

Twitter’s female “problem” - kposehn
http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/08/twitters-female-problem-this-is-why-mobs-dont-appoint-public-company-boards/

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smacktoward
It's fascinating how, in an article that's ostensibly about Twitter, Sarah
Lacy manages to write so many more words about Sarah Lacy than she does about
Twitter.

~~~
phoward
I noticed that as well. A critique turned into self-affirmation. Stuart
Smalley would be proud.

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nonchalance
> Particularly one Twitter screed that said I only successfully raised venture
> capital for Pando because of how I look and who I know.

Gender issues aside, Why exactly did Pando raise money, and how are they
spending it? AFAICT it's a tech blog like many others

~~~
fleitz
Let's assume PandoDaily will never make money, and in a few years will be back
for another few million in funding.

Lets assume that PandoDaily will continue to write articles about VC funded
tech startups, now why would a company that stands to gain potentially
billions of dollars from positive press of its portfolio companies invest in a
money losing business like Pando? Especially if Pando can't continue
operations with out more funding?

Do you ever wonder why companies you can't buy anything from advertise on CNN?

I have no idea whether this is true, but if we're making up conspiracy
theories, this seems at least plausible.

~~~
nonchalance
What's not obvious to me is your implicit assumption that press from
PandoDaily is a positive signal. If it is understood that PD is sponsored by
the very VC companies whose portfolio companies are being pumped, isn't it
conceivable that the articles in the future could be a negative signal?

~~~
fleitz
That's the nature of risk. Being able to associate negative perceptions around
a company isn't exactly worthless either.

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adamnemecek
I don't think that I will ever get tired of articles about gender and
diversity in tech.

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newnewnew
Is it just me, or has there been a recent explosion in the number of east
coast "tech journalists" who couldn't code a hello world website who earn
paychecks and page views by attacking tech startups with social-justice
warrior type articles?

This is what happens to a country with too many worthless bachelor's degrees
floating around.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
It's not just tech journalism, it's a phenomenon that echoes in Western media.

I'm waiting for an article on how Silicon Valley discriminates against
otherkin.

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The_DHC
Outrage is a growth industry. Go long on Outrage futures.

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parennoob
[EDIT]: Also, talk about the pot calling the kettle black. This is the NYTimes
Board of Directors

[http://www.nytco.com/company/board_of_directors/](http://www.nytco.com/company/board_of_directors/)

Quite the diverse bunch, aren't they? (I'm focusing on the NYTimes, where the
original article appeared instead of PandoDaily because PandoDaily is our
standard tech industry rag that tacks on three pages of superfluous rubbish
onto what someone else wrote first.)

\---

This is a 100% non-issue. As a person of colour, if I started raising a hue
and cry every time there was a tech company (or, for that matter, any company)
board full of white men/women, people would go bonkers. No one says "there
should be X Asian, Y Hispanic, and Z African-American members on the board"
because it simply isn't practical to implement without cast-iron Government
controls (which are themselves susceptible to favoritism, corruption, etc.)

If this Claire Cain Miller person on the NYTimes doesn't like it so much,
maybe she should be in tech instead of spouting vitriol about Silicon Valley
during the day and then going to a journalists' cocktail party in the evening
where you would get laughed out and never asked again if you talked about
apache v/s nginx. Her ilk of pseudo-intellectuals and outrage artists are
making reporting into more of a theatre play.

For an example of a (young) woman who is _actually_ making a difference --
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35XINnYFtA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35XINnYFtA)

~~~
felipe
I don't think it's right that Twitter is being singled-out as the evil
chauvinistic company out there, but it is undeniable that positions of power
in Silicon Valley are indeed reserved for the privileged white-male, and
that's the focus of the NYT article [1], although it does use Twitter as a
high-profile example.

Would you deny that Silicon Valley's VC community is not a "old boys’ club" as
the article describes? Would you deny that things are not tougher for women,
persons of colour such as yourself, or latinos such as myself?

You are right: It is not practical to force companies to distribute
opportunities equally among genders / sexual preferences / ethnicities / races
and whatnot. However, we cannot also simply ignore the problem in our industry
because a solution is not available at first sight.

Also, your own answer shows a bias against the author, dismissing her kind as
"pseudo-intellectuals". That's exactly the kind of comment that makes
technology such an unfriendly field for diversity in general.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/technology/as-tech-
start-u...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/technology/as-tech-start-ups-
surge-ahead-women-seem-to-be-left-behind.html)

~~~
parennoob
Of course, things are probably going to be tougher for people who are not
white males, and we should pragmatically try and do something to fix that. My
point is that articles such as this do little or nothing to help, and often
end up breeding resentