
Paul Graham & Sexism: Just One More Distraction From Real Work - ntippmann
http://nibletz.com/2013/12/28/paul-graham-sexism/
======
ChrisNorstrom
Paul, you really need to stop being honest in public. The world doesn't want
honesty, it wants lies. It wants to feel good. Wake people up from their
politically correct Utopian dream and they will attack you viciously. Just go
with the flow and speak freely only to a close group of friends.

As I recall last time PG was honest about founders with heavy accents not
doing well due to communication problems he attacked as well. American culture
(founded on freedom of expression) has turned into a culture of witch hunts
and public shaming. Leading more people to simply stop talking about important
and many times controversial topics. From freedom of expression to fear of
expression, who's the witch hunt's next victim?

~~~
athesyn
It's this bizarre twitter/social justice generation. After seeing the
phenomenon where merely saying the word 'female' is considered sexist, nothing
surprises me anymore. It's better to never speak about gender differences.

~~~
tptacek
To the list of shibboleths that includes "third wave feminism" I will now add
"social justice". Thank you. It's convenient that people that hold views like
yours are so willing to mark themselves.

~~~
smtddr
I just want to say that it is very refreshing to see your comments on these
types of issues. You're one of the apparently very few people on HN that
actually understands what sexism/racism is in the tech-world.

------
willtheperson
Is it really wrong to say that women could be better or worse (in general) at
one thing or another? Is it sexist to even point out that men and women are
different?

I think my wife is pretty awesome and capable of things I would not be able to
do. Am I sexist for talking about it?

I think in the source PG even says that women are good (maybe better) than men
at business focused startups. Or will the world not be balanced until just as
many women are making hot or not for XYZ in the off hours

~~~
newnewnew
> "Is it really wrong to say that women could be better or worse (in general)
> at one thing or another? Is it sexist to even point out that men and women
> are different?"

Yes to both questions. On the other hand, it's science[1][2]! There's lots of
proven differences in personality and ability between the sexes.

When the official ideology is against reality, you have to choose between
being a "good person" and a good scientist. It's best for your career to
choose the first.

[1] [http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-
fundamentals/#sex](http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/#sex)

[2] [http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-
hug...](http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-huge-gender-
math-gap-persists-with-a-33-point-advantage-for-high-school-boys/)

~~~
gizmo686
>When the official ideology is against reality, you have to choose between
being a "good person" and a good scientist. It's best for your career to
choose the first.

Unless your career is in something like insurance, medicine, or any field
where those differences actually matter.

------
tptacek
What we seem to be seeing now is a wave of commentary from people who are
familiar only with what other people have said about the Graham interview at
The Information, but who have not themselves read that interview carefully.

~~~
michaelochurch
What's your takeaway from it? (I don't have a subscription to The
Information.)

~~~
tptacek
About the sexism issue?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980805)

About the interview as a whole? Sadly, I think the whole interview was pretty
boring, and the discrimination stuff was the most interesting part of it.
Everything else Graham had to say, it seemed like he had said elsewhere
before. I'm not criticizing Paul Graham here: I think he made the rest of his
points effectively and was well-tuned to the audience.

Ironically, Graham spends some time later in the interview talking about
"reputation as potential energy" (which rings true to me), and how that energy
is part of what makes people "attack" him and YC --- presumably, he means that
the energy he has captured is threatening to people. I wonder if he had
fielded that question first, before the discrimination thing, if he might have
said something different about women in tech.

~~~
larrys
Haven't you watched any prison movies? Everyone wants to take down the new
barn boss. (Sean Penn in "Bad Boys"[1])?

I'm joking of course (about the barn boss) but the truth is it's a good sign
when you get to the point where people analyze and give a shit about every
word that comes out of your mouth. You can then move the needle. I say ignore
the controversy and use it to your advantage.

[1] Remember the dweeb that built the radio and took down the goon with an
explosion?

------
unclesaamm
> While I fully get the the “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” thing, I
> just have to say there’s really not much here to be pissed about.

The "'hell hath no fury like a woman scored' thing"? That's an offensive thing
to say in this context.

From PG's interview:

>Does YC discriminate against female founders?

>I'm almost certain that we don't discriminate against female founders because
I would know from looking at the ones we missed. [...]

That's not evidence, because YC boosts the success rate of those who get in.

That said, I agree with the idea that hacker culture is not something a CS
major can impart, and that it helps to have an early start.

~~~
tptacek
It's not evidence that YC isn't discriminatory, that's true, but it's also not
evidence that YC is.

I think Graham would have been better off saying "I don't think we
discriminate, here's why, and I don't know why the gender imbalance exists".
Instead, he overexplained.

~~~
klipt
> I don't know why the gender imbalance exists

Well it depends what age group you're talking about. He says the gender
imbalance in 20 somethings is due to a gender imbalance in teens (which just
assumes that time spent in your teens is predictive of career choice and skill
level), and he doesn't know why the _teen_ imbalance exists, but it needs to
be fixed.

I don't see how that's over explaining. If you didn't study math or science in
highschool, you probably won't be a physicist either.

~~~
tptacek
It is simply not true that you need to study computer programming in high
school in order to be an effective professional programmer.

~~~
klipt
Didn't say it was strictly necessary. But you're less likely to even choose CS
as a career path if you had no interest in it earlier.

You can also become a physicist later in life, but it's rare.

------
was_hellbanned
If technology startups were founded more on business principles and less on
hot air, tech hand-waving, and "the Facebook of _X_ ", then this probably
wouldn't be so much of an issue.

Speaking as someone who got a home computer at eight, back when it was still
_extremely_ uncommon, and who never stopped programming, I actually think we
vastly overvalue this whole "you have to have been hacking since age 13"
angle. There are so many other elements that go into _actually delivering
solid product_ that I just don't think we can point to that as the issue to
focus on.

This is a symptom of a problem, not a qualification of proficiency.

~~~
coroxout
I very much agree with this.

I'm a woman and at age 13 I was, if not actually "hacking", at least teaching
myself to code simple games/graphics. However, "delivering solid product" is a
very big leap from that. I'll never be an elite ninja rock star coder or a big
name entrepreneur.

Conversely, there are plenty of posts on HN from people, mostly 20-something
and male, saying they just taught themselves to code from scratch within the
past year. Some of those people are already doing pretty damn awesome things,
and thankfully they usually get encouraging feedback rather than told they'll
never make it because they weren't geeky enough in junior high.

(And I was a big nerd all through school, so believe me, I'd love that to be a
meaningful qualification!)

------
zw123456
I recently saw an interview between Eric Schmidt and Sheryl Sandberg on BookTV
(www.booktv.org) and Sandberg made basically the same point but I think in a
little bit more elegant way. She mentioned that she put her teenage daughter
in computer camp and there were only 2 other girls in the camp, both of whom
were Sandberg's nieces and she also put them in there. The take away for her
was that most parents do not encourage girls to go to computer camp. So there
is a self fulfilling prophecy so to speak going on. I think both PG and SS are
saying pretty much the same thing, but SS is the better person to say it in my
view, not that PG shouldn't comment, it's just that him saying distracts from
the key point, it is socialization that needs to change. And they are both
correct, to be really good in tech, you need to start them young !

------
larrys
I would be remiss if I didn't reinforce a point that I make frequently that
after (as Fred Wilson calls it) this "shitstorm" passes more normals will be
aware of Paul Graham and YC do than before. And perhaps that will have an
effect on the general conversation as far as women in tech or taking up
computing (at age 13 or whatever) and actually do something useful.

Never let a good crisis go to waste as the saying goes.

------
holychiz
I normally don't bother to comment on these manufactured outrages but I have
to make an exception here. Look, PG clearly were referring in the interview to
startup _founders_. The magazine twisted his words to make it sounds like he
saying that women can't be _coder_, meaning women can never learn to code well
enough to get a job, which he never said. If that's indeed what he say then
everyone, you and I can decide to be outrage about it. But that's not what he
said. We should really be outraged at the magazine for this hit piece.

------
vezzy-fnord
Finally, a relatively rational response.

On another note, I just realized that Medium.com is absolutely _inundated_
with blog entries about pg's statements. Wow.

------
lkbm
pg says founders start programming when they're thirteen, and concludes that
we have a ten year lag time.

The author says founders can be much older than 23, so given that we have a
ten year lag time, we can start with people will over 13.

pg: x=13 y=23 Therefore z=y-x=10.

Author: No, y=40 Therefore x=y-10=30.

There's a pretty clear flaw in the author's reasoning here. Why say x=10 when
you've just rejected the value from which that ten was calculated?

