Why is competition a diversity problem? To me, the idea that aggressive competition selects for a specific age, gender, or ethnicity is itself problematic. Not to mention that I think that's not true.
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.