Diversity and Startups
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
Ivy League Parents -> Private School -> SAT tutoring -> Ivy League College -> Investment by Ivy League VC -> Acquired by Ivy League Tech Company
vs
Poor parents -> Shitty Public School -> High School Drop Out -> Programmer at Ivy League Tech Company (maybe)
There's a reason most of the big tech companies are from Ivy League graduates.
And you can't ignore how many successful startups only happened because parental financial support. Someone working paycheck to paycheck to pay for college isn't going to have a reading week to hack with. Or can't borrow $40k from their parents. Or live at home for free.
The game is ultimately fair - even a dog could get funded with traction. But there really is a class system in the U.S. and it is probably the biggest bias in the system.
My actual intention was to get the OP to move away from an emphasis on the "Ivy League" brand, which I think people need to stop putting up on a pedestal.
I think aspirations are likely to play a big role here, after all people tend to judge their successes relative to their family and close friends. So for a kid from a poor neighbourhood (who's more likely to be black), getting a good job with a decent salary and benefits is a great success already and running a startup is too risky so there's less incentive.
If you come from an upper middle class family and all of your siblings are training to be lawyers or doctors then that ups the ante a lot in what your "floor" to success is, and like you say risk is reduced because of family so starting "the next facebook" looks like a more attractive option.
Also since we are talking about aspirations you have to consider the "all or nothing" attitude that's so common these days, and I see a lot of people particularly in the lower classes who are far more motivated about the tiniest possibility of a quick jackpot than a slow but steady improvement in their lives.
But then again that way of thinking might have more to do with the way the middle class (the "steady option") is disappearing than with a social fad.
I agree that it sucks to be poor, but I don't know how much startup funding can fix that.
For starting and running a startup, maybe, but those forces are much less in effect when the upper classes are doing the hiring. As we see at a lot of these companies, they aren't really reaching very far outside of their cohort. Cue the culture-fit debate.
The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.
I don't think this is what you mean.
I knew exactly what the OP was driving at even if the details were off, and only after you point out that Ivy League is an athletic conference did it occur to me that that would be where the current colloquialism came from.
Words mean things.
It's great that YC has taken steps towards gender equality, but I don't think they have much of a say when it comes to inequality in education.
For example, MIT is ~46% female. Stanford is 47% female. (I won't be pedantic about the Ivy League thing.) These numbers look absolutely nothing like the small end of the VC funnel.
(That doesn't really affect your chance of startup success, but surely it affects your inclination to go into one.)
The issue of "class" doesn't have nearly enough political clout in this context in order to get a mention from any important person. Gender does, though, for obvious slightly related historical reasons. The only hope that class itself can get a mention is by piggy-backing on the issue of gender.[0]
The topic of Diversity in Tech shows that 1) hacker types aren't as unsuspectible to being political as they historically may have thought, when their career and businesses start to be influenced by their own reputations. 2) Diversity seems to largely just inspire sympathy for whatever issue which has enough political influence to actually be kind of threatening, which seems to be very convenient.
My point is; assuming that there was never any movement or awareness of inequity in tech, what would have been the prevailing attitude? Well, it seems that "meritocracy" is big in tech culture. What is the attitude now? Meritocracy, with the stipulation that your gender can cramp your style. Has the attitude changed all that much, really? Or has it perhaps stayed the same, with some lip service in the general direction of gender issues for good measure?
"Tech" in this context refers to tech in America. That makes for an industry (at least a subset of which) that is known for having the belief in a meritocracy, which exists in a country that historically has had a strong collective belief in meritocracy. The archetypical hacker is someone who at a very young age felt the calling of the computer[1] and learned himself (or herself!) to program with some cruddy manual. I am not exaggerating by calling it a calling: if you didn't feel that calling to program your calculator in the second grade of elementary school, then tech was probably not for you, whether you're a boy or a girl. Now? All of the sudden environmental factors like culture, opportunity, other kids who tinker with computers, matter. Wow, all of a sudden tech types are starting to talk in sociological terms rather than black and white simplifications.
Old-school hackers (those who have the experience and connections to be political) haven't struck me as being very "sociological". To them, there are four kinds of people: hackers, java developers (snorts), managers, and everyone else (mostly tech-illiterates). Hackers are self-made, passionate people. Java developers and managers are sell-outs. Tech-illiterates just don't care. Hell, they probably don't even have a job they like, passionless peasants. But wait, now you're saying that passionate developers can come from all walks of life, that there isn't some universal Calling of The Computer that happens around ages 5-8, that passionate people can be scared away/demotivated by things incidental to tech and not just power through it, that not everyone has had access to a computer since a young age, that a professional work culture can discourage the people who are working in it enough to quit, even though the deficiets are not really law breaking but discouraging in a subtle, insidious way?
Wow. These hacker types sure get more reflected when their careers and reputations depend on how they look to the outside world, as opposed to when the only people they would risk offending were users of some inferior editor or programming language.
[0] User NaitJones also mentions black men, a class of people who in his experience doesn't get nearly as much air time when it comes to diversity in tech as the usual classes of people.
[1] preferably sometime in the 80s or earlier, to get some creds with the millenials for having hacked on "low spec PCs".
However, I believe making the decision solely based on a person's anatomy is wrong.
Context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879598
I know it's hard to believe, but relative to their proportion in the workforce white males are slightly underrepresented in tech. Additionally, people of color are dramatically overrepresented. It's easy to march under the banner of "men in tech shouldn't act like sexist jerks"—what kind of sexist jerk could object to that?—but the more accurate slogan "we need many fewer Asian males in tech" doesn't sound quite so nice. In fact, it sounds rather nasty. And yet, it's the inevitable implication of increasing diversity.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22094415/asian-workers-now-dom...
Based on my experience, I'd believe it, though the proportion is likely less in San Francisco and more in the South Bay.
Everybody needs to stop with this "white-male" nonsense, which is inherently racist. There is much cultural diversity among what is considered "white" and that is painfully obvious. The "black" American guy and "white" American gal might have more in common with each other than the "white" Italian working in the cubicle next door. This also applies to the vast spectrum of "Asians" whose cultures differ significantly.
And just a personal opinion on something else Sam said
"Realizing that it’s hard to speak with much authority here as a white guy"
Completely unnecessary and I think it would be healthier if people stop this self persecution. (Using the same logic, maybe I can say this with authority because I am an indigenous Australian =D)
For example, take a look at this thread from about three months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7662013
He labeled the submission itself a "troll" (and locked it) because it generated what he called "high-indignation, low-information" responses. Read the responses and decide for yourself. It's pretty clear that "high-indignation, low-information" just means "doesn't support my ideology".
> it would be healthier if people stop this self persecution
If only it were self-persecution.
It's actually persecuting other (infinitely less powerful) white men and boys by implying "You—as a member of the group who will be most negatively affected by the policies we are discussing—are not allowed to object."
That's false. We didn't lock anything. We simply made the post not be on the front page.
Edit: I posted a longer reply, but decided it was a bad idea.
It is entirely possible I was mistaken, but I was under the belief that HN was mostly hands-off when it started. I.e., things other than clear attempts to spam, etc were off the page. Also, I think the focus of the site was narrower and clearer. It was dominated by technology and business with political pieces specifically discouraged. Now, political posts are pretty common. This broadening and blurring of the borders of what's "hacker news" can leave more room for mods to simply boost those they agree with and silence those they disagree with.
The particular article above is disturbing to see suppressed since it's clearly factual, isn't spam or similar and it's about the bay area tech scene, but apparently it's politically inconvenient.
This is merely a theory to explain your observations. I think a more plausible alternative explanation is that the moderators' beliefs about what makes up worthwhile discussion is different from yours.
I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't. Interfering to suppress spam or a flamewar is reasonable but interfering to suppress things which contain ideas you personally disagree with is not.
Similarly I don't have a lot of respect for you downvoting all my comments in this thread and on the previous one we were both on. It's the same principle, just on a lesser scale. I made a valid point in the GP post and was answering Dang's question.
By "what makes up worthwhile discussion" I was referring to a content-neutral or viewpoint-neutral notion of the idea. (The general category of "Not written for the reader's sake" encompasses most of the badness.)
> I generally think it's worthwhile to let the community decide what's "worthwhile" and what isn't.
If HN were decided purely by votes, the front page would consist of outrage, gossip, and fashion, and the site would be unrecognizable. HN has never been decided purely by votes. It has always been a blend of community and moderation—and I do mean always, from day one. If you believed otherwise, you were mistaken; if you thought HN was good, consider why. All that has changed in this area is that we're being more transparent.
You've repeated several times the false claim that we buried that article because we "personally disagree" with it. Obviously, we don't "personally disagree" with a factual article. That would make zero sense unless the facts reported are wrong, and I have no idea whether they were in that case.
The article was two years old. It was posted by a serial political troll whose sole interest (to judge by the account history) is in using HN for ideological provocation. Predictably, that worked. The thread brought us such jewels as "Oh, do fuck off and take your strawman with you". Is that the civil, substantive discussion that HN calls for?
Weighting that thread off the front page was an obvious call. What we did not do was kill the story—the discussion could and did continue [1]. Such is the balance we try to strike. This has exactly nothing to do with our personal politics, though that of course is the first thing, and the cheapest, that we're accused of. Not to penalize such stories would put HN at the mercy of arsonists. You seem to imply that online communities, or at least this one, are robust enough not to be damaged by such provocation. That, sadly, is wrong.
The user in question has a bunch of accounts. One they are careful to use for legitimate purposes; the others just push an agenda. Many have been banned. Of course, when we ban them, they make new ones and accuse us of censorship [2].
Many if not most of the ideological throwaway accounts you see on HN are the work of the same few users. I don't think it's unfair to call them trolls. They've shown up in this thread, too, of course, even posting the same link. I wonder why it's necessary to repeatedly push a two-year-old article. It must be quite a classic.
1. But that didn't stop a second serial political troll from accusing us of doing exactly that, presumably because what we actually did wasn't spicy enough to justify cries of repression.
2. The irony is left as an exercise to the reader.
I really appreciate the amount of detail in your reply. In all honesty, I severely underestimated the level of top-down editorial control on HN from the early days. I had thought that it was basically just PG, that he was too busy to deal with this kind of thing and that the type of discussion was due to the user base having come mostly from his essays. I have been lucky with the much smaller communities on my own websites over the years in that there were relatively few bad apples and only one sock puppet that I knew of.
I must admit, it is very difficult for me not to dislike "softer" forms of suppression even more so than outright removal of posts. This may be due to how I have seen media manipulation manifested living abroad for most my adult life. I sincerely apologize if I've mistaken comments by the OP to mean something other than they did. Once again thanks for the transparency.
Talking about white people or even generalizing about white people is not racist. There is no institutional and systemic power backing discrimination against white people based on their skin color. On the basis of being white, you do not suffer increased chances of incarceration, lack of access to education, worse job opportunities, and so on.
White identity is not the same as Asian identity and the issues facing Asian people do relate to racism. It is a false equivalence to compare whiteness to being Asian.
> Completely unnecessary and I think it would be healthier if people stop this self persecution. (Using the same logic, maybe I can say this with authority because I am an indigenous Australian =D)
There is nothing wrong with a little self awareness of being a member of the dominant social group in tech.
> Talking about white people or even generalizing about white people is not racist. There is no institutional and systemic power backing discrimination against white people based on their skin color.
Unfortunately generalizing about white people is racist. And saying that it isn't, is a "systemic power backing discrimination" based on their skin color.
> On the basis of being white, you do not suffer increased chances of incarceration, lack of access to education, worse job opportunities, and so on.
This supports my original post, I think we should move away from skin pigment based judgements. Also I don't have any references at hand but I recall these statistics being heavily influenced by your socio-economic status. You could replace "white" with "middle to upper class".
> White identity is not the same as Asian identity and the issues facing Asian people do relate to racism. It is a false equivalence to compare whiteness to being Asian
I'm not sure what you meant by this point. But what I meant is that Italian's, Greek's, Irish, American' and Australian's don't fit neatly under the "white" banner and nor do Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian's and Korean's fit neatly under the "asian" banner.
> There is nothing wrong with a little self awareness of being a member of the dominant social group in tech.
"white" is not the master social group of tech nor do people walk around consciously identifying with the "white" group. The Tabs vs Spaces debate does not give a shit if your black or white, extend this to TDD debates, functional vs OOP etc.
Yes, I know racism exist.
> I was just adding a point that is left out of these discussions more often than not. The point is that "white" people aren't unified because of their skin pigment. Europe is a major example and of course the never ending protestant and catholic wars around the globe.