~~~
zaphar
The author agrees with x=10 based on the 10,000 hours hypothesis as she states
in her article. She didn't base her agreement on pg's "hackers start at 13"
statement. She agreed with it due to the shear number of hours it takes to get
competent in a highly technical skill.

~~~
lkbm
The 10 000 hours thing is often paired with "3 hours a day for 10 years", but
by my recollection there the only number with a basis is 10 000, not the 3
hours or the 10 years. I'm pretty sure she chose 10 years because she was
responding to someone who chose 10 years.

------
robomartin
The problem of getting anyone, young or adult, interested in a subject --any
subject-- isn't one with a simple solution. Technical subjects have the added
difficulty that they require you to use your brain in non-trivial ways.

Given equal exposure to the subject matter, I fail to see how a male or female
subject would react differently to the idea of learning that subject. This, of
course, assuming that both the male and female subjects got to that moment in
time with a similar educational and perhaps even cultural frame of reference.

If a mother only ever bought a little girl frilly pink and shiny things, well,
it is probably unlikely that as a teenage girl or an adult woman she would
even remotely show interest in learning more technical subjects. She will
probably be a dancer and go into the arts or some other less "brainy"
occupation. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions to this, but they
are probably few and far between.

The same is true of boys. If they are brought-up in front of a playstation,
shooting at things, playing sports, and well outside of more academically
focused areas he will probably grow up to be a jock and then move on to
careers that do well when you use half your brain. Hell, he might even go into
sales!

Things are vastly different if you feed your kids a constant diet of what they
should be learning in order to operate at a different level when they are
older. My teenage son finished MIT's CS 6.00.1x course just a few weeks ago.
That did not happen magically. That was a lot of work. For me and for him! And
that also required a lot of work to get to the point where he could even be
shoved into that end of the pool.

My little girl is too young to think about formal learning of these kinds of
subject, but this year she got introduced to Lego robotics and is starting to
like it. Yet, the situation is exactly the same: It requires a ton of time and
dedication on my part --as the designated nerd at home-- to keep her exposed
to such subjects and make it fun. I have to get silly while teaching something
useful. I have to figure out ways to make robotics fun, silly, exciting and
something she wants to do. We don't buy lots of silly frilly things for her.
That said, I have to tell you, it is hard to fight both genetics and exposure
to such things through her peers.

I guess my message is that parents needs to be very engaged and active in
bringing up a child into the sciences and technology. It will not happen by
osmosis. And, I really don't think gender makes a huge difference. It might
change the approach, but I don't think it is the primary determinant of
success or failure.

One way I've explained this in the past to friends who marvel at what my kids
are doing is that this is like a Formula 1 car drafting a car in front of
them. You need to drive well and use a lot of effort to get close enough to be
within the zone where drafting happens. Up until that point you are using a
lot more energy to chase the car in front of you. Once you get into the
drafting zone you need less power to maintain the same speed. Yet, you still
need that foot solidly planted on the accelerator.

With kids you have to push, push, push. I have navigated through really
frustrating moments when I've gotten angry because I couldn't understand why
he (my oldest son) didn't just grab that book I bought for him and launched
himself into software development nirvana. Of course, I always reflected upon
these things and never externalized them --not much of a motivator to yell and
scream at your kid about learning something-- and realized that (a) he is
still young and (b) we are not in the "draft zone" yet. It'll take a lot more
effort --and this is different from kid to kid-- to get him into the "draft
zone". Once we reach that zone it will require a lot less energy on my part
and, if interested, he will ultimately need virtually no support from me.

This is where I look at some of the things being said about STEM education and
can't help but think we are just throwing money into a big bonfire. You can't
force people into learning anything. A lot of my kid's friends are, well,
jocks or exhibit no interest in anything at all. They are navigating through
school with no guidance or encouragement in any direction whatsoever. You
can't just throw money at that and expect things to change. For most kids it
requires far more work than can be done during the time they are at school.
Yes, of course, there are a few kids in every sample group that need almost
zero work. These kids get hooked on a subject like programming and just go, go
, go. Most kids are not like that. Just like most successful businesses did
not get launched with a long coding session over a weekend while eating
popcorn.

Going back to my little girl, she is not seriously exposed to Lego robotics.
In fact, our living room table is an official FLL table with the official
field mat and everything. Yes, we are serious about this. I'd rather have a
learning environment in my living room than a fancy dinning room table.

As far as why there aren't more women in tech today. I don't have the answer
for that. I only know that when I was a teenager girls mostly did different
stuff. Not because they were being forced away from tech, they simply showed
no interest in what we were doing. My guess is that it all came from home. So,
as our culture changes so will that aspect of things.

Evolution?

------
michaelochurch
Paul Graham is probably not sexist, and if he's ageist, it's a product of his
sampling bias. Most qualified 40+ founders are not going to be that interested
in the 6%-for-$15k type of deal that YC offers. Those terms are great for
someone out of college; not as much for a seasoned 40+ entrepreneur. There are
plenty of very qualified 50-year-old entrepreneurs out there, but I doubt
they're applying to YC. I could be wrong; that's just my best guess.

I'm not PG's biggest fan, although I admire his Lisp chops. Still, this attack
on him is ridiculous. The interview shows him as a decent guy admitting he
can't solve a difficult and complicated problem. Really, my feeling is,
"Nothing to see here, move along".

The truth is that even if Paul Graham _were_ sexist, that wouldn't be such a
big deal if the startup industry were healthy, because the biases of one
influential individual shouldn't matter.

Rather, the VC-funded world is seriously and systemically ill-- and the rarity
of female founders is a symptom of that sickness-- and PG is just being made
(completely unreasonably, IMO) a lightning rod, even though he's clearly one
of the more reasonable (and probably one of the less sexist/racist/classist)
investors out there.

