Diversity and Startups

http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups

by dmnd • 12 years ago

160 181 12 years ago

blog.ycombinator.com

minimaxir4• 12 years ago

Specifically, we’d like the community to help by downvoting comments that make HN an unwelcoming place to anyone.

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.

Permit3• 12 years ago

We have no way to tell if they're being flagged by users or setting off the automated system for detecting flamewars.

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.

minimaxir4• 12 years ago

About a year ago, a friend wrote a good post about diversity in hackathons which was submitted to HN and hit #2 quickly, then dropped down to the second page in an instant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495950

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.

king_jester6• 12 years ago

We have no way to tell if they're being flagged by users or setting off the automated system for detecting flamewars.

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.

tomjen36• 12 years ago

I have never seen an interesting discussion on that subject where I came away being smarter or having learned something new.

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.

dang9• 12 years ago

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.

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).

zorpner• 12 years ago

Do people who routinely flag stories about diversity in tech have their flagging privileges revoked?

DanBC2• 12 years ago

{That link returns a "no such item" for me. EDIT: Thanks Minmaxir; not sure why I missed something so obvious}

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.

smtddr• 12 years ago

I would just like to say that I agree that this issue is much less a problem today than it use to be. Before it was such a problem that I started maintaining a list of comments/articles that kept being wrecked by ridiculous comments anytime a discussion around ethnicity or racism. I use to post the growing list in every thread that it occurred and I was generally upvoted so I guess most people agreed.

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.

thrownaway9993• 12 years ago

Do you really want a meaningful discussion, or a discussion where PC opinions are upvoted and critical voices are downvoted/banned by dang?

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?

MartinCron4• 12 years ago

I don't know why more people don't understand that equality of opportunity is perfectly compatible with inequality of outcomes

It's an easy theoretical thing to understand, it would be good to see equality of opportunity in practice.

Dewie3• 12 years ago

Do you really want a meaningful discussion, or a discussion where PC opinions are upvoted and critical voices are downvoted/banned by dang?

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.

Dewie3• 12 years ago

Maybe they are flagged precisely because those topics don't lead to meaningful debates? Take any slightly controversial (or can be spun to be controversial) gender-and-tech issue, submit it to HN: if it gains traction, it will consist of hundreds of posts with two kinds of people who have so little common ground and set of mutual opinions/world-views that they can not do anything but shout past each other. Meaningful discussion? Hardly.

_pius3• 12 years ago

Glad the issue's being addressed, but sad that it dodges race almost completely.

Making diversity all about gender is effectively playing the topic on "easy mode." Kinda lame, honestly.

sama3• 12 years ago

it's really hard to address everything in one post, and i think the issues around gender and race in tech are pretty different. (we did include a stat on international founders, many of which are not white.)

i don't think we're playing this on "easy mode", but i'm sorry you feel that way.

jfc3• 12 years ago

Many people deal with both gender and race issues simultaneously. Non-white women in the U.S. are 18%+ of the population (over 1/3 of the U.S. female population). It's easy to think of gender/race as an either or, but for many of us it's a both/and.

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.

_pius3• 12 years ago

it's really hard to address everything in one post, and i think the issues around gender and race in tech are pretty different.

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.

NaitJones2• 12 years ago

Let me first say, as someone with two children, both girls, I really appreciate the efforts that are going into making CS careers an accessible option for them, and that includes your post and the sentiment behind it. Kudos to you! What continues to irk me is the almost a disregard for black males when discussing diversity. There isn't a single group less represented in CS than AA males and there isn't a single group that has been more disparately affected by the recession.

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)

ritchiea• 12 years ago

I don't think you're playing "easy mode" by any means. It's admirable that you are writing blogs posts about gender diversity in tech & at YC. It would be even more admirable if you wrote about class and race diversity in tech & at YC. Right now it feels like you are avoiding talk of other types diversity in the industry. Though I do agree the issues are different.

shanacarp3• 12 years ago

Agreed. A lot of the race issues are closely tied to class issues. The gender issue isn't.

moe_14• 12 years ago

Came here to say this. I applaud the stance on sexism, but what a mis-titled post.

mrkurt2• 12 years ago

You can't tackle, or even really talk about, all diversity problems in tech startups at once. The reality is that it's currently a "whitelist" (no pun intended) problem, not targeted exclusion.

