the absolute best thing you could do is to try to do it yourself. There's an old slogan, "Be the change you want to see in the world." It makes a pretty good point.

There are groups that cater to teaching women and girls how to code, with the strict exclusion of men despite women continuing to outpace men in college enrollment (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/08/2011-gender-hig...). I have no problem increasing diversity but I take exception to ignoring other race/gender makeups that are clearly under-represented in tech/startups especially those who have little post-secondary education (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/08/2011-gender-hig...).

As one of those 'privileged' minority males, I shake my head.

I suspect you'll get a two-fer: Asian, Hispanic and Black female founders.

FWIW, living in SF, I've met more Asian female founders (including those who went through YC) than male black founders (one maybe?).

That probably just reflects the racial demographics of SF independent of gender:

    390,387 Whites (48.1%)
    267,915 Asians (33.3%)
     48,870 African Americans (6.1%)

No, zip codes are irrelevant. Whites and Asians dominate elite schools because they are wealthier and/or more focused on money. Black in general are not seen as "attractive" socially (if you look at the data from dating sites, for example), whereas whites and asians are disporportionately so (at least for the females). So, if you combine the social dis-advantages and the educational disparity, you get a very strong anti-black bias. Pretty simple to understand, but hard to fix.

"So then why not also include some initiatives to encourage more Asian, Hispanic, and Black men?"

Honestly I think because the women's issue has been more front and center in attention as well as blog posts. So it's more "de la journée".

There should be. A related question: is it easier to fix systemic biases against women than for racial minorities?

"What is your unfair advantage in the marketplace for .gov-funded work?"

"We're a female minority-owned small business, so we get preferential treatment in bidding."

Actually… http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1430465/tiger-mums...

Is there any evidence that Asian men are under-represented as founders?

They are more likely to have foreign accents, surely

I know that this is just a lame dig at Paul Graham's advice that it's helpful for pitching founders to be intelligible to customers and investors, but I'm also not sure it's true. There's this place called "continental Europe". Also a pretty big strip of Asia called "Russia".

There is a massive bias for white founders (~87%), to the detriment of minorities (~13%). This is masked slightly by the fact that Asians dominate minority founders (12% to 1%). These numbers are "under-representations" in relation to university populations, even for asians. [1,2]

[1] http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capit...

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/how-amer...

None of this has anything to do with my comment.

Maybe that says your comment is off base.

These goals aren't in opposition. But they aren't the same thing.

Women don't launch startups as often as men, and black people don't launch startups as often as white people, but these aren't necessarily for the same reasons, and there's no reason to think that the same advisors and mentors that can help achieve a goal of attracting more female founders would also be effective at attracting more African-American founders.

So it stands to reason that both of these things would be good things to do, but not necessarily as part of the same initiative. And it may be impractical for the same person or institution to launch multiple diversity initiatives at the same time and maintain institutional focus.

So I think the answer isn't to use this as a reason to critique initiatives aimed at attracting female founders. There's no reason the onus for other diversity initiatives should be placed on the people who are already devoting resources to recruiting female founders. Rather, I would suggest that you get involved yourself -- and also encourage others in the startup scene to get involved -- to devote equivalent energy to launching initiatives to recruit founders who are members of traditionally disadvantaged racial and ethnic minority groups. The more the merrier.

Why not judge everyone on a per person basis rather than generalizing in the first place. That is the real problem.

>it just so happens that the best people are overwhelmingly white and male.

No, I don't believe that is the argument.

The argument is "Let's not over-compensate for historical institutional racism/sexism, and, going forward, select the best candidates based on merit, regardless of gender or colour."

You can't eliminate these issues overnight, with a rule or two.

I think the counter argument to that argument was always "can we actually do that as humans?"

The push towards diversity is a straight forward reaction in an attempt to prove "yes we can" by moving the numbers as much as possible as quickly as possible. I'd guess that eventually the pendulum will swing back again. The reason the diversity tactic is used so much is because it's the only tactic that seems to actually produce results, artificial or not.

>"yes we can" by moving the numbers as much as possible as quickly as possible.

(This is a touchy subject. I'm not implying this initiative takes it "too far" or anything of the like...)

I agree, the problem is that over-compensation (pendulum swinging too far) inevitably leads to another party being alienated. Sometimes the people at the margins most affected are relatively powerful and aren't happy with the results. An example being anti-affirmative-action sentiment among white blue-collar workers. This can diminish the effectiveness of the diversity push.

I'm not saying the sentiment is justified; I'm saying it inevitably happens. It's a tough balance. We know that SV and the tech scene is a very male oriented culture. What happens with as that changes? There are bound to be losers.

The problem is it is very difficult to ensure that your selection criteria is totally unbiased when investing is such an emotional, gut based decision. If most founders in the past have been white males, then investors are going to continue to give that group preferential treatment if only because they look like the type that has succeeded before.

I have a novel suggestion to fix this diversity problem.

Women tend to outperform men in the general desirability of occupations[1]. In jobs like veterinary and psychologists, the competition is fierce and highly gender imbalanced in favor of women.

So in order to get more women into other fields like programming, lets favor men for occupations that has high general desirability. This will move men into occupations normally occupied by highly skilled and educated women, and move women into occupations with lower general desirability by which is otherwise male dominated.

Do not be against diversity, support this move today!

[1]: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/gender-societ...

But even in a meritocracy you can only select the "best" from those who are available. There are certainly plenty of people who could have been successful in technology but went into different fields entirely.

> 1. The VC ecosystem, as it stands, is almost completely unbiased and fair-minded with regards to gender and race. The massive disparities in terms of funding and founder backgrounds reflect that.

So I'm a little confused here, since no one who has participated would ever think this is even remotely close to true, I guess it's a rhetorical element.

But I can't quite figure out to what end. Maybe you could explain to me like I'm 5?

"We want to fund more women" because "we want to fund the most successful startups, and many of those are going to be founded by women."

How is this statement supposed to be read? Probably not like this

"We are going to fund people we otherwise wouldn't because they happen to be women and many successful startups are going to be funded by women."

Also, probably not like this

"We want to have 'more than a thousand dollars' because we want to have 'more than a million dollars' and many times 'more than a thousand' is 'more than a million.'"

If that's the case then it would be much better to simply say

"We want to fund the most successful startups and it would not be in our best interest to differentiate founders based on gender."

I read it as , hmmph, you know... the market for men's ideas is probably getting close to being played out and there is probably an untapped market for products made by women... Diversity? Bonus!

I read this as "There are women who would make good founders. If we can find them and nurture them, even if it's more work for us, we're still going to make a lot of money by doing so."

In fact, you could almost look at this as a startup-ish idea - finding an under-served niche, and making money from doing what nobody else is doing.

One challenge is that there are some rational things working against diversity.

One heuristic is "Aim for as diverse a group of entrepreneurs because we don't want to miss any opportunities"

Another is "Fund people I've worked with, or come recommended by people I work with, because word of mouth is a better predictor that resume"

The first encourages diversity. The second discourages it, but is rational. It takes being very proactive to push for the first to win over the second, because you have to actively find something as strong as "Word of mouth from my network" to predict success. Bravo for YC pushing this agenda.

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