

OATV posted an opening for an associate. Only one woman applied. - ivankirigin
http://bryce.vc/post/3919404272/lets-try-this-again-ladies-oatv-is-hiring

======
solsenNet
Yeah, this recruitment thing he laid out is illegal on several dimensions.

1\. employer is obligated to advertise broadly enough to generate a diverse
applicant pool (for protected classes). 2\. personal reference is prohibited
along similar lines.

IMPORTANT: by the sheer fact of your pool not being diverse, you have
liability! does not matter if you treat every protected class applicant really
well! The NON-DIVERSE POOL ALONE creates a legal liability.

This is also illustrative because VC's often say the'll help company
management with operational issues, but because VC's are so sheltered (don't
have to hire a lot) they don't know these basic issues.

Any company CEO worth his salt is very sensitive to "job applicant pool"
issues, and funny that the operations value add from a VC is going to lead
some poor CEO into a lawsuit!!

some references:

[http://www.workforce.com/section/news/feature/dipping-
carefu...](http://www.workforce.com/section/news/feature/dipping-carefully-
into-applicant-pool/)

[http://public.getlegal.com/legal-info-center/hiring-
process/...](http://public.getlegal.com/legal-info-center/hiring-
process/employment-screening-and-advertising)

------
scottru
If you're in a male-dominated profession, where both the "employees" (VC's)
and the "clients" (startups) are 90+% male, and the way people are to apply
for your roles (primarily) is through an introduction, you should not possibly
believe you will get >10% women - you will almost certainly get far less. In
addition, if the women that others can see in the profession are concentrated
near the "top" (i.e. they're already VC's or they're CEO's at successful or
well-known companies), and you look at their stories and they didn't move up
from the "bottom," then you don't even see anybody who looks _like_ you.

And saying that what you want from other candidates is "hustle" doesn't help
matters much, though I won't pretend to be an expert on gender-dominated
language - there are plenty of smart people out there (here?) who can comment.

(I thought there was a very cogent blog post from Anil Dash on this topic some
years ago, but I can't find it.)

(Added: I saw Ivan's HN headline for this post and somehow missed the
original. "Let's Try This Again Ladies"? Really? That certainly screams
"comfortable work environment.")

------
ojbyrne
Umm, "required a personal introduction." Does he not understand how
discrimination works?

~~~
pedalpete
In this day and age with the power and ease of networks, is a personal
introduction really discriminatory? or was it ever? Find out where he gets
coffee in the morning, ask the barista for an introduction. It might not work,
but it is an intro.

Also, is a woman any less likely to be linked in the network than a man? I'm
not sure exactly what you're getting at saying this is discrimination.

If a personal introduction is discrimination, isn't location discriminatory as
well?

~~~
Semiapies
There's a reason it's called an "old boys' network".

EDIT: We have many men at HN who are hypersensitive about any suggestion that
sexism exists. It's disgusting, pathetic, and gives me one of those moments
where I'm embarrassed that I come to this site. [This is more directed at the
downvotes than you, pedalpete.]

But this is reality - all hand-waving about how a good candidate will get an
introduction aside, the advantage to getting introductions goes strongly to
people who _already_ know someone. In this industry, that's an almost entirely
male crowd.

~~~
jeremymims
Almost all VC funding is done through introduction. That's the way this game
works. It's one of the reasons so many people apply to YC. As a VC, you spend
your days trying to figure out which teams will be successful in the future
(even if they've never created a company before) and sometimes all you have is
a trusted recommendation to work from. I can't think of a single VC who brags
about how few people they know, how small their network is, and how they can't
think outside the box to reach the person they don't know who could change the
destiny of your company.

What we all agree on is that it is a good thing for more women to be in tech.
Here's an influential VC who is ACTIVELY trying to encourage more balance in
his applicant pool and he gets attacked. Seriously, what's the endgame here?
Discrimination exists. He's one of the good ones trying to make it better. The
real discrimination is the stuff you don't see in a blog post.

Not cool attacking someone trying to do the right thing.

~~~
Semiapies
Let's unpack the things you say here, starting from the end:

" _Not cool attacking someone trying to do the right thing_ "

Of course, the only people I actually _attack_ are people here on HN who are
very much _hostile_ to trying to do the right thing.

 _"Here's an influential VC who is ACTIVELY trying to encourage more balance
in his applicant pool and he gets attacked"_

I haven't attacked him, nor do I see anyone else in this thread attacking him.
His chosen methodology got _criticized_. Is someone trying to do something
right immune from criticism? No.

Now, is he trying to do something right in the first place? Perhaps. He does
seem to be uneasy at a male-dominated pool of responses. However, his response
to seeing this pattern is to assume that this represents a failure on the part
of some unknown women who did not respond. That's a remarkable and dubious
attitude to strike; taken most charitably, it's a startlingly _naive_ one.

" _sometimes all you have is a trusted recommendation to work from_ "

The cold fact is that someone not within a network or who cannot easily enter
that network is disadvantaged by this requirement. In this case, it's a
strongly majority-male network that shows quite a bit of discomfort and
sometimes outright hostility towards women trying to enter it.

So, I will say to you:

1) Blaming women for the fact that you've set up filters that are biased
against them? Uncool on the VC's part.