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.

ctide• 12 years ago

Will all the misogynist trolls still come out to play on this one given that it's a YC post?

gizmo• 12 years ago

This was a well written post and I think it shows that sama gets it. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept, as a post argued a few days ago. This is also the case here. If we all push for a more equitable Silicon Valley then we can make loads of progress in a short time. The rate of progress is more important than how much behind we are.

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.

tomjen36• 12 years ago

Debating how to fix it is important, but debating whether or not sexism actually exists trivializes the problem in a toxic way

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.

sama3• 12 years ago

debating the extent of the problem of sexism is in tech relative to other fields is very different from saying "there is no sexism in tech at all"

epistasis2• 12 years ago

One of the ways that people slow down progress, in startups or in society, is by resisting unreasonably at every step in a series of steps in an argument.

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.

tomjen36• 12 years ago

One of the ways that people slow down progress, in startups or in society, is by resisting unreasonably at every step in a series of steps in an argument.

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.

yumraj• 12 years ago

What about ageism?

whybroke5• 12 years ago

Well, comments raising the issue are almost universally down-voted without comment.

I imagine that tells us quite a bit.

tptacek10• 12 years ago

It does not tell us that all the downvoters believe ageism not to be an issue.

Castlereagh• 12 years ago

People who are not white males...

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.

tomasien2• 12 years ago

Are they under-represented in terms of being founders/CEOs/Execs? I don't think I've ever seen that argued.

jiggy20113• 12 years ago

Do you have any figures on tech as a whole? The thing that I'm never sure about in these discussions (on any on HN really) is whether people are talking about "tech" to include people working 9-5 in IT at a bank somewhere or whether it really means "venture capital backed startups operating out of California".

crassus22• 12 years ago

The San Jose Mercury News estimated that Silicon Valley tech jobs are mostly held by Asians.

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.

dominotw• 12 years ago

I know Indians are overrepresented to their relative proportion in general population ( ~1%)

arjie• 12 years ago

That's because we're the master race. I'm kidding. It's because we're immigrants from a populous country that overwhelmingly work in a few occupations in America.

thomasfromcdnjs2• 12 years ago

Just hi-hacking this comment to talk about the same line.

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)

a-t-shirt2• 12 years ago

At least one moderator here (with the username "dang") has blocked discussion of the fact that white men are actually underrepresented in tech.

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."

king_jester6• 12 years ago

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.

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.

yypark2• 12 years ago

I think the disconnect comes from having a minority group strongly over-represented, and the disagreement over what causes representation differences. It's the inconvenient factor that doesn't get discussed a lot. Benefactors see diversity initiatives purely as eliminating discrimination on the part of privileged groups, whereas detractors see it as unfairly lobbing claims of wrongdoing on white men, calling for soft quotas - which in this case, imply fewer Asian males in tech.

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...

ignostic• 12 years ago

.... source?

jfc3• 12 years ago

On some level, the tech world isn't living up to its own principles, as it relates to diversity and inclusion (D&I). Many seem to view D&I as being somewhat external to the tech space--it's an issue that other industries have been discussing and is becoming more prominent in tech.

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.

morgante• 12 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree, yet certain people continually attach open source as somehow being the worst of our industry. Just because it requires people be passionate enough about development to do it in their free time.

lliwta3• 12 years ago

To be fair, github culture is a far cry from the early days of open source.

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!

seanflyon3• 12 years ago

I don't think I've ever met anyone who thinks open source shouldn't exist. I know quite a few people who don't want to open source everything they make.

king_jester6• 12 years ago

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.

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...

jfc3• 12 years ago

All great points. You have highlighted exactly what I was getting at: the tech world has some of these D&I principles in place already, but is failing to live up to, or--as you aptly point out--even critically reflect on them.

spindritf• 12 years ago

OSS communities are not inclusive

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.

icebraining• 12 years ago

I don't get this idea that the tech world, or even just SV startups embrace FOSS as a core values, even in software itself. Since when have most startups released all their software under a free license? Most embrace it if and when it suits them - libraries, frameworks, etc. Everything else is proprietary, and usually follows a cathedral model. When was the last time someone submitted a patch for Dropbox, or most SaaS services out there?

Three are a few brave ones out there, but they're the exception.

clairity• 12 years ago

as a half-asian female founder with a diverse team (mexican, german), this is a intimate issue for me. i'm really glad to see the topic being discussed, but it really is the first small step.

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).

kika2• 12 years ago

Let's say I have a magic wand which will make all -isms go away in one waving. I waved, -isms went away and now what? Where do I hire skilled black female CoffeeScript developers? How many of them do actually exist? I'm insider/outsider - I live in the US now, in Bay Area, but I went to school in the country which doesn't even exist anymore, while my daughter goes to the one of the best middle schools around here. And I see her genuine interest in math, she's among a group of 'popular' girls in the school, where the popularity is judged not (only) by the looks or clothes, but to what "Math Honor", "Advanced Geometry", etc class the student was admitted to. 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? 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.

Something tells me it's not just our (white tech male population) sexism, it's a problem rooted deeper.

bqe• 12 years ago

There are systemic and cultural biases against women in math and in technical fields. Women are driven out of these fields by people in them.

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.

king_jester6• 12 years ago

Let's say I have a magic wand which will make all -isms go away in one waving. I waved, -isms went away and now what? Where do I hire skilled black female CoffeeScript developers?

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.

shanacarp3• 12 years ago

I was that girl. You were my mother in a lot of ways (my mom is a programmer) the problem becomes more endemic in high school and then college where you have to start becoming a woman.

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)

kika2• 12 years ago

I'm dad, not mom (though mom shares my concern) :-)

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.

staunch• 12 years ago

What about class?

Ivy League Parents -> Private School -> SAT tutoring -> Ivy League College -> Investment by Ivy League VC -> Acquired by Ivy League Tech Company

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.

argonaut4• 12 years ago

Minor nit, which is that all the top CS (and engineering, for that matter) schools are not Ivy League schools: MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, CMU. And I've never heard of top tech companies being referred to as Ivy League tech companies. But your point is still valid when you talk about "top schools."

famousactress2• 12 years ago

Ah, the irony of making sure we're careful to make subtle distinctions about the top fraction of a percent of the population... in response to a comment about massive class imbalance.

jiggy20113• 12 years ago

There's likely to be big correlations between class and race. Gender is obviously a much more complicated one.

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.

JVIDEL• 12 years ago

The problem is that as the gap widens that poor kid might have no actual chance at a decent stable job with benefits. Odds are he will be stuck in part-time land with no benefits and doing odd jobs on the side, so for him going with a startup must seem like a better choice.

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.

rhizome• 12 years ago

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.

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.

jmromer• 12 years ago

Using race as a proxy for class is a great way to generate oppression along some margin (i.e., for some poor bastard(s) unlucky enough to be both poor and not a member of a protected racial/ethnic group). If you want to talk about class and poverty, talk about class and poverty. There's enough misery in the world.

dpeck2• 12 years ago

Ivy League is an athletic conference, or at best a collection of prestigious schools from the north east:

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.

jbigelow76• 12 years ago

I think the colloquialism of "Ivy League" as a psuedo pedigree or class distinction has superseded the actual athletic conference definition.

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.

Permit3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how this is releveant; how can YCombinator influence this? The disparity in education has already taken full effect by the time people apply to YC.

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.

a-t-shirt2• 12 years ago

Their steps toward their vision of gender equality make it even more difficult for men who didn't attend a prestigious university to be accepted.

mrkurt2• 12 years ago

The selection problems that make Stanford grads have a leg up on startups isn't education related, really, it's network related. YC helps get more people into the circles required for fundraising. There's no other way I, for instance, would have had any credibility with the people who fund companies.

ahh• 12 years ago

Class issues help people from the wrong caste. Who cares about poor men when there are rich women who don't have enough in their lives already?

runako• 12 years ago

This argument dodges the thrust of Sam's essay, which centered on gender disparities. Your argument doesn't work for gender disparities.

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.

astrange• 12 years ago

Do you know which schools those numbers are from?

(That doesn't really affect your chance of startup success, but surely it affects your inclination to go into one.)

shanacarp3• 12 years ago

True - the way out is to hire interns from state schools/small programs.

Dewie3• 12 years ago

What about class?

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".

xiaoma5• 12 years ago

I have to say I found it disappointing to see Sama call out Hacker School and Google's explicitly discriminatory policies in a positive way. I'm all for helping people in need. As someone whose earnings were at less than half the poverty level just two short years ago, I can definitely empathize with people struggling at the margins, whether social or economic.

However, I believe making the decision solely based on a person's anatomy is wrong.

Context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6879598

spacehome• 12 years ago

Sexism in tech is real.

Honest question: Is there any unambiguous evidence of this?

brianbreslin• 12 years ago

Would expanding the geographic sourcing of startups help with diversity? Cities like Miami, which is 75% hispanic, our startups are as diverse as our city. However I only recall a couple ever getting into YC (note, I have no idea of the merits of any others who applied).

So could sourcing from more diverse cities help YC ?

argonaut4• 12 years ago

One objection I have is with hackathons. From my observations most hackathons aren't particularly inclusive environments - they may do more harm than good.

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.

tptacek10• 12 years ago

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.

benmathes2• 12 years ago

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....

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.

argonaut4• 12 years ago

Since I seem to have ignited a huge sub-thread on competition, I'd like to clarify my intent. There are varying degrees and kinds of "competition." The competition I had in mind is the kind of competition associated with people pulling all-nighters for the entire weekend, loading up on Red-Bulls, and worrying about the best ways to pitch judges (and manipulate those pitches).

That kind of competition is generally unrepresentative of the "cooperative competition" of the tech industry.

rmason• 12 years ago

Most but not all hackathons. I founded a hackathon and we made it a priority in our first planning meeting that women would be made to feel welcome.

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.

lacus2• 12 years ago

This is really great. Obviously, we can't prevent every bad outcome, but I think sometimes people don't realize how little efforts like this actually go a really long way.

gailees• 12 years ago

This year, our theme for MHacks (http://mhacks.org) is that "Hackathons are for everone."

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.

dothething• 12 years ago

The only age you see in any of these is percentage.

Diversity shouldn't be a whatever convenient cause you want to look progressive on.

adamzerner5• 12 years ago

1) I suspect that the bias against girls is "I don't think she'll be effective" rather than "I am sexist and don't want girls to succeed".

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.

tptacek10• 12 years ago

The belief that African Americans were literally inferior to European Americans animated most of 20th century racism, so this observation is probably less helpful than your otherwise clear writing makes it sound.

"Girls" is probably not the word you want to be using, by the way.

adamzerner5• 12 years ago

The belief that African Americans were literally inferior to European Americans animated most of 20th century racism, so this observation is probably less helpful than your otherwise clear writing makes it sound.

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.

adamzerner5• 12 years ago

Sorry, but I think you guys are taking the downvoting a little too far. There's a difference between being unwelcoming and being critical.

whybroke5• 12 years ago

Its fantastic the gender issue is being looked at. And it's nice that non-US citizens are funded.

But what percentage of the founders were pg's age or older?

alexanderss• 12 years ago

What percentage of applicants are his age or older? Probably very, very small for obvious reasons. Most founders PG's age and older have more financial resources (and network, etc) making YC's terms less appealing than for younger founders without any experience. In terms of diversity, age doesn't quite fit in here.

whybroke5• 12 years ago

19% female applicants were accepted, and 24% applicants were female.

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.

a2kadet• 12 years ago

Any fans of the Office?

http://youtu.be/FTOgm_EMgVI?t=12m8s

These statements always seem really empty to me.

incision3• 12 years ago

I appreciate that this post takes the time to acknowledge a few specific problems along with suggestions for actions.

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.

wudf• 12 years ago

Let me get this straight: YCombinator is pledging to snub investors who conduct sexist and racist abuses toward founders? I know we'll face adversity, and I want our team to be able to stand up for our beliefs without getting fucked by the tight-night nature of the community.

throwaway420• 12 years ago

We’re encouraging our startups to get HR infrastructure in place earlier.

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.

lzecon• 12 years ago

HR for startups wouldn't and shouldn't be like HR for big companies. It doesn't have to slow a company down at all, and it's definitely a function that can enhance a company culture in really positive ways without dampening it.

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.

mmodahl• 12 years ago

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.

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.

melindajb• 12 years ago

What you fail to recognize is that YC is funding a disproportionately large number of founders who have little to no work experience. this leads to situations where the founders have no idea how to protect their company(including their investors) from harassment and discrimination lawsuits, or the attendant PR nightmare that hurts all their fellow batchmates.

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.)

designNERD2• 12 years ago

The young YC companies don't hire anyone not like them so they don't need HR.

thrownaway9993• 12 years ago

Could someone convince me why I should care about the gonads and skin color of the people writing code for me? Does anybody really think YC's performance would be better if their founder classes looked like a diversity picture from a college recruiting brochure?

designNERD2• 12 years ago

You don't understand the importance of having different perspectives represented when you are making products and services for everyone?

Seems pretty simple to me.

crassus22• 12 years ago

Could you point out for me where Sam talks about diversity of perspectives? All I see him talking about is what the OP mentions - gonads and skin color.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

You avoid a lawsuit that destroys your company.

lacus2• 12 years ago

YC is starting to take a lot of the right steps. I know for me personally, as a female founder, my attitude has changed a lot in the past 6-8 months (from "I guess I'll keep reading HN & essays because I don't want to miss out on interesting content... but I don't feel good about it, and I'd definitely never apply" -- to now being able to be an unequivocal fan, attending Startup School, etc.).

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.)

potatolicious2• 12 years ago

"e.g., that other industries are doing worse than tech on gender issues. (Like who? Who's doing worse, specifically?"

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.

sanderjd• 12 years ago

I think any reasonably sized group of people can reasonably be expected to defend themselves when accused of being literally the worst in some way that matters if they don't think they are, regardless of their level of pedantry. In general, if you're trying to make some other major point in an article, it's best to equivocate on things that you think would be inflammatory and irrelevant.

onmydesk• 12 years ago

I started watching 'Portlandia' for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Its basically the HN readership. Funny stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IfOKeZ-MWI

alexyes• 12 years ago

Things will get better in the future, as CS education is becoming accessible to more people.

yypark2• 12 years ago

First off, I applaud YC's efforts in this sphere to give all groups more opportunity to participate in startups and tech in general. I do not mean to disparage efforts or "derail" a conversation, but to bring up the fundamental question once the low-hanging fruit - discrimination, etc. is gone - self-selection and equality of result as a goal.

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.... "

[2] http://paulgraham.com/say.html

tuxidomasx• 12 years ago

As mentioned in some other comments, the post focuses more on gender than ethnicity. As a 31 year old African American male in tech, some of the challenges for black males and females that I've witnessed range from cultural mismatches to being under-valued and therefore underutilized. There's also a lot of stress and pressure associated with often being the only black person in the room throughout most of your STEM education and career. For startups specifically, I've often heard of "pattern matching" as a manifestation of bias for white and asian males. If we're looking for a cause of the lack of ethnic diversity, we can't ignore the socially uninviting nature of the environment.

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.

Diversity and Startups

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