
On The Information and How We Operate - IBM
http://jessicalessin.com/2013/12/31/on-the-information-and-how-we-operate/
======
Arjuna
It's egregious to edit a quote. After all, the very raison d'être of a quote
is to convey that, _" this is exactly and precisely what was said."_

However, here we have a case that, due to the editing of a quote (despite the
intentions of the person that modified the quote), we didn't previously know
what was actually said, and that's extremely disingenuous and misleading to a
reader.

The writer goes on to say:

 _" The reason was simple. The "these" didn't refer to anything. The paragraph
that preceded it referred to Mark Zuckerberg being a hacker and it immediately
followed a question about what would be lost if YC encouraged more women to be
startup founders."_

[...]

 _" In many cases "these" is an important word. But in this case, we decided
it wasn't because it didn't refer to a specific group of women and was in
response to a question about women in general."_

Removing "these" and the context _completely_ changed the meaning. It leads
the reader to believe that the narrative is about females in general. But,
with "these" included, and the correct context, it is clear that this is about
females who are not programmers.

In the final analysis, editing quotes is bad form.

~~~
abalone
What pg said is that

1) the "pool of potential startup founders" is programmers,

2) it's non-discriminatory and self-selecting, and

3) women are underrepresented in this pool because it's hard to get 13 year
old girls interested in programming, and

4) rather than encouraging women to become startup founders it would be better
to fix that 13 year old girl problem

This debate about whether he was referring to "just programmers" is a complete
red herring. Programmers == startup founders, to him.

The really damning quote is this:

 _If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found
it own their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this
is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What
that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to
fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start
startups now._

Repeat: pg _literally said_ it would be better to discourage women from
starting startups now.

Not "these" women. Not "non programmer" women. All women.

......

The problem is not that pg is some huge sexist. It's that he's defensive. He's
passing the buck 10 years up the chain, saying that's where the problem lies.
In CS curriculum or something.

But in actuality, parents and educators could just as well say that 13 year
old girls don't have enough 23 year old female hacker role models to look up
to.

So perhaps YC, PyCon and the industry as a whole _could_ be more proactive.
For example by spotlighting and giving extra support to the best examples of
female hacker role models, and connecting them with girls.

Not by discouraging women from starting startups now.

~~~
demallien
I really think you are misinterpreting what pg said, and I say that as a card-
carrying equal opportunity feminist (you can check my HN comment history for
proof). He is not saying that women should be not encouraged, he is saying
that encouraging women at ycombinator application time is not the solution,
and that the solution needs to be applied earlier, because a prerequisite of
an ycombinator founder is that they be a hacker, and a hacker needs ten years
experience.

It's like getting upset that there are no 5'2 guys playing in the NBA.
Although height is not a job requirement, if you don't have it it is highly
unlikely that you will get the job, unless you can demonstrate that you have
other skills to make up for height (speed, highly accurate shooting, and a 5'
vertical jump for example). To bring the analogy back to ycombinator, I'm
pretty confident that a woman that shows up with only 6 months experience
hacking, but she already has a decent chunk of her product built, that the
ycombinator crew will consider her application very seriously, because she
would have already demonstrated that her lack if experience was not a handicap
to her hacking.

~~~
abalone
So women applying to YC is analogous to short people playing in the NBA. Where
did you get your feminist card from again?

The problem with pg's statement, which I quoted directly, is that he blames 13
year old girls and middle schools and gives industry a pass. We're already
non-discriminating and self-selecting. The problem is getting girls into code,
and god knows how to do that.

Parents and teachers might have a response to that. Where are the female
hacker role models for the 13 year old girls to look up to?

That's one of the proactive things industry can do. Shine the spotlight on
positive role models. Counteract brogrammer culture at conferences and in
companies, too. That requires _active_ intervention, not just an open door
policy.

And that was the whole question he was responding to -- not just whether we're
actively discriminating against women, but whether there's something more
_proactive_ we should be doing.

Just pointing his finger up the line and saying "it's their fault" is kind of
disappointing.