The point here isn't that there are different kinds of people who are white, but rather there is a continuum of treatment, both from individuals and institutions, that white people share. In the US it doesn't matter if I'm from one part of the country or another, having white skin still benefits me in all the ways it would anywhere else. This esp. applies to institutional and systemic things: rates of incarceration, job opportunity, access to education, rates of poverty, etc. are all correlated in my favor. Not only that, but compared to other groups of people I am far less likely to be affected directly by violence based on skin color.
> Unfortunately generalizing about white people is racist. And saying that it isn't, is a "systemic power backing discrimination" based on their skin color.
You'll have to explain a little more, why would a single person's opinion create systemic and institutional difficulties for white people when they currently don't experience that?
Generalizing is not necessarily racist. There is a difference between stereotypes and something like talking about shared experience as a member of a group.
> This supports my original post, I think we should move away from skin pigment based judgements.
People of different races have problems that affect them uniquely compared to races, to not talk about that is to ignore the effect of existing racism on those people. That is not a judgement, that is fact. We have evidence, first hand and statistical, that shows this is true and we should not discard that.
> Also I don't have any references at hand but I recall these statistics being heavily influenced by your socio-economic status. You could replace "white" with "middle to upper class".
Race and socio-economic status are heavily correlated and racism and class are indeed related. However, racism confers benefits and damage that goes beyond class boundaries. Being of a high class may not, for example, protect you from racism at the hands of the police. Being of a low class, for example, doesn't mean you still don't have some kind of privilege or benefit. Moreover, there are many cases in which being white and low class still confers benefits over being not white.
> But what I meant is that Italian's, Greek's, Irish, American' and Australian's don't fit neatly under the "white" banner and nor do Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian's and Korean's fit neatly under the "asian" banner.
Obviously each of these cultures and ethnicities are different. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't shared experiences for both white and asian people and racism plays into that: white people experience less discrimination than asian people as a whole, regardless of ethnicity within those categories. Indeed, for asian people ethnicity erasure and representation is a big deal as their ethnicity is often erased via stereotyping.
> "white" is not the master social group of tech nor do people walk around consciously identifying with the "white" group.
White people are absolutely the dominant race in tech in the US today. Also, people do both consciously and subconsciously identify with and look for white culture signifier in others. Indeed, one of the biggest deals about interviews and hiring in tech today in the US is about culture fit being used as an excuse to look for traits that are most commonly associated with white middle class men. Model View Culture had a whole issue related to mythology in US tech that I highly recommend for more about this. [1]
I wrote more about this here - about over-represented minorities, and self selection: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8088263
Fundamentally, people disagree to WHY certain groups are over-represented - is it mostly discrimination, mostly cultural, mostly self-selection? Discrimination is bad, but how bad - or not - are cultural factors and self-selection? Asians are strongly over-represented - but no one says this is because admissions officers prefer them - there is strong evidence to the contrary - and most agree it is a combination of selective immigration policy and cultural factors on the part of frequently college-educated, first-generation parents. However efforts to take race into account in college admissions no doubt will tend to work against members of this still minority group (in fact - only 5% in the US).
Finally, the attacking white males is basically a motte-and-bailey tactic [1] in which something very obviously wrong, and not defended by a majority of any group e.g. racial discrimination, is then used, strawman-like, to strike down countervailing discussion as "derailing" (no one is saying racism is good). Do white men need to make counter-adjustments in order to correct for previous sins (or sins by others in the same group - see sexual harassment by another unrelated man in the same industry)?
Is that fair to those white men to take steps - perhaps even extending privileges to other groups at their own cost, or is it fair because the discriminated-against groups have experienced injustice? This is the fundamental disagreement in the social justice debate. What makes sense on an individual level can look wrong on a collective level, and vice versa. It just depends on your sense of fairness. The voices on the collective side of this debate are the strongest in Silicon Valley, but a greater amounts of people - and Americans overall - frequently disagree on what needs to be done to address racial disparities e.g. affirmative action or no affirmative action.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...
I would posit that the underlying principles of the tech world share a number of core values with D&I.
Think about the open source software movement (OSS). One crucial perspective that the OSS shares with D&I is that both view discrimination as an impediment to progress. OSS licenses include several non-discrimination clauses (economic, field of endeavor, other restrictions). The licenses go to great lengths to ensure the technology is available to everyone.
When you think about the "Cathedral and Bazaar" models of software development, which one is naturally more diverse? The hierarchical, exclusive cathedral, with its rigid structure, serious gatekeepers, and highly-credentialed leadership? Or is it the open air bazaar, with all kinds of people talking (softly or loudly) in a place known for public discourse. A place where anyone can walk by and join in and become part of what's going on?
My point is that the underlying precepts of D&I are similar to principles that already exist in the tech world.
So this isn't really about embracing D&I. Instead, the tech community needs to start living up to its own rhetoric--it's own values. This isn't about adopting an external issue, it's about a community fully aligning with its own values.
If I didn't run in with the first/second generation of OSS developers, I probably wouldn't like the culture either.
Now get off my lawn!
While licenses may have clauses that deal with some kinds of discrimination, OSS communities are not inclusive and may actually be outright hostile to groups of people. The last Model View Culture had an article about this [1]. Suffice it to say that there is no common community behavior that appears in all OSS groups and what is exceptable in one group vs. another varies quite a bit.
> Or is it the open air bazaar, with all kinds of people talking (softly or loudly) in a place known for public discourse. A place where anyone can walk by and join in and become part of what's going on?
Well this come back to the very common myth of meritocracy in tech, that tech only looks at merit and thus avoids discrimination, personal and institutional. However, meritocracy in tech often simply functions as a way for people to avoid talking about bias or pretending like bias doesn't exist. Moreover, what it means to look for merit is often defined as those statuses and symbols that are comfortable to the dominant group of people in tech, white men of middle or higher class backgrounds.
> So this isn't really about embracing D&I. Instead, the tech community needs to start living up to its own rhetoric--it's own values. This isn't about adopting an external issue, it's about a community fully aligning with its own values.
Again, there is no consensus on values and often people actively advocate that there should be little criticism or reflection on what people and groups in tech value. Without that kind of introspection and discussion, little will change.
[1] http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/leaving-toxic-open-source...
Community or inclusion aspect is a red herring imho. I use opensource software all day every day and barely ever even communicate with its authors.
I'm willing to bet that majority of open source code is just some dude banging it out in his free time with maybe an occasional question or a patch if he's really lucky. No community at all, just a repo, a package, and a few stars on GitHub.
Three are a few brave ones out there, but they're the exception.
Many of us here are idealists. We don't want to work on any product, we want to make a great product. We want to do the right things. We want to use best practices and we want to hold ourselves and others to high moral standards. To make Silicon Valley a place of equal opportunity (regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc) we have to fight prejudices where they exist and we have to hold each other to this high standard too.
This may come at a cost in the short term. Hiring your college buddies is easy. Building a qualified diversified team is hard. But making this extra effort is worth it. It's worth it because there is an unbelievable amount of talent out there that is excluded from SV as it exists today. It's unjust and a tremendous waste of human capital.
Examples include the intense focus on competition and prizes (I didn't think it was a good idea for YC Hacks to explicitly advertise the prize of getting an interview), the fact that many hackathons now have applications processes where more applicants are rejected than accepted (so that the net effect is more exclusion than inclusion), and the general vibe of having to power through the night with redbull while cranking out code.
Most hackathons I've attended I've usually gotten this exclusive, rather than inclusive vibe. From my own experiences, the most exclusive hackathons have been the larger, more monied, more applied-to ones that have more applicants than attendees. The most inclusive hackathons have been smaller, intimate hackathons where the problem has been not having enough attendees!
EDIT (reply to below): I'm referring to the general feeling of inclusion vs. exclusion (of newcomers, people not sure if they fit the mold of <quote>hardcore<unquote> coders, etc.). The next step is to argue that exclusion discourages minorities from pursuing the field.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201210/when-c...
https://www3.nd.edu/~wevans1/fresh_honor_seminar/vesterland....
I am not saying men are more capable, just more likely to self-select into the competition. Read up on what professional coaches of womens vs mens teams say.
(Caveats: you're right that women perform in the industry just fine. Also, many women are motivated and successful in competitive environments, and those women are negatively affected by perception that their gender prevents them from being competitive.)
Otherwise, I reject this argument. I see it as mostly waving off gender concerns. "Let's not address our broken perceptions about the capabilities of women, but instead think about how we can rework the entire fabric of the industry." I'm sure everyone's going to get right on that.
I think that we already have a primarily cooperative industry culture and that stack ranking is a bad idea in general, not because of gender concerns. I disagree with your statement that this is "a deeply, irretrievably competitive industry" though perhaps we mean different things by "competitive". Seeking capital is, to a degree inherently competitive, but even early stage enraptures are more often than not willing to help each other succeed.
Competition is not a fetish. It's not a de facto solution that showers the world with good things. Quite often it makes people do unintelligent things for silly reasons.
It's actually a mythology. And it's perfectly fine to criticise blind adherence to it.
As for women in tech - I'm always fascinated that the pressure is one way. Why don't the fashion or beauty industries - which are hardly small or financially irrelevant - complain that so few men work in them?
I suppose there's a presumption that tech is very serious and important, and fashion and beauty are trivial, silly, and vapid.
Problem is, tech is often trivial, silly, and vapid too - as is a lot of business culture. How many products have been released that fundamentally fail to work? How many projects have veered off in surreal directions because innovation[tm]? How many episodes of Dilbert have there been now?
Perhaps it's the perception of seriousness and importance that's the real problem.
As a side note, fashion contributes around £26bn to UK GDP. It's very difficult to get hard facts how software compares, because the definition can include anyone selling anything from a website. But web design and app development on their own are much, much smaller.
(a) differences in reactions to a competitive environment are partially due to differences in how women and men are treated.
There's also no question that women and men differ biologically. The null hypothesis is thus
(b) differences in reactions to a competitive environment are partially biological in origin.
We thus have joint null hypotheses. Most commentators focus on a for obvious political reasons. Most contrarians focus on b, partially because a receives most of the attention, thus perhaps discounting a unfairly. But both a and b deserve consideration, and the burden of proof is on those asserting either ¬a or ¬b.
By stating that women are "victimized by the perception that their gender prevents them from being competitive", you've implicitly asserted that women are not in fact less competitive because of their gender, but rather are merely perceived to be so. You have thus placed the burden of proof on those who claim otherwise. In other words, by asserting a while discounting b, you have implicitly asserted ¬b as the null hypothesis.
You're in good company, of course: virtually the entire mainstream treats ¬b as the null hypothesis. Indeed, publicly supporting anything other than ¬b in the workplace is not only socially unacceptable, it is probably illegal. Unfortunately, it is also fallacious. The burden of proof is on those who assert that women's biology doesn't make them less competitive in startups and tech.
So, what evidence is there that women and men are equally well-suited to highly competitive environments? Bear in mind that nearly every highly competitive field (not just startups and tech) is now, and has historically been, dominated by men—including in far-flung locations without significant cultural contact. Contra the mainstream, ¬b is an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary evidence.
In the case of sex differences, we need only one empirical result to determine the null hypothesis: male and female members of H. sapiens have different reproductive incentives. The null hypothesis then follows from an application of simple logic. That I do find convenient.
This doesn't mean the null hypothesis is always correct, of course. For example, there is strong evidence that mean IQ for men and women is virtually the same, which suggests the null hypothesis in this case is wrong. Neither need the null hypothesis conform to a "sexist" narrative; e.g., credible studies in cognitive neuroscience show that women are better on average at multitasking and verbal fluency. But the entire mainstream is committed to marginalizing the null hypothesis whenever it contradicts the politically correct narrative, logic be damned.
You are evidently a supporter of the mainstream, which is why you deride my [use of mathematical notation](https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/493116213803757568) instead of addressing the content of my comment. My respect for your technical work is high, though, and I know you're smart and thoughtful. I suggest grappling with the strongest arguments of those you disagree with rather than resorting to such puerile snark.
That kind of competition is generally unrepresentative of the "cooperative competition" of the tech industry.
I got up on stage at the event and said specifically what was acceptable and not acceptable behavior. I think if more hackathons did that there wouldn't be all the atrocities that I read about in Techcrunch.
We've changed our advertising to focus on the first time hacker experience rather than competition, lowered the prize amounts, and have adapted our application to be as blind to experience as possible.
In my experience, smaller hackathons are actually much more exclusive because they tend to be much more homogenous due to the self-selection bias; whereas, at a larger hackathon with thousands of applications, we have the opportunity to focus our outreach to welcome a much more diverse audience.
Making diversity all about gender is effectively playing the topic on "easy mode." Kinda lame, honestly.
i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.
I've written a book on the subject (diverse women/women of color), and have done a good bit of research in this area which is why I am familiar with the numbers and the issues.
Feel free to reach out if you'd like additional information.
Edit: This isn't meant to discourage; the post is a good start. Just wanted to provide some information for next time.
Sure, but you clearly didn't call the piece "Gender and Startups" or "Sexism and Startups." Presumably the broader title was chosen deliberately.
For instance, I'd push back on an essay called "YC and Startups" if it only mentioned one company in one batch, but with a quick token sentence about other batches.
i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.
What can I say? It's a piece that scores points for "addressing diversity" but only substantively discusses the less controversial, more tractable subtopic of sexism.
Excited to read the upcoming, more inclusive posts though.
do you really think we are trying to "score points for 'addressing diversity'"?
i had an early draft titled "sexism and startups", but many people pointed out the last 7 paragraphs apply to racial minorities just as much as women.
That's the net effect; it's not my place to impute a motive.
All I'm saying is that you wrote a piece about sexism and titled it as if it were about a broader topic. And I know that you're usually a sharp, precise writer.
I do recognize that none of this is easy and I think it's admirable that you've addressed this (very thorny) topic. You've said that you plan to address the other aspects of diversity as it relates to YC and I'm looking forward to reading about it.
It's pretty well established that there are lots of people who were born outside the US in tech in general [1] and among founders specifically [2].
Simply noting the same isn't necessarily saying anything.
>"there are people of all colors in this YC batch."
That's great.
Seeing numbers broken out by ethnicity would be a lot more interesting as it would facilitate a more direct comparison to the rest of the recent releases on diversity.
1: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516546/silicon-valley-f...
2: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/immigration-and...
If someone doesn't want to consider blacks for a job, it probably means they don't like black people, and they don't care if a particular black person can do the particular job. They don't want black people around for any job.
The former is more tractable because it involves changing someone's attitude about specific objections about people that they have no general objection to. The latter requires changing a general objection.
They very much do didn't like black people.
This is observably false. In American culture there are many jobs are perceived to be "for" blacks, and jobs that are perceived to be "for" hispanics.
Racism and sexism isn't as different as you seem to think it is. In the modern context (i.e., not guys in hoods hanging you from a tree) it is all about perception and opposing when races/genders stray from their "place" in society.
This is even observable in Asians, who are disproportionately highly employed in tech, but represents but a tiny proportion of leadership positions. Clearly someone thinks they're good for grunt work, but not suited to lead.
This is why people object against even positive stereotyping of races, because ultimately the bulk of the racism we deal with today isn't the foaming-at-the-mouth homicidal-rage type of racism, it's more casual and has everything to do with perceptions of what a race should, and shouldn't, be doing in society. Positive and negative stereotypes both contribute to pigeonholing people into their races.
Try talking to an Asian artist about this. "Positive" stereotypes of being mathematical, analytical, and traditionalist are actively harming people who don't fit the description and are trying to work jobs outside of their racial stereotypes.
This.
Who sets policy? Who makes the decisions? What value system do they use to do it?
And most of all - who benefits from their decisions?
The debate isn't really about diversity, it's about values. And you won't get 'diversity' until those values change and become less dysfunctionally self-serving.
I believe that gender and sexual identification is a pretty easy thing to agree on when discussing diversity, because only a cave man would oppose a more welcoming environment, and balanced representation of women and LGBT.
What irks me, is that I know only a hand full of AA males working on silicon valley and they are all friends of mine, and yet they are addressed indirectly in diversity reports as (non whites) as a way of covering up the abysmal rates of black males represented.
My cynical side says that some of this is the result of a culture that currently does not take black males specifically seriously, due to the representation of them in popular culture, but my more rational side tells me that we as black males bear alot of the responsibility ourselves for understanding where the world is going, and to prepare our careers for tomorrows jobs (technology) and to help advance those that need mentoring to get into CS career paths both technical and non technical. Even so, and taking self responsibility, black males will need to be addressed specifically by the same organizations that are addressing diversity and there needs to be a more forthright and brutally honest admission of what is happening. Black men are being left out of another generation of wealth creation and we need to stem (excuse the pun) the tide of that now.
Again, I appreciate the dialog, and I do appreciate the efforts to open up silicon valley to all.
Just my humble take (engage in rotten tomato throwing now)
> Black men are being left out of another generation of wealth creation and we need to stem (excuse the pun) the tide of that now.
What's your suggestion, other than the normal stuff (engaging with students in HS etc)?
Solutions? tech companies and incubators need to be targeting young black males for immersion and mentoring programs as early as 5th grade. The myth that silicon valley is closed to non CS types needs to be exposed for exactly that, a myth, so that we can start to recruit talented non SC students into silicon valley in areas of marketing, sales, general management and finance. Areas where they are currently.
waiting ten years until the CS rates increase is not an option, because the ship will have already sailed by then on this generation of wealth being created
the whole debate around diversity in silicon valley right now is pretty much marketing and seems pretty cynical and disingenuous from my POV
Unfortunately I have no power in SV. People who do are reading this, and I hope they notice how on-point you are. I'll do what I can in the regions I can effect most greatly.
> A more well rounded approach is needed and that can't begin until we are comfortable with admitting that the job isn't done in regards to young black males
I have a bit more power here, albeit not much. Honestly -- and I'm very ashamed of this -- I've been reluctant to call out the elephant in the room (publicly, using my real identity) for exactly the reason you identify (it's not "sexy" and seems "political" somehow).
Anyways, thanks for contributing. I'm now resolved to finally do the right thing.
edit:
> Areas where they are currently.
I hadn't thought about it like this before, and mostly focused on how to increase AA representation in CS programs. Great idea.
This right here, If it wasn't for my uncle getting me into computers I don't I would ever had thought to see a career in computers let alone development. If we want to be frank I know when I was growing up (only 28), playing around with computers as a black child was something that "blacks didn't do". It was hard to find any blacks computer teachers, mentors or owners that you could access easily in the tech area and the stigma of being a "nerd" was something the culture was about to accept. Of course my parents made sure if it was something I wanted to do that they would make sure I had the best education I could to make it happen.
What we lack in the community is for children to see other blacks in a position and think "Hey I can do that". This was something that we didn't have much back then. I still only know a handful of black developers and it may be wrong to say it but sometime when going to conventions and what not I know I sorta feel like a unicorn, after a while you just go with it but its still in the back of your mind.
Attractive, white, young, well connected males who can afford to live in the Bay Area get a disproportionate amount of startup funding. Diversity is an enormous problem on many different axes.
You use "easy mode" as a pejorative, but YC should be tackling an enormous problem narrowly. There's no other way to make much progress.
That's only a solution for half of the problem on Hacker News. The other half is that most submissions about gender/diversity get flagged to death very consistently, which make it difficult to have any meaningful discussion about these topics.
One of the problems with the topic is that essentially every Hacker News reader feels as though they're qualified to comment on the topic. This translates into massive nested threads that blow up with people arguing the same points.
I'm not convinced that discussion of these issues on Hacker News does anything to push the ball forward. I have yet to meet the person who changed their position on the subject due to an internet argument.
Not many people commented on it. I believe the flame-war detector only takes significant effect when # comments > # points, which is a pretty good heuristic for a flame war that has gone out of control.
This is the fundamental problem. No matter how a story gets made invisible, once it gets in that state nobody knows how it got there and whether or not it was justified. Not to mention that no matter how those stories vanish, HN (by community or systems) is not facilitating discussion on diversity, sexism, racism, etc. in tech.
On the other hand I have had such discussions suck many hours away. I understand that this is a topic very dear to many peoples hearts, but it seems like one of those things that are just not a good fit for HN.
It isn't user flagging that makes meaningful discussion difficult. It's the discussers, unfortunately, who are doing that. I wonder if you may have cause and effect reversed here.
Also, it isn't true that most of these submissions get flagged to death. Some do, but most don't, so in most cases the discussions continue. Moderators also sometimes unkill stories that were flag-killed, precisely so discussions can continue. (An example from last night is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8083596).
Are you wondering whether revoking selected users' flagging privileges would change the balance on these stories? I doubt it would. We're talking about a larger-scale response than measures like that can really address. The community is divided in at least two ways: on the issues themselves, and also on the HN discussions about them.
I used to flag a lot of these stories as soon as I saw them. I stopped doing that and now I wait until the discussion turns toxic - which it almost always does - before I flag them.
I'm not sure that waiting for the conversations to turn awful is a useful tactic.
Also, it would be great to know if there was vote-ring style detection on some of these threads. It feels pretty clear that there is infiltration from RedPill like posters who vote and post in groups, but I am aware that this is strongly playing to my biases and perhaps it's just people who happen to agree with each other.
I don't think I've ever flagged a thread based on the comments (down votes are sufficient), but that's not a bad idea.
Overzealous punctuation. Fixed, thanks.
I have no idea how you folks did it, but you've somehow gotten rid of all those people. I've scanned all the comments here and, though I don't agree with all of them, none of them appear to contain ridiculously specious arguments.
There are a lot of us who think that the code you write matters more than the gonads you carry or the color of your skin. We're quickly becoming pariahs as our workplaces become more politicized.
I don't know why more people don't understand that equality of opportunity is perfectly compatible with inequality of outcomes. Does nobody read Harrison Bergeron anymore?
It's an easy theoretical thing to understand, it would be good to see equality of opportunity in practice.
I find it funny. Some controversial or just plain stupid opinion gets posted, dang responds to it with basically "I disapprove of this post soooo much, and I'm glad that HN does too, judging by the downvotes. Pats HN on the head". Then a whole bunch of regular users reply with how awesome his reply was for telling the poster that he was an idiot/bigot.
I mean, they can of course moderate or whatever in whatever way they want to. I just don't understand why so many are fascinated by it.
sexism & racism isn't something that people do consciously. that's why there's such a backlash against it because most of us can honestly say that we're not consciously sexist or racist.
these prejudices are systemic biases that flow through all of us. it takes hard introspection and compensatory mechanisms from each person to address the structural underpinnings that create the biases. it's really hard. as sama notes, the discussion needs to move towards these underlying mechanisms, rather than getting mired in the stale discussion of whether prejudices exist or not (they do).
Many of the solutions that have helped counter these challenges for me and a lot of my peers have been programs, organizations, and networks that focus on creating a culturally targeted atmosphere. Professional organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers really go a long way in encouraging minorities to pursue careers in technology. And within the startup community, I think programs like the NewMe accelerator meet a very specific and important need. Instead of just corralling minorities into tech companies or startups where they will still be underrepresented, there is a benefit in encouraging them to create their own companies where they can foster a cultural climate that naturally appeals to their ethnic peers.
Something tells me it's not just our (white tech male population) sexism, it's a problem rooted deeper.
If you had a magic wand, women wouldn't be driven out, so there would be more women in professions that have biases against women.
This is a bit strange to say. If there were less barriers for people in tech, there would be more of different kinds of people in tech. Indeed, combating sexism and racism in tech should, in time, lead to more participation from people who currently are not in or leave tech quickly.
> So it's not just her, there's a solid group of (mostly white though) girls interested in math and other similar topics. Where these girls disappear later?
There are a variety of reasons why women do not pursue STEM that may happen at various times of their lives. If you want to know why that happens, you'd best look for the written experiences of woman and the reasons why they left. There's been quite a lot of blogging by some of those women on the subject.
> I understand that I'll learn this in a hard way later, but if there're valid theories out there, may be I'd be able to prevent her from losing interest in math, special video effects, photography, optics, etc.
Being supportive is great, but keep in mind you won't have the same experience as your child, esp. considering they are living in a different time and with a different gender. There ultimately may be, in fact, nothing you can do. But in this case your best bet is to read about the experience women have faced in STEM and share those resources.
> Something tells me it's not just our (white tech male population) sexism, it's a problem rooted deeper.
Sexism is both interpersonal and institutional, the deeper roots of the problem is still sexism and misogyny, among other things.
Programming in a startup is not a great choice for peak fertility (where I am at...thankfully I consciously only want one kid, so I have time to delay)
You're saying "start becoming a woman" as it contradicts being an "IT person", whatever that means, programmer, sysadmin, etc. Why? I want my daughter to become a woman (as much as my wife is a woman, and oh boy, she is. While being a an executive director of a science foundation). But I also want her to become whoever she wants to become professionally, programmer, designer, digital artist, VFX guru, whatever.
I can understand fertility and startup, but statistically, majority of "IT people" work for established companies, not startups. Enjoying all these extended maternity leaves, good health benefits plans, etc.
I imagine that tells us quite a bit.
Honestly, any effort at all is appreciated, although some efforts count for more than others. For instance, the Female Founders conference is fine, but I (and I think a lot of people) probably assign more credibility to efforts that really demonstrate a depth of thought on the issue. Here's a tiny example of what I mean, just from this essay, in fact: I always see VCs and journalists citing to the percent of portfolio companies that have a female founder, and every time I see this, it makes me think they're not really serious about analyzing the dimensions and complexity of the issue ("Out of how many founders TOTAL, not how many companies??"), so the fact that SA at least pointed this out puts this piece above not only other investor posts but also posts by tech journalists -- people whose very job it is to, you know, point this stuff out. That's a tiny example, but to me it counts for a lot more than just boilerplate "we support women blah blah blah." [1]
The same principle probably applies for what kinds of events/projects you sponsor. "Women in tech" conferences are great and all, but the more innovative (and tangibly helpful) the initiative is, the better. I'm not sure what your suggestion/feedback mechanism for this is besides HN and talking to your own portfolio, but it may be worth setting up another channel to get ideas from current non-YC technical women/female founders (maybe anonymously, or at least in a more conducive forum than the HN comment section).
Anyway, just my thoughts. I second the other comments about the importance of race/class diversity, too, but I don't have as much to add on that. (Not that race needed to be tackled in this particular post but the title maybe shouldn't have used the term "diversity" if it's mainly going to be about gender.)
[1] It also affords YC/SA a bit more benefit of the doubt when the post also asserts some, uh, less-well-thought-through things, e.g., that other industries are doing worse than tech on gender issues. (Like who? Who's doing worse, specifically? I literally can't think of a single industry in 2014 America that's doing worse than the startup/tech community [both statistically and anecdotally, as well as based on my own personal experience]. Not even investment banking -- and certainly not medicine, law, academia, or traditional business. It's not helpful to sugarcoat it.)
Probably no one, or at least no industry of comparable size.
But knowing HN, if Sam made an absolute statement like "we are the worst in diversity", the HN crew will spend the entire ensuing commentary self-importantly arguing whether or not we are literally the worst.
That's a conversation best avoided, as it is entirely irrelevant to the point being made, but this community is fucking pedantic like that when their egos are being challenged.
But what percentage of the founders were pg's age or older?
39% accepted applicants were from outside the US.
0% of founders were anywhere near pg's age. Are all Entrepreneurs under 40? Not remotely.
But more astounding: You would never get tech industry leaders saying "men are just smarter" or "whites are just smarter" yet Zuckerberg makes exactly that statement for agism.
And he made that statement at a Y Combinator Startup event.
So re your "obvious reasons", it is not that every one over 40 is rich, it is that few intelligent people over say 40 would be fool enough to go near those organizations given that very public attitude.
Very well. Name one.
So could sourcing from more diverse cities help YC ?
I haven't seen much of the former in diversity releases - just 'diversity' on its own as if the word alone represents both every possible problem and validates the proposed solutions.
It's hard to put into few words, but as I think of it, diversity is neutral - it's just a measure and the goal shouldn't be dragging it one way or another just reducing friction.
EDIT: To be clear, when I refer to friction I mean any barriers beyond individual control which prevent people, whoever, wherever from entering and/or excelling in the field.
Seems pretty simple to me.
For instance, just see the period panties thread. Men don't have the perspective necessary to even comprehend the idea of period panties, let alone build one.
Not everything in tech is that obvious, of course. But it's worth thinking about non-obvious ways in which it might.
http://youtu.be/FTOgm_EMgVI?t=12m8s
These statements always seem really empty to me.
Any diversity discussion will eventually reach the awkward points of over-represented minorities and self-selection, which negatively impact numerical diversity: There are some elements of the industry that will inherently self-select for groups. Asian males are currently the most over-represented group - racially due to US immigration policy and cultural factors encouraging many recent immigrants to go into technical fields and not humanities.
Men tend to self-select into higher risk and highly competitive environments - e.g. startups, hackathons [1] but also ones with negative outcomes - crime, gambling addiction - see the 9-to-1 ratio of incarcerated men to women. (Denying the evidence for risk-taking and self-selection is to me, similar to denying evidence that sexism exists -- on the face of not wanting to confront it).
At what point do these become issues to address? It seems like the desired result is not the strawman, Harrison Bergeron, 100% representative (of what? the US? the world?) demographic, so what is the desired outcome? I'm for eliminating discrimination and bias, but I don't think this will leave us with a 50-50 perfectly balanced startup scene, but it's the most fair. You would either have to change humans' own free-will preferences for risk, or the nature of the industry (with other side effects). If you have ideas on this, I'm open to hearing them.
This is a legitimate question - shutting down discussion here in the name of being "against progress" or trivializing the issue is highly reminiscent of Paul Graham's warnings in "What You Can't Say [2]. The demographic balance of any industry or field is always in constant flux, and heavily influenced by self-selection and non-discriminatory factors. We need to remove discrimination, but also know that a fair outcome in the absence of discrimination - with equal opportunity does not necessarily lead to perfectly equal outcomes.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8087536
"Broadly speaking, competition definitely creates sex-based selection-bias. Men self-select into competitions more than women, and are more motivated by them.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201210/when-c...
https://www3.nd.edu/~wevans1/fresh_honor_seminar/vesterland.... "
Diversity shouldn't be a whatever convenient cause you want to look progressive on.
Honest question: Is there any unambiguous evidence of this?
2) The bias doesn't seem to be that strong to me. This is a simplification, but I'd guess that girls start with about a 10% handicap. Meaning that in close cases, girls lose out. But in the cases of girls who clearly have ability, I don't see the bias against them as something that will prevent them from being successful.
3) A more important question is "what can we do about it?". I agree with the idea to showcase successful women. I think it'll help a little. But obviously it isn't anything close to a solution by itself.
Option 1: If people were less biassed in the general sense, the bias against girls would be reduced. I think that making people less biased in the general sense is an important goal, but ultimately unlikely to happen for some time.
Option 2: As there are more and more instances of girls having success, people will start to view girls as more competent, and the bias will be reduced. I think the fastest way to reduce the bias against girls is to increase the amount of successful girls.
The question then becomes, "how do you do that?". This is getting long so I won't go into this too much... but I think it needs to be active rather than passive. Don't just sit there and wait for them to come to you asking for help. Go out there and inspire and persuade them.
"Girls" is probably not the word you want to be using, by the way.
I'm afraid I may have implied something I didn't mean to imply.
I'm not sure what you mean by "this observation". I didn't mean to imply that people see girls as "literally inferior". Just that people probably think they're less likely to be competent.
> "Girls" is probably not the word you want to be using, by the way.
I'm saying girls to be all encompassing. "Women" just includes adults. And "females" sounds weird, like dehumanizing.
I understand your point that "girls" might have a connotation of disrespect. As if they're young and immature. But I think it's a slight connotation.