2) Jumping on someone pointing out those biased filters? Uncool on your part.

~~~
jeremymims
Sigh. You do know that almost all of us are on your side, right? Do you have
any idea how often the topic of the difficulty of hiring women comes up when I
talk to fellow entrepreneurs (male and female)? Personally, I've tried
recruiting six talented female programmers to apply to Y Combinator. None
have. Two of them took jobs at Goldman Sachs. One of them was one of the most
talented programmers I've ever met.

If you want to change the game, you've got to get in it. The fact of the
matter is that VC is an institution that's incredibly biased against anyone
who doesn't have connections. The year before I went through Y Combinator, I
emailed 30 VCs our pitch deck. Two responded. The day after demo day, we had
offers for meetings with half. Today, I have no trouble setting up meetings.
VCs simply don't have time to review every company that might come their way.
So they use intros and recommendations as short cuts. This isn't actually a
male or female issue. Very few people have the requisite connections to break
into this group. Isolating it to a female issue alone probably minimizes the
seriousness of the problem. That's why I love when a VC like Bryce reaches out
and gives people a way to even get in the door without having said
connections. This is a huge improvement for those willing to take advantage of
it.

Seriously, I'm open to suggestions. What solutions do you have that would get
more women into the game? We both agree that it would be a good thing.

~~~
Semiapies
" _Sigh. You do know that almost all of us are on your side, right?_ "

If you mean random people on HN, definitely not. Nearly every thread on women
in the industry here devolves into rants about how stupid, weak, and whiny
women are, and many or most of the posters who _don't_ drop into open misogyny
instead pretend we're in a perfectly equal world (or, at least, a perfectly
equal industry) and that sexism is a moot issue that only conniving lib'ruls
try to whip up out of nothing.

Now, if you mean people you work with, I'm willing to believe they'd like to
do the right thing. However, a big part of actually DOING the right thing is
_entertaining the possibility that you're doing it wrong_ , and that involves
not being defensive. That includes such things as _not_ trying to foist the
blame on the women themselves (as TFA did) and _not_ trying to shout down
people who point out problems (as you did).

 _"This isn't actually a male or female issue"_

It's not a strictly racial or sexual issue, either, but this is still a setup
where a bunch of mostly straight white guys will end up giving much better
odds to similar folks than they will give to equally talented people who
aren't straight, white, and/or guys. Not "there are fewer of them in the first
place", but straight-up "we are making this harder for you if you're gay,
black, or a woman".

Suggestions?

1) Think of it as marketing. Try to look at finding talented people beyond the
standard pool of straight white guys as something that's on _you_ in order to
make more money, not some problem you're saddled with that just benefits
_them_. Look at the positions you're offering as something you're trying to
sell and see how attractive they are - and think of things like "almost no
women apply" as "we're failing to attract a major segment of the market".

2) Don't emulate TFA. Don't patronize the people you say you want to recruit.
Would you try to sell something by squinting at customers who turned you down
and saying, "Let's try this again"? That sure wouldn't work on _me_ , why
would that work on women?

3) Keying into that "possibility that you're doing it wrong" - when you can,
find out _why_ women aren't applying for something. If you had good rapport
with one or more of those six programmers you mentioned, _why_ did she or they
not want to apply to Y Combinator? They all had reasons.

------
pge
We (a mid-sized tech VC firm) recently did an associate search as well. We
posted the job listing publicly (e.g., LinkedIn) and got almost 200 resumes.
Of those, fewer than 5% were women. And we are a firm that has more women than
most (up to and including Managing Director level). I was stunned that the
ratio was so skewed.

~~~
jdp23
Did you follow best practices for outreach? I've got some links at
<http://bit.ly/nwenctr2>

------
Semiapies
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with a guy hectoring _any_ set of
people who chose not to apply for a job he's offering?

Myself, I'm wondering how many _men_ applied.

------
michaelcampbell
How many Asians? Caucasians? African Americans? Paraplegics? (Quadraplegics?)

In other words, why does it matter how many of some arbitrary sub-
categorization of "humans" applied?

~~~
pge
It matters because when your applicant pool does not approximately reflect the
distributions of the target demographic along any dimension, it suggests that
you are not reaching the group of candidates you would like to. The qualified
candidates are presumably 50/50 male/female, so to see the applicant pool so
skewed from that number suggests that the firm is not reaching the full
candidate pool it should be. You always want to be reaching as many qualified
candidates as you can in order to ensure you are reaching the best potential
candidates.

~~~
hisabness
how many African Americans applied?

~~~
metageek
He probably doesn't know, because it wouldn't be on a résumé.

------
scottru
Separating the detailed comment from the pedantic comment: the word is flair.
You put a flare in the road. You do things with flair. (And in Office Space,
you wear pieces of flair. And if you're in the ring with the master of the
figure four, you're with Ric Flair.)

------
slouch
I clicked, scanned, and clicked a few more times. I have no idea what OATV is,
and I have lost interest trying to learn.

edit: Curiosity got the best of me, and I dug until I found out what it was.
Now, should I restart my search to find out what the job description is? I
think a blog post isn't the best way to accomplish this task.

------
LilValleyBigEgo
Well I guess I won't apply since I'm male.

Apparently only women are welcome to apply at OATV.