~~~
cafard
a. Need there be a cause for blame, at all?

b. I know a certain number of woman who were 13 roughly 10 years ago. None is
now working in programming, or that I know looking to start a company. Several
are in the technically demanding field of architecture. One is an RN, which
requires a good deal of intelligence. All seem reasonably happy with their
choices.

c. For it may be hard to see in the world of HN, but programming, let alone
programming as founder of a startup, is not the be-all and end-all of
vocations.

------
sillysaurus2
_We edited a bit around some of Mr. Graham’s quotes on female founders.
Specifically, we edited a “these” from the quote. The reason was simple. The
“these” didn’t refer to anything._

What pg actually said was, "We can’t make these women look at the world
through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven’t been hacking for
the past 10 years."

Lessin is saying removing "these" doesn't change the meaning. I think that's
absurd, to put it mildly.

~~~
ceol
Could you explain how the meaning of his statement changed so drastically from
the inclusion of the word "these"? The question asked about women who are not
founders, not women who are not programmers. It seems fitting to remove it,
since it would feel out of place when quoted, but it seems the point of his
statement is there.

~~~
thatthatis
Q: What about lowering the bar now?

A1: There's nothing we can do to help women become hacker-founders.

A2: To help women become hacker-founders, we have to start with the group we'd
be admitting in 10 years.

the "these" changes it from: "women can't be helped" to "you can't fix the
problem for this generation, you can only fix the problem for the next
generation"

One says "it's a problem of gender" the other says "it's a problem of
sequencing"

~~~
ceol
Doesn't the second one still say it's a problem of gender? I'm not seeing how
the introduction of the word "these" adds all of that additional stuff you're
saying. All it does is take the statement from "all women" to "all women who
we could recruit to be founders." But in the context of the discussion, he
meant the same thing: He feels women do not want to be founders.

~~~
thatthatis
women who could be recruited as founders _TODAY_. Not ever.

The second one says 1) solutions may exist and 2) they require lead time.

The first one says solutions don't exist.

The second one implies that it is or might be a solvable problem. The first
one implies that it is an innate gender difference.

~~~
ceol
I guess what I'm saying is that going from the original interview to The
Information's edit, his quote didn't lose meaning, because it didn't imply
that pg thought women were genetically predisposed to hate tinkering with
computers. Only when Valleywag got ahold of it and framed it to look like pg
was saying that did it lose its original meaning and go from "there's a
problem, but it's not YC's fault" to "the problem is genetic, womenz don't
computer güd."

~~~
britknight
While I agree that sans controversy, the exclusion of "these' might not have
been so important, I think that when reporting on issues like this that are
apt to cause controversy, it is better to err on the side of caution and stay
as close to the original quote as possible, in order to avoid situations such
as this.

------
georgemcbay
Why can't people just be wrong anymore (and admit to it)? I'm sure there's
some amount of rose-tinted glasses going on here but as a 40 year old I seem
to remember a now long-lost past when people could more readily issue a mea
culpa, promise to try harder and everyone could move along without every
discussion turning into a battle where the person who fucked up expends
massive amounts of energy trying to prove they didn't fuck up by selectively
choosing to cling on to ways they could possibly weasel out of the issue
without actually saying they made an error in judgement (or allowed one to be
made on their watch).

To be fully fair, the sincere mea culpa does still occur sometimes and we've
even seen it here on HN with some startups/founders who fucked up, but it
happens so rarely now that when I see those exceptions that prove the rule
they are surprising, which is sad.

Ignoring the human element, this sort of non-apology response isn't even a
good strategy if you look at things in a purely Machiavellian way. "Yeah,
sorry, I fucked up, I'll fix this" gains you a bunch of goodwill, repairs
reputation and trust (so long as you aren't fucking up constantly). OTOH, the
typical "Nah, I wasn't wrong, here's why you're wrong to think that" or "I'm
sorry you were offended by the thing I did" response does nothing but make you
look like an immature ass, so why pursue this strategy? Even in borderline
cases where you still think you were kind of right, just fucking apologize and
move on! It is clearly the +EV move.

As a non-subscriber to The Information I previously had a fairly neutral view
of them as I just sadly sort of accept selective misquoting as the way things
work now, but reading this "How We Operate" thing skewed my view harshly
negative.

~~~
olefoo
Up until the last paragraph I thought you were going to say that your opinion
of Paul Graham had become much more negative.

To be fair most of the people directly involved in this ruckus don't come out
of it looking all that well; but The Information did say the interview was on
the record and did tell Graham that it was getting published and didn't get
pushback. The fact that Valleywag was able to stir up a controversy and garner
a massive amount of traffic off the back of PG's somewhat inept handling of a
sensitive question ( that he knew was sensitive ) does no credit to Valleywag,
even if it is their business model.

Those people who slotted this into their preexisting models of reality and
tried to use it as a teaching opportunity may feel rather threatening to some.
which may mean they need to rethink their tactics; but may just mean that some
people feel threatened whenever the topic of gender equity is brought up.

Now I get that what PG was saying was not nearly as inflammatory as it was
made out to be by Valleywag. However, it did bring to light some unconscious
bias on his part; and I get that that is very hard to acknowledge and correct,
especially when you have to do so in the full glare of hostile publicity. I do
hope the PG can take some time to reflect and to reach out to some of the
people who have substantive criticisms of his thinking on this topic.

note: I'm not saying that he needs to turn ycombinator into a feminist
reeducation camp, just that he needs to _listen_ to what some of his critics
are trying to point out to him.

note the second: I've been participating in HN for 6 years or so; and I have
to say that the level of reflexive sexism I've seen in the comments this past
week is making me think I should abandon my account.

~~~
wvenable
> it did bring to light some unconscious bias on his part

Can you expand on that? Because from his actual quote I don't find anything
unreasonable or biased about his opinions on this particular issue.

It seems to me like while pg is no longer guilty of being overtly anti-woman-
in-technology, his reputation is now unfairly tarnished by this attention.

~~~
olefoo
Well, the bit about having to start hacking at age 13 to have the right
mindset to be a founder packs a number of assumptions into one bundle; and
some of those assumptions are gendered.

There are girls who start programming at that age, but they learn to mask it
because peer pressure runs against them. It also makes assumptions about the
socio-economic status of the household; being able to afford even a cheap
computer for a child takes some doing even today. It's not an opportunity that
everyone gets, and it's a sad fact that in most human cultures scarce
opportunities are handed preferentially to boys.

The thing is; and I think PG is aware of this, ycombinator is missing out on
good opportunities because of false negatives in this particular area; and
even more so because potential founders who happen to be female perceive that
they aren't as welcome as they might be.

I think the best thing he could do would be to reach out to some of the people
who are seen as his harshest critics ( specifically Shanley Kane and Ashe
Dryden ) and open a dialogue with them.

The thing is that Paul Graham and YCombinator have accrued a level of
influence and power that can be quite damaging if exercised blindly and he
would I think understand the need to use that power responsibly. And in this
case that means having some uncomfortable conversations and being challenged
in ways that I'd guess he's becoming rather used to not being challenged.

~~~
wvenable
I think PG would agree with everything that you are saying -- and he really
hasn't said anything otherwise. We could all maybe totally agree that peer
pressure runs against girls, economic status matters, and so on. What is the
result of all that? Less women with the right ability at the right time for
YC. I don't think there is much to argue about there.

But then you _assume_ that PG isn't doing _enough_ to support women. But
that's just an unfounded assumption born out of nothing. The only reason why
we're even talking about this is because of some mis-quote to begin with. It's
frankly all a bit pathetic.

~~~
olefoo
Oddly, the only thing I said PG _should_ do is open a dialogue with some of
his critics.

This is a much better explanation [http://danilocampos.com/2013/12/explained-
why-people-are-ang...](http://danilocampos.com/2013/12/explained-why-people-
are-angry-at-paul-graham/)

------
waterlesscloud
Well, the problem here is that "these" very clearly did refer to something,
and anyone who doesn't think so might not be someone you want editing.

Apparently they _still_ don't think it referred to anything, which is
completely mind-boggling.

The correct response here would have been to admit the mistake and apologize
for it. As it is, it's hard to take them as any sort of serious journalists
now.

~~~
hamburglar
Yeah, the notion that "these" didn't refer to "women who apply to YC and
aren't already hackers" is just silly when you read the actual transcript. She
may as well have said "the 'these women' referred to something we edited out,
making it confusing, so we decided the quote was better if it appeared to mean
'all women'".

~~~
samstave
The editing made the whole context much more sensationalist and generalized.

This simply removes all credibility for this woman in my eyes.

"Hey, just by removing the word "these" we can make this quote look as though
it refers to half the population!"

Yeah - how about this:

Original:

 __ _Just by this manipulation of a quote, a journalist has ruined trust in
her journalistic integrity_ __

Vs:

 __ _Just by this manipulation of a quote, a journalist has ruined trust in
journalistic integrity_ __

------
eCa
> We edited some of Mr. Graham’s quotes on female founders.

If you quote someone you _quote_ them, you don't remove certain words because
they don't "refer to anything". If you leave something out you put in "[...]".

What does "a bit around" mean anyway?

~~~
Crito
The Reuters _Handbook of Journalism_ on quoting:

 _" Quotes are sacrosanct. They must never be altered other than to delete a
redundant word or clause, and then only if the deletion does not alter the
sense of the quote in any way. Selective use of quotes can be unbalanced. Be
sure that quotes you use are representative of what the speaker is saying and
that you describe body language (a smile or a wink) that may affect the sense
of what is being reported. When quoting an individual always give the context
or circumstances of the quote.

It is not our job to make people look good by cleaning up inelegant turns of
phrase, nor is it our job to expose them to ridicule by running such quotes.
In most cases, this dilemma can be resolved by paraphrase and reported speech.
Where it cannot, reporters should consult a more senior journalist to discuss
whether the quote can be run verbatim. Correcting a grammatical error in a
quote may be valid, but rewording an entire phrase is not. When translating
quotes from one language into another, we should do so in an idiomatic way
rather than with pedantic literalness. Care must be taken to ensure that the
tone of the translation is equivalent to the tone of the original. Beware of
translating quotes in newspaper pickups back into the original language of the
source. If a French politician gives an interview to an American newspaper, it
is almost certain that the translation back into French will be wrong and in
some cases the quote could be very different. In such cases, the fewer quotes
and the more reported speech, the better."_

[http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=Accuracy#Quotes](http://handbook.reuters.com/?title=Accuracy#Quotes)

Basically _minimal_ editing is acceptable, so long as you remain _very_
faithful to the original quote. If the original quote is too broken to be
published, then don't quote it; instead paraphrase it in your own words.

------
dpcheng2003
Running in the minority here but I honestly don't have a HUGE problem with the
omission of "these", even though, yes it does change the meaning and intent of
PG's quote.

I am more interested that in all the backlash, I haven't seen anyone trash
Valleywag, which originally sensationalized the article in the first place. If
Valleywag didn't add their hyperbolic rhetoric around the quotes, would we be
having discussion?

Regardless whether you think PG meant these women to be those who apply to
YC/choose CS as a major before hacking at 13, I think the greater point he's
making (and one that is being lost here) is that STEM bias against women is
systemic and starts much earlier than the YC interview process, board room or
admissions desk.

Girls who are discouraged from STEM interests at 6 and 7 are less likely to
pick up "hacking" at 13. This causes a ripple effect over time as fewer
girls/women convert into STEM practitioners at each stage of growth, partly
from additional gender bias and partly because we're starting at a lower
number.

This is a real issue and I'm glad we're having a discussion about this. I just
hope we don't lose sight of what matters.

~~~
Crito
> _I am more interested that in all the backlash, I haven 't seen anyone trash
> Valleywag_

I see most people taking Valleywag/Gawker being trash as a forgone conclusion.
Take tptacek's top comment in this discussion two days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977412)

Anyway, I don't think this issue is as simple as women being pushed away from
STEM fields at a young age. The gender discrepancies seen in different
undergraduate STEM programs don't quite support that idea; women have a _much_
stronger showing in the natural sciences than engineering or computer science.

There may be influences at a young age in play here (I strongly suspect that
there are) but it seems to me that it is not as general as STEM.

------
diminoten
Technically speaking, the word 'these' as used by PG doesn't refer to anyone,
as the group he's referring to (non-programming women) isn't specifically
mentioned by him or the interviewer previously. So it is indeed ambiguous, and
it would make sense to clean up, in a vacuum.

Valleywag was clearly out for blood, and it sucks they don't care what PG
meant, and PG very clearly didn't say women aren't hackers, even without the
'these'. The tone is _absurdly_ clear.

The Information wasn't wrong to remove it from a grammatical standpoint, but
hopefully their editors will walk away with a better understanding of how
precise language can be. Frankly, I doubt PG or The Information saw this
coming.

Why this has been a newsworthy event baffles me, but here we are.

~~~
jeswin
Not true. PG used 'these' with context. The interviewer was specifically
asking about admitting women by 'lowering standards' or recruiting. And PG is
saying that those ideas won't work, because the applicants won't have the
experience.

Eric: "If there was just the pro-activity line of attack, if it was like, “OK,
yes, women aren’t set up to be startup founders at the level we want.” What
would be lost if Y Combinator was more proactive about it? About lowering
standards or something like that? Or recruiting women or something, like any
of those options?"

Paul: "No, the problem is these women are not by the time get to 23…"

------
logn
> _Mr. Graham has since said the “these” referred to women who aren’t
> programmers. In our opinion, he didn’t say that to us. We’re happy for him
> to have clarified to the public._

He says it right here, in his second use of "these":

 _We can’t make these women look at the world through hacker eyes and start
Facebook because they haven’t been hacking for the past 10 years._

And for more context prior:

 _Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably
the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the
problem is 10 years upstream of us._

Even without context, "these" modifies women; it's a subset. Anyone who thinks
"these women" is equivalent to "women" isn't qualified to be a journalist.

------
anaphor
I don't think "these" was supposed to be referring to anything in the sentence
or around the sentence there. It was being used as sort of a quantifier, as in
"there are some women who haven't been hacking and we cannot make them see
things as a hacker". Of course "these women" refers to something different
than "women". i.e. "for all women who have not been hacking for at least 10
years, it is not possible to make them see things as a hacker" vs. "for all
women, it is not possible to make them see things as a hacker". You can
clearly see they mean two very different things because in the first one you
are quantifying over a proper subset of women.

------
aresant
All controversy aside, it's interesting how much of this negativity to both PG
and The Information was driven by ValleyWag's link-baitery of the original
story.

While I believe The Information made a mistake, and should have probably
apologized a bit more succinctly, I don't think anybody - including PGs press
agent who had the transcript - could have imagined that quote, in particular
lighting this firestorm.

------
jhonovich
Is this claim true?

"Mr. Graham didn’t object to anything in the story, or the fact we published
it in the first place, until Valleywag wrote about the story days later."

------
n72
Dear Jessica, let me introduce a tool that you can add your journalistic
toolkit: square brackets. As user Kosmonaut says in an "English Language and
Usage" post _: "[Square brackets] are used to indicate that a direct quote has
been edited — to fit the surrounding information, or to add context that does
not show up within the scope of the quote."

See, originally, the word "these" appeared where "[Square brackets]" appears
in the above quote. However, since you don't have context for the quote, you
wouldn't have known that "these" referred to "square brackets". So, I put
"Square brackets" in square brackets to add clarity to the quote.

I hope I have shown you how useful square brackets are and I suspect that
since you seem to be involved in journalism, which often involves quotes, you
will find opportunities to use them!