~~~
crassus
Paul's done more good for people of all human subgroups - "protected" or
unprotected - than any of the commentariat. But we live in a culture that
gives power to Social Justice Warriors who haven't done a damn thing. Why do
we privilege the talkers over the doers? We're moving into a time where right
ideology matters above all else.

Something ugly is happening in America. If Paul Graham worked for someone
else, he'd be fired by now[1]. That's sad, as everything he's said has been
thoughtful and in good faith. None of it should be out of bounds for adult
discussion.

We live in a time when it's best to shut up if you know what's good for you.
And that's sad.

[1] [http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-
badg...](http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-badgered-
pressured-and-purged/)

~~~
tptacek
I keep seeing comments like this and thinking about how easy it is to
caricature any effort; for instance, people manage to do the same thing to
Watsi, which should be an unimpeachable project. Are there do-nothing "Social
Justice Warriors"? I'm sure there are. What's your point? By focusing on them
to the exclusion of all else, what you're really demonstrating is that you're
not interested in understanding the complaint. Why is ignorance supposed to be
a compelling argument?

~~~
crassus
Social Justice Warriors are shrinking the bounds of possible thought and
tarnishing people's reputations. If you're not self-employed, they can get you
fired. I'm an old-fashioned liberal: I believe that thoughtful, free
discussion leads to improving our knowledge of the world. So first of all,
SJWs are the enemy of free thought and they have turned their eyes towards
tech. I hate to see the enemy wielding power or gaining in it.

Secondly, I agree it is useful to introspect into tech culture and hiring
practices to make sure we are not turning away good candidates. But we cannot
judge the fairness of a hiring process solely by results because the hiring
process doesn't control the larger culture that a person grows up in. If the
cartoons kids watch at age 8 only have pimply male geeks in tech roles and as
a result your startup has a skewed gender ratio 14 years later, that doesn't
make the startup founders a witch, oops I mean sexist.

Changing the culture is a monumental task, but the startup community is not
shying away from it. They are investing in early childhood education and other
initiatives to give all people the opportunity to code. But the fruits of
these projects will be long-term.

In the meantime, I want people to be able to discuss the issue openly and
honestly without being attacked/fired, because I believe that makes us most
effective and I believe that is what is right. The SJWs looking to burn
witches aren't adding anything and they can go to hell.

~~~
tptacek
Your comment would have been just as effective without its first and last
graf; had you refrained from trying to caricature everyone who feels like
gender imbalance is a problem, I would merely disagree with most of it.

It is simply not true that cartoon representations of computer programmers are
a necessary component of an effective startup hacker.

Changing the culture is indeed a monumental task, but the startup community
seems to be embracing the current culture and back-rationalizing its
attributes. You see this when you see people describe how getting started at
age 13 is somehow important to building CRUD websites.

~~~
crassus
Just curious - do you think that outlets like Valleywag are a positive or
negative for our industry?

If something is a positive for everybody who believes the "right" way and
negative for everybody else, I tend to believe that's a net negative because
it makes us dumber in the aggregate.

~~~
tptacek
Negative.

