
Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. - kunle
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/18/women-in-tech-put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is/
======
coderdude
>If I appear to be moronic, self-centered, or sexist… it’s only because I am
(I’m a guy). Still I believe my heart is in the right place, and unlike my
head, hopefully it’s not in my pants.

What the hell? I feel like I'm watching a US TV commercial.

"Whoops honey, if I didn't have my sports cap on I'd probably lose my head."

"Oh dear, you lovable oaf." _Mother and daughter shake heads at retarded male_

~~~
sopooneo
I agree. And frankly I find it the most grating thing about my generation: no
spine. Stand up and speak. Don't try to soften the message with tired jokes
and deflection. Just make your point. If people are angry, they're angry.
Listen to their reactions and if you think you were in the wrong, apologize.
If you think you were right, defend yourself. But you never, ever, open with
an apology.

~~~
sp332
I think it worked. It just disarmed every ad-hominem attack right in the first
paragraph.

------
InclinedPlane
Right, this is just a call for something akin to affirmative action, which has
had questionable results at best.

The onus here isn't on women. And the right solution is not to preferentially
favor women in the tech field. What you'll end up with is a situation where
asshole misogynists consider themselves even more justified in treating women
in tech as second class citizens. This time because "they only got there
through charity".

The solution is simple. People in tech need to treat other people in tech like
human fucking beings, regardless of gender, race, or age. And more
importantly, when we see people treating others based not on the quality of
their work but on superficial qualities like gender, religion, national
origin, sexual orientation, or what-have-you we need to call them out on it.
Loudly. Publicly. Repeatedly.

~~~
Xcelerate
I'm a little confused as to what the problem _is_. Is it that there aren't
enough women in tech, or is it that women who are in tech aren't being treated
fairly?

If it's the latter, then I'm all for fixing that problem. But if it's the
former, then it may just be the case that women don't' _want_ to be in tech. I
try encouraging my sister to learn about programming and computers all the
time, but she'll have nothing to do with it. It has a certain, ah, stereotype
when you're good at that stuff that she'd rather avoid (although she's smarter
than I am and could probably learn it very quickly).

~~~
scott_s
Then that _stereotype_ is the problem that people want to fix. And then it
becomes a chicke-and-egg problem: how do you fix the stereotype without having
more women in tech? So you try improving things on both sides.

------
csallen
I just finished reading "The Blank Slate", a very interesting book by Harvard
(and former MIT) psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, he argues against
the politically correct (but factually incorrect) notion that our minds are
infinitely malleable at birth, and that our nature is primarily shaped by
culture and the environment. On the contrary, genetics and neurobiology play a
comparatively tremendous role in determining who we are. And, like it or not,
these physical characteristics may differ across individuals, races, gender,
etc.

Pinker devotes an entire chapter of the book to gender, and the first half of
that chapter to workplace equality. His thesis here is that a lack of 50-50
gender equality in a given profession isn't necessarily indicative of
discrimination or unfairness, unless you believe in the blank slate. That is,
unless you discount the possibility that women, on average, are interested in
different things than are men. He goes on to present a vast amount of evidence
that such differences in preference _do_ exist, regardless of cultural
conditioning.

This isn't to say that discrimination is non-existent. Many of us have seen
(or heard) enough to know that it's alive and well. The point is that we
shouldn't arbitrarily strive for _perfect 50-50 equality_. There will always
be fields in which men and women outnumber each other by large margins, and
that's okay. The best we can do is to try and stamp out discrimination
wherever possible.

~~~
scott_s
An indication that it is cultural is from looking at other cultures:

 _If you look globally, there are countries where that isn’t the image, and in
fact, their numbers are dramatically better. I was recently speaking with some
of our Oracle engineers from China and they pretty much have a fifty-fifty
split of men and women. And they think it’s sort of odd that we don’t._

[http://www.txchnologist.com/2012/breaking-the-brogrammer-
cod...](http://www.txchnologist.com/2012/breaking-the-brogrammer-code-margo-
seltzers-views-on-women-in-computer-science)

~~~
csallen
That's interesting, although I'm not inclined to take hearsay of hearsay at
face value. It'd be great to see a report with some hard numbers proving that
this is the case, and examining the cultural differences that could explain
why their numbers are so drastically better than numbers elsewhere in the
world.

Also, from a scientific perspective, this is a disastrously imperfect
experiment. You cannot rule out the effect of the genes unless you control for
that. Looking at a group of people who are physically different AND culturally
different , then arbitrarily concluding that any differences are the result of
cultures is about as unscientific as it gets.

~~~
scott_s
I actually agree with your first statement - I saw that a few days ago, and
I'm keeping it in mind provisionally.

As to the second point, humans are not very genetically diverse. Of course
there are enough differences that we can sometimes conclude that a particular
person's genes come from an ethnic group, but it's not as nearly as varied as
even other primates. Basically, we hit a genetic bottleneck sometime in the
past 100,000 years. So it's far more likely to be a result of culture than
genes.

~~~
csallen
You're right about the lack of genetic diversity, but even that limited amount
of diversity can result in drastically different personalities, tendencies,
etc. For some truly shocking material on just how much of a role genes can
play, look into the studies done on identical twins raised apart vs adoptive
siblings raised together.

------
bherms
As a guy in tech, I agree wholeheartedly with everything Dave has said, and
was surprised he said it in an actually non-offensive way, given his typical
writing style..

However, something I took away from this that really surprised me was how
little money Dave started with and how little he still has. Don't get me
wrong, I would kill to have $300k in the bank, much less $600k+, but I've
always assumed that angel investing (despite the small investments) was a game
for the incredibly wealthy and I wouldn't be able to invest until I was in my
30's and had exited with more than a few million in the bank. When he points
out that anyone with more than $10k lying around can be the next big angel
investor, it really jumped out at me. I've never considered investing $5k or
so into something I really believe in when $5k-$10k is all I have saved up...
However, as he said, it would be hard not to get my money's worth by investing
in startups. I'm glad he conveyed how easy it is to become an angel because
otherwise I would have never considered it until I had plenty of "fuck you"
money.

~~~
nirvana
The problem is, you do need to be a millionaire to be an angel investor. IF
not you open your investments up to liability unless you really are "friends
and family".

This industry is regulated and McClure sorta completely glossed over it.

I would be an angel investor if I was allowed. I would have been doing it for
the past 4 years, and I would have much enjoyed doing that. I had 6 figures
and 20 years of startup experience and was ready to write checks.

I just never found a way around the need to get accreditation. (Note when you
have a successful exit you have cash in the bank, but that doesn't mean you
necessarily have a $250k a year job, or $1M in the bank!)

Maybe in the bay area there are lawyers who can set you up to do this even
despite the regulations... I dunno.

But this seems to be a glaring omission on his part. Or maybe the law has
changed recently and that's why his program could now work.

~~~
bherms
I actually do believe the law changed recently.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/04/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/04/jobs_act_now_ordinary_people_can_lose_big_investing_in_startups_too_.html)

------
ntkachov
Women don't need to be "empowered". It's not some socieo-ecominic reason
that's causing girls to steer clear of tech. It's been discussed here before
many, many times and women have weighed in. According to them its the culture
and insensitivity towards women thats causing skewed gender ratios.

This isn't a problem you can throw money at.

~~~
benmccann
There are far fewer women in tech majors than men and that happens before
women ever hit the workplace. The skewed gender ratio starts much earlier in
life.

------
rachelbythebay
Okay. I left Google because I was fed up with how things were going over there
(read my posts - link in profile - if you want to know more). I started my own
little business.

So, okay, let's go. Throw money at me. I'll make more cool stuff with it. I'm
mostly a "plumbing" sort of person, but I've been known to make actual top-
level user interfaces on occasion too.

Well? Who's with me?

~~~
ajross
I'll bite here on a tangent: are you _really_ interested in taking a $5k check
from an individual angel? Do startups (real ones, not just "I started a
company!" startups) bother with that stuff? It seems that if you're a three-
person YC gang that the effort involved in coming up with an extra week's (if
that) worth of runway isn't even close to worthwhile.

~~~
rachelbythebay
No, I'm interested in building something useful for a reasonable amount of
money. That's what I do: a simple exchange of currency for services rendered.

Is this about women in tech, or is this some nebulous thing about startups?
Because I'm all for the former, and don't really worry so much about the
latter.

~~~
Locke1689
_Is this about women in tech, or is this some nebulous thing about startups?
Because I'm all for the former, and don't really worry so much about the
latter._

Why don't you read the article?

~~~
rachelbythebay
I did. What you quoted is what's known as a reply to the person above me.

------
wheels
_> I’d like to CHALLENGE every woman in tech who’s a) got a nice car, b) owns
a nice house, or c) is making over $125K a year_

In the US you need to have an income of greater than $200k/year or assets not
including your home of over $1 million in order to be an accredited investor.
[1]

You don't have to be an accredited investor to invest in startups, but it does
open up the company to additional annoying reporting requirements such that
almost all advisors suggest staying away from such. From info on his own
assets that he's posted in the past, it seems Dave's chosen to skirt said law
himself, but it seems quite brash to (without disclaimer) push others to do
the same.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor>

~~~
delinka
What's to keep me from investing all my money in my own startup? I note
attempting facetiousness, I'm truly curious how they differentiate me starting
my own business and investing all my own money (at a substantial percentage of
my reported income) or starting a business with a buddy and putting in a
serious amount of cash.

~~~
wheels
There's a provision for raising up to $1 million from "friends and family"
(specifically pre-existing contacts only, no solicitation). I presume, though
am not certain, however, that personal funds of the executives are exempt from
that.

[http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=35d8764e...](http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=35d8764e-eee4-4ecc-8ef6-8da9e91b2575)

------
habitue
I would suggest that instead of affirmative action in funding women in
startups, instead we should encourage successful women in tech to become
evangelists. I don't think the issue is as much in the "nobody gives money to
women who want to start startups" but rather in the fact that fewer women are
in technology because of the cultural bias against it (and as a consequence,
less women get funded startups).

Just think, if you are a teenager or college age girl, what women programmers
do you currently look up to? They exist, but they need to be more visible to
break the perception that "women don't become programmers"

~~~
bishnu
Women in this field who try to be more visible are prone to being labeled as
superficial, attention-seeking, untalented (and much, much worse) terms [1].
Culture change is what is required.

[1]: [http://www.poynter.org/latest-
news/mediawire/175064/forbes-c...](http://www.poynter.org/latest-
news/mediawire/175064/forbes-com-contributor-deletes-post-about-sheryl-
sandberg-after-people-call-it-sexist/)

------
chriszf
It's wrong to offer up the idea that women somehow are biologically averse to
tech. You need only look outside the US to verify this: Malaysia's tech sector
is almost evenly split between men and women.

It's a cultural thing, which we're loth to admit. We look around and say, "We
treat women the same around here", not thinking for a second that maybe that's
the problem.

I run the Hackbright Academy, a hacker school for women, and I ask all
applicants what compels them to apply to our program. Invariably, part of
every story is the idea that they were intimidated out of the field in college
or high school by their male peers. Whether or not that's the grand reason for
the disparity, it's still something that shouldn't be a reason at all.

~~~
astrofinch
Malaysia may not constitute good evidence for it being a cultural thing.
Reason: a young male social outcast in Malaysia can't teach himself computer
programming the way a young male social outcast in the United States can. So
all programmers are college taught, which results in an even gender split.
Whereas in the US, male geeks get a head start as kids and intimidate women in
college with their accumulated skills.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4062243>

------
GregBuchholz
Finally. It is hard to believe in this day and age that 99.99999% of women
have no chance at receiving VC/Angel investments, whereas men only have a
99.9999% chance at not having access to VC/Angel money.

------
staunch
If women founders are being underserved by existing investors that would
represent a market opportunity. Someone _should_ exploit it out of pure self
interest.

~~~
konstruktor
Making this even more of a "put your money where your mouth is" situation.
Women in tech fund, where are you and your gigantic returns?

------
waterlesscloud
Did anyone actually read this article?

From the comments, I can only assume not.

He's asking women in tech to act as angels for other women in tech.

This does not seem to be what anyone here is responding to.

~~~
ricardonunez
I agree. I read the post and most comments here apparently didn't get the main
point of the article.

------
Nursie
This doesn't seem to be about women in technology at all, just yet more fluff
about startups, founders, exits and angel investors. Maybe Hacker News is the
wrong site for me.

------
andyl
Old people (older than 40, say) are way under-represented in tech. Can anyone
argue with this point? We need culture change, and maybe even affirmative
action to force the industry to open up to oldsters. (yes, I'm in the 40+
demographic) In fact, we probably need a whole army of old journalists and
bloggers to celebrate the achievements of their beloved demographic, and to
get indignant about the injustices when they occur.

And come to think of it, I haven't seen many black or hispanic coders lately.
They probably need to impose their demands on the industry as well.

Just kidding. I'm against quotas for oldsters like me, or any other supposedly
marginalized demographic. I look for people who simply excel at _writing code_
and _building products_ , which anyone can do if they devote themselves to the
craft.