_ [http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2271/what-is-
the-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2271/what-is-the-proper-
use-of-square-brackets-in-quotes)

~~~
gcb1
to properly use [] on a recorded interview is overkill. just glance on the
transcript... there is barely a proper english phrase there. the whole thing
would be 80% brackets just to make it grammatically correct.

------
maillure
This seems like a non-apology. In my opinion, it seems like you ("The
Information") made a colossal mistake by editing out a key word in a sentence,
profoundly changing its meaning, and worse, doing this on a hot-button topic
in a way that attempts to raise stink.

If this is true, shame on you.

------
rdtsc
Quite simply, either incompetent or malicious. Can't figure out which.

Incompetent: if really can't see how "these" changes the meaning, because it
does. As a journalist, not realizing how a word can change the meaning and the
idea of message, they might want to reconsider professions. I really don't
know how much better to put it. It is like saying "as a programmer I don't
understand why I need to put semicolons at the end of C++ statements,
whitespace should just be enough!".

Malicious: they knew what they did and they wanted to create controversy. Well
they sure did create controversy. Will they end up benefiting from it? Not
sure yet. I suspect there is probably an agenda behind it all and "oh look,
misogyny!". Not to say misogyny in tech should be downplayed or not payed
attention to BUT this is moving the topic backwards and hurts it more than it
advances it. Every Andrea Richards, every Ben Noordhuis case hurts the cause
more than it helps. I've said it before (and probably copied it from someplace
I don't remember) sometimes a cause's biggest detractors are its most ardent
fans. Really the ones who are a little too ardent for the cause's good.

In summary, yeah, still can't decide which is which but I can see it some
between those two -- incompetence and maliciousness.

------
karterk
I'm sorry, but you just can't "edit" quotes - that's just bad journalism. They
wanted a sensational story that will rake in pageviews, and have conveniently
slanted the quotes towards that. Pathetic to say the least.

~~~
crassus
I disagree with this. I've seen blogs use completely unedited interviews with
ideological enemies, leaving in "ums" and "you knows?" and it looks terrible.
Probably every decent interview you've ever seen was lightly edited.

~~~
thatswrong0
It makes sense to get rid of most "ums" and "you knows?". For the most part
they don't require judgment; most cases are just useless artifacts of speech.

Removing "these" from the a middle of a sentence is not nearly so easy.
"These" generally refers to something and it can't be removed so easily just
because an editor thinks that it can be. In this case, removing "these"
changed the sentence to be a general statement about women from a statement
amount a subset of women. This obviously should not be removed, regardless of
the lack of a specific reference from "these". Leave the judgment to the
reader.

------
njones
"We edited Mr. Graham’s quotes on female founders." (edited for clarity)

------
milkshakes
> In our interview, which was explicitly introduced as an edited transcript,
> we made edits for clarity and length.

How, exactly, is the edited version more clear?

------
aroberge
Instead of saying _" In our interview, which was explicitly introduced as an
edited transcript, we made edits for clarity and length....._" and then talked
about consulting with PG's PR person, a proper apology should have been along
the lines of "For the sake of clarity, we sometimes edit for length but, in
this case, it is clear that a word that was removed changed the meaning
intended. Even though our process involved consultation with PG's PR person,
in the end the responsibility for accuracy is ours and we failed. For this, we
apologize."

------
daemonk
"Mr. Graham has since said the “these” referred to women who aren’t
programmers. In our opinion, he didn’t say that to us. We’re happy for him to
have clarified to the public."

The word in question, "these", refers to this sentence of the interview:

"We can’t make these women look at the world through hacker eyes and start
Facebook because they haven’t been hacking for the past 10 years."

I think it's pretty obvious that he is referring to women that haven't been
hacking for the past 10 years when he used "these". How else can you take that
sentence to mean?

------
baldajan
Having read this post and pg's essay (and comments), I think the pitch forks
have been raised and we should calm down. Yes, removing "these" was a bad
judgement call, and I believe the true intentions were hidden in the post. It
was an editorial mistake that caught pg off guard and went viral, making it a
"disaster".

In hindsight, things could have been better communicated and better organized;
but everything is better with hindsight. In the end, the mistake was corrected
and we hopefully all learned something from this debacle.

~~~
thatswrong0
> It was an editorial mistake

Yet this post doesn't acknowledge it as such:

> We edited a bit around some of Mr. Graham’s quotes on female founders.
> Specifically, we edited a “these” from the quote. The reason was simple. The
> “these” didn’t refer to anything.

> ...

> Mr. Graham has since said the “these” referred to women who aren’t
> programmers. In our opinion, he didn’t say that to us. We’re happy for him
> to have clarified to the public.

No acknowledgement that they made a mistake. That's the sound of heels digging
in.

------
thelibrarian
"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. Its what separates us from the
animal. Except the weasel." \- Homer J. Simpson

------
hugi
"We edited a bit around some quotes"… This passes for journalism?

~~~
schainks
My sentiment exactly.

If journalists want to help people through their craft with integrity, these
kinds of modifications should be transparently pointed out to the reader.

Oh, wait! There's MLA formatting for that:

"We can't make . . . women look at the world through hacker eyes and start
Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years."

------
brianmcdonough
PG has a lot of integrity, something that warrants protecting, but this is not
that big of a deal.

Nobody will remember it in a few weeks and The Information probably snagged as
many new subs as they lost because of the publicity. I highly doubt they were
attempting to make PG look bad on purpose and it was the other pub that drew
attention to it or really, nobody would know about the edit.

The whole thing is pretty silly, but I understand why PG is responding. It
must be hard for some people to understand why there aren't more female
founders, but that's not something he can change unless he decides to change
his business, which is wildly successful... so why would he... ? People forget
he runs a business and they think he just snaps his fingers and startups turn
to gold regardless of the founders. He's always maintained it's all about the
team. That will never change, male, female or robot.

------
forrestthewoods
In an attempt to edit for clarity the intended meaning was completely changed.
There's only one possible response that is appropriate. Admit that a mistake
was made, apologize without reservation, and make sure it never happens again.
Anything short of that is simply unethical.

------
groups
It's fine to edit for length and clarity if you recognize that by removing
context you're creating a new context. It's up to the editor to be careful.

The editor can't say "I am the editor and I have perfectly preserved pg's
comments" knowing that valleywag will call him a sexist, when the editor knows
him not to be one. If the editor thinks pg is, they should talk. I'm convinced
by pg's rebuttal.

------
ojbyrne
"No, the problem is these women are not by the time get to 23… Like Mark
Zuckerberg starts programming, starts messing about with computers when he’s
like 10 or whatever"

Let's concentrate on the slight against twenty-something women, because of
course there's no such thing as hackers in their 30s, 40s or 50s, of either
sex.

~~~
wvenable
You are under the mistaken impression that the people for which pg is in the
business of spending very small amounts of money on in the slim hope that a
few of them will be wildly successful and return hundreds of times on that
original investment in a relatively short time frame are "hackers". They are
not. They might be a very small subset.

I don't know how old you are but if you're willing to rent a room with a bunch
of other people and hack on code for peanuts and ramen then I wouldn't be so
sure pg that would automatically reject you because of your age or gender.

~~~
ojbyrne
This is a reasonable rebuttal, other than the fact I have savings, so I can
probably sit in a room for 3 months and eat a little better.

------
bjornsing
I'm not a linguist but in my mind there's very little wrong with the original
sentence as pg said it. Compare e.g. with this one:

"These apples are bad because they have been laying in the sun for two days."

There is no reference to anything outside the sentence; "these" and "they" are
sort of referring to each other, tying the sentence together.

So to me this is the most shocking revelation:

> _Mr. Graham has since said the “these” referred to women who aren’t
> programmers. In our opinion, he didn’t say that to us._

That's the equivalent of editing down the above sentence to say,

"Apples are bad because they have been laying in the sun for two days.",

and then start claiming that the interviewee is a schizophrenic because he's
making general claims about all apples. :/

------
ChristianMarks
It's hopeless to attempt to extract a correction from a journalist on a matter
of interpretation and context. It isn't forthcoming, even though in this case
the omission of the qualifier 'these', which selects some subset of a set,
cannot be omitted without changing the meaning.

------
bethly
His quote was ungrammatical, but it sounds significantly worse when he seems
to be talking about the women applying to YCombinator.

His use of venues that have been traditionally hostile to women, conferences
and open source, to try to make his group look better is pretty disingenuous
too.

------
gcb1
the fact that this is "news" at all is embarrassing to all women that managed
to become developers, ceos, etc. period.

this shouldn't be here, in two or three front page items. and this shouldn't
have even been asked on that interview.