Given the context, of me pointing out that girls are being mistreated and that I think we should treat them better, I think the connotation is negligible. In other contexts I could see "girls" being disrespectful, but I don't think it is in this one.
With that said, maybe I'm being too stubborn. I often protest trivial things like this. For the record, if the case were reversed, I would absolutely be using the term "boys".
Edit: Also, I think the big thing is that I don't think of people in their mid-twenties as "adults" (men/women). I'm 21 and I'd refer to a friend of mine as "a guy I know" or "a girl I know".
However, I suspect that most people wouldn't be offended. If I used "women", I think the implication is "age > twenty something". I think the context makes it clear that I'm just using "girl" to be all encompassing, and thus, most people wouldn't be offended.
There is an overwhelming body of evidence that it is offensive to many women.
That said, if you want another reason, how about that it's quite all right to use the term woman to refer to a woman who is participating in a startup even if she has not reached legal majority. It is preferable to call a girl a woman than the other way around.
If there's one thing that a fast and nimble startup DOES NOT NEED, it's HR drones trying to assert themselves into the startup. This is great news for us that compete with YC companies because it means that you're going to be handcuffing yourselves and bogging yourselves down employees who are literally a negative to the bottom line.
> Specifically, we’d like the community to help by downvoting comments that make HN an unwelcoming place to anyone.
In other words, you want to address diversity by stamping out any ideas that are contrary to the modern politically correct BS that most people here are dulled into believing.
However, if you think sexual harassment doesn't happen in small startups, you're not paying attention. At the end of the day, HR is a mediator for the company to protect it from lawsuits. HR can stop a little issue from turning into a big, expensive issue, which is positive for both the company and employees.
My natural reaction to this comment is Plonk.
But I realize that is only perpetuating the problem. I have the luxury of ignoring you. I have the luxury of ignoring whoever I want to. Many people don't.
And maybe that is exactly what you are trying to point out: if we try to solve this by using group consensus to ignore/block/killfile idiots/fools/bigots, what happens 1-on-1.
So in response: I also have experienced situations where HR doesn't really add anything, but maybe someone can come up with a way to do HR.
I don't think it is just politically correct BS.
I happen to think this is not enough but at a minimum I've always found it rather surprising that the money invested in these companies didn't want to protect it from the stupidity that is inherent in most young people. To be clear, I mean this as stupidity of youth, ignorance, naivete.
At bare minimum YC needs to require its founders to be trained in some basic legal 101 stuff since they haven't yet had to learn it on the job in a corporation.
(and hey, If I'm going to make a wishlist, add some leadership training to this, too. If you want to make young people into CEOs you need to teach them how to do it. Building a great product is absolutely NOT synonymous with building a great company. If experience has no value to them in hiring, they're learning that somewhere, and it needs to be corrected by the investors--if not for the morality of responsibility to young people looking to them for guidance, but to vouchsafe their own investment.)
You are walking into an extremely dangerous territory here. If reasonable people can disagree with you on the points you are not willing to debate (such as the widespread existence of sexism in tech[1]) or (worse) that you find morally wrong to debate then those reasonable people will not consider you reasonable - not only do you then lose any chance of changing their perspective, you will also create a schism in the community. This is what has happened in the US over guns, to the point where there is now no hope of reconciliation.
For example I could counter the few well published incident by pointing out that the media cherrypick a few stories and them run with them - what you see in the media is not an unbiased sample. A few stories from a large enough group does not mean that the group is especially sexist, it just means that it has a few assholes in it. We don't know whether the asshole procentage is higher or lower than in the general population and we don't know that if it is higher, whether there is some third-party variable (such as a general disregard for rules) common to both tech people and sexist assholes or whether the causality runs the other way (ie assholes are more likely to be tech guys because they don't work well with people).
Before we bring out the big guns and tear this community (which I highly value) apart, can we please have some independent, unbiased, studies - both as to the extend and effect of sexism and what causes it? Armed with this knowledge, we will be in a much better position to find out how, if at all, we should address this issue.
[1]: There is sexism in any sufficiently large group of people, independent of the field you gather the group from. What is more interesting is how large a percentage of the group is sexist.
If you want to debate that, that's fine, just do it somewhere else. It appears that Y Combinator has accepted the ample evidence of the presence of sexism in tech, and is focusing discussion away from existence, and towards the next necessary steps. Rehashing the evidence of the previous step may be an OK exercise, but it's not the most fruitful step right now.
HN doesn't have to be everything to everybody, it gets to be what it wants to be.
They key here is _unreasonable_. I do not believe it unreasonable to demand evidence to the extend and nature of sexism in tech (as I have seen no formal study on it at all).
Frankly all I am seeing here are the very methods described in What you can't say being used to silence a debate, because some groups use it to run their own agenda.
I'm trying to not be rude here, but my inclination is to tell you to just go look for such studies or run such a study yourself. Nobody owes you a spoon-fed version of reality on your terms when they make their own decisions.
What is unreasonable is saying that normal business decision practices are not adequate to make this particular decision, and instead a formal, "unbiased" study must be conducted.
The numbers are so extreme that they speak for themselves. Several years of 0% women founders, and now 10%.
There's a double standard for evidence when it comes to sexism (and other cultural issues). Maybe it's because some people take it as a personal affront, as if they're accepting responsibility for the actions of others, and it switches into "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" mode rather than "what's the most likely reality here."
Recently there was a string of articles on Language Log about gender disparities in meetings between men interrupting women and women interrupting men during discussion. A surprisingly large number of comments consisted of men denying the evidence. This type of response is endemic wherever science touches cultural issues. An unbiased scientific study of gender disparity may be useful as a tool for finding where to make corrective steps, but it will convince nearly no one. On issues like this, people stick to their cultural inclinations more than the evidence.
HN has decided to move the conversation forward, and I give them kudos for that.
I am not the one who is asserting things, they are. Custom demands that the person asserting something is the one who is to bring evidence.
>HN has decided to move the conversation forward, and I give them kudos for that.
If we run around on hearsay and feelings, how do we really know what is forwards? You could end up damaging the very goal you are trying to get to.
There have been so many studies, blog posts, and anecdotes about sexism in tech. Basic searching for this stuff will get you all the relevant info you need, nobody is obligated to walk you through it if you aren't aware.
I am not aware of any studies, otherwise I would have read them. Blog posts and anecdotes - are useful for acting on individual cases of sexism, but because they are, by definition, limited to one or two cases, taken out of the whole, using them as arguments for widespread sexism is wrong (in the sense of incorrect).