Ask HN: Where are the gays at?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1809929

by stevenp • 16 years ago

29 34 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I posted a message on the Startup School Fridge wall looking to see if there were any other GLBT entrepreneurs going to the event, and got no reply. Working as a software engineer, I'm generally used to being the "token gay guy" at the office, but I'm curious as to whether any of you guys (or girls) are roaming HN wondering if you're also alone out there. Has Y Combinator ever funded a startup with a GLBT founder? Are there any other GLBT hackers out there? Am I missing some other awesome resource where we should all be metting? :) Thanks!

lzw• 16 years ago

Don't know any resources for queer hackers, but both of our founders are queer.

thetylerhayes• 16 years ago

Chris Hughes, founder of Jumo and former Facebook co-founder/spokesman, is gay. Not a technical hacker, but a hacker nonetheless.

Skroob3• 16 years ago

They're out there. Does it really make a difference?

mcantor4• 16 years ago

Yes, it does make a difference.

Finding a community of "People Like You" can make or break someone's journey into a new field. That means the hacker community at large needs to be equally supportive of queer hackers, or a queer hacker sub-community must form.

I'm all for the former, but let's face it: historically, us straight white males (who make up the vast majority of contemporary hackerdom) are pretty awful at making people who "Aren't Like Us" feel comfortable & welcome. (Hell--we have a hard enough time staying comfortable with eachother.)

corin_5• 16 years ago

I disagree with that stance on "equality".

I want to be outraged when someone isn't treated equally because they're gay, I don't want to celebrate when someone who's gay isn't treated negatively.

nostromo• 16 years ago

Actually I think gays are well represented in tech because geeks tend to be more inclusive than other subgroups. I'm gay, have been very successful in tech, and have never felt unwelcome in the industry.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Bay Area is a mecca for both geeks and gays. Something about the culture here accepts people of all varieties.

However, this is not true for old-school business types. Golfing to network, sports talk, trophy wives, talking about Entourage... all that is very foreign to me and yes I feel out of place around it.

Skroob3• 16 years ago

The way we become equally supportive of each other is by not forming little "sub-communities" based on race, religion, gender, orientation, eye color, hair color, car color or anything else. I don't care if the person helping me with some code is black or gay or from an alternate universe where ducks invented the transistor, but if Mr. Quackers only feels comfortable in his interdimensional hyperduck clique, he won't be able to share his knowledge with me and vice versa.

Basically, why would we want to section ourselves off? We have reddit for that. (http://www.reddit.com/r/interdimensionalhyperducks is still available!)

seiji2• 16 years ago

Finding a community of "People Like You" can make or break someone's journey into a new field.

I can trace my current job situation back to a boyfriend I had in college. Job prospects were low in 2002, but he knew someone who could use a CS intern. The acquaintance created a job for me and I've been in similar fields ever since.

seldo4• 16 years ago

Somebody is going through this thread systematically down-voting every single comment. So, yeah, gays in tech could still use a little extra support.

Skroob3• 16 years ago

Maybe it's that. Or maybe they feel that clique-tracking in this environment is noise and doesn't belong here. Or they had a bad day and are taking it out on HN. Don't assume you know some anonymous person's motivations.

jackowayed2• 16 years ago

Wow, that's terrible. I've offset one bigot :)

IsaacL• 16 years ago

Joel Spolsky and Peter Thiel. I didn't find out they were gay for a long time, though I guess it just shows that it's not/shouldn't be anything remarkable.

ShardPhoenix• 16 years ago

I find the first one really surprising for some reason.

seldo4• 16 years ago

Joel was a real, honest-to-goodness role model for me when I was 18 and still wondering whether tech was a place where you could comfortably work as an out gay person.

He doesn't seem to do much in the way of gay activism -- his blog bio used to mention his partner by name, but it's been dropped. I sort of wish he'd do more, but on the other hand, his quiet, unassuming but unabashed acknowledgement of his sexuality is really the ideal I feel we should be aiming for.

Me, I overcompensate, but that's because I'm still angry about high school :-) It gets better, kids!

starkness• 16 years ago

As for resources, have heard about this organization dedicated to helping lgbt entrepreneurs: http://startout.org.

seiji2• 16 years ago

Lorenzo Thione, the technical co-founder of Powerset (-> Bing), helps run StartOut.

I've been to a few of their SF events, but they are usually sparse on hacker attendees.

seldo4• 16 years ago

Hi! Gay co-founder of awe.sm here. I've considered posting exactly this Ask HN a few times, pleased to see somebody else did.

My side project http://gaygeeks.org is also probably pretty relevant here, if you'll excuse the (second) shameless plug :-) It's not specifically for hackers, but there are a lot of tech people in there, unsurprisingly.

stevenp2• 16 years ago

Hey Laurie! I didn't count you out, of course -- I'm surprised you didn't recognize me by name. :)

corin_5• 16 years ago

Don't personally see any reason questions such as "Has Y Combinator ever funded a startup with a GLBT founder?" matter even a tiny bit (unless there was some reason for a discussion along the lines of "Are YC people homophobic?")

Side note: I'm bi, and still don't care "where the gays are at".

stevenp2• 16 years ago

I think of it as being similar to the questions about other types of minorities as startup founders. The gay community is pretty distinctive, and I'm curious to see if there's any overlap between that and the tech community. Didn't mean to offend you.

corin_5• 16 years ago

No offense at all, perfectly happy for you to be interested - just expressing my view that it doesn't matter, to me at least.

bkudria• 16 years ago

I just disliked The Fridge the second I saw it.

danielnicollet• 16 years ago

There are gay people everywhere and they are welcome here. But does it really matter if there are some here or not?

dmpayton• 16 years ago

While I empathize with the purpose of this posting, I don't personally see why it matters. I want to surround myself with smart people, be they gay, straight, or somewhere in between.

Someone posted that Joel Spolsky is gay. I remember hearing something about that a while back, but had honestly forgotten about it. What matters isn't that he's gay, but that he's smart and gets things done. Same goes for everyone else!

mlinsey• 16 years ago

"Has Y Combinator ever funded a startup with a GLBT founder?"

Yes, definitely. Considering YC has funded hundreds of companies, I expect there are quite a lot of them, but one of the characteristics of hackers is that we tend to talk about ideas instead of personal lives, even at social gatherings, so it's not something that comes up often. The ones I know of were friends of mine before they did YC.

crizCraig• 16 years ago

I'm not gay but the father of computer science, Alan Turing, was.

sp4rki• 16 years ago

Why should it even matter? What unites all of us is a love for entrepreneurship or hacking or both. What difference does being gay make in this field? No one really cares about your sexual orientation in tech. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against gay people, but I find it patronizing that you need to find a "Gay Entrepreneurs" group, because I don't see people looking for the "Womanizing Entrepreneurs" or "Alcoholic Entrepreneurs"... Hell if I go about asking HN where the "Insomniac Entrepreneurs" (that would be me) are I'll get massive down voting, which won't haven to the same question but on the gay angle for political correctness.

Ask HN: Where are the gays at?

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