~~~
detcader
really? "all women"? should all Muslims be embarrassed for 9/11?

~~~
Crito
_should: 1. Used to express obligation or duty_

I see no such suggestion in the post that you are responding to. You seem to
have misread it.

~~~
detcader
So, you're saying gcb1 is a woman who speaks for all women?

------
uptown
What's up with all the "smart people" references? Seems like a self-
aggrandizing attempt to elevate the stature of "THE information" by claiming
it's the chosen publication only for those with big brains.

------
abalone
This whole thing is a fascinating demonstration of the power of
contextualization to color one's perception of the facts.

When you read the whole transcript, it's pretty clear pg is NOT just talking
about a subset of women. He means women _as a whole_ are underrepresented in
the founder population because it's really hard to get 13 year old girls
interested in coding.

When the valleywag expose was first published, I thought the comments were
pretty damning. pg's reponse really focused my attention on the omission of
"these" and persuaded me that he was only talking about women "who aren't
programmers." This convinced me that The Information are egregious hacks.
After all, they omitted a word without an ellipsis and that's clearly wrong.

But now, perhaps motivated by my fascination, I took the time to actually read
the full transcript. And it's clear pg is talking about _all female applicants
to YC._

Here's a fuller excerpt that traces the complete context of exactly what group
of people pg is referring to.

\--------

Eric: I want to circle back to women in YC. How much do you think YC needs to
be proactive, has any moral obligation to be proactive about this, or anything
like that?

pg (excerpts):

There’s a couple of reasons why there are not as many female founders...

If the reason we accept few female founders is that we’re biased against them,
we would be able to tell this... I’m almost certain that we don’t discriminate
against female founders...

The problem with that is... the people who are really good technology founders
have a genuine deep interest in technology...

If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it
own their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is
invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13...

God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in
computers...

You can tell what the pool of potential startup founders looks like... You can
go on Google and search for audience photos of PyCon... That’s a self selected
group of people. Anybody who wants to apply can go to that thing. They’re not
discriminating for or against anyone.

[at this point Eric asks his question about how Y Combinator could be more
proactive]

Paul: We can’t make these women look at the world through hacker eyes and
start Facebook because they haven’t been hacking for the past 10 years.

\--------

Conclusion: The entire time pg is referring "female founders" and the "pool of
potential startup founders". His only reference to "programmers" is merely in
describing the pool of potential startup founders. And women aren't in it
because they weren't "hacking on computers at age 13".

So yes, absolutely pg made a gaffe in saying girls aren't hackers. That is in
fact what he said, and is now pretending he didn't, and that it would be
"absurd" for him to say it. But he did.

~~~
unclesaamm
Yes, this is exactly the same impression I got. I am surprised so many people
are calling BS on the blog post. Gaffes happen, and the best solution is to
apologize succinctly.

It's a sensitive topic, because women _are_ underrepresented in YC and
software engineering as a whole, so trying to nitpick the grammar in the
interview is insensitive, and sends the wrong message. Rather than turning
this into a debate, pg should have _agreed_ with the spirit of the valleywag
article while calling out the edits as an aside, and used this entire
situation as an opportunity to increase awareness of the problem (which is a
problem) by stating firmly that he is 100% willing to work with people who
want to help increase women's presence in computing.

~~~
abalone
That's a good point. The bigger problem with pg's post is not whether he said
13 year old girls are uninterested in hacking. It's that he completely passed
the buck 10 years up the line.

We'll see, maybe now his upcoming essay on women and coding will have more
"proactive" things that can be done at the YC stage.

For one, 13 year old girls need more 23 year old female hacker role models.

------
primitivesuave
There is absolutely no defense for editing a quote.

------
n72
Wait, Ms. Lessin is one of Rapgenius crew?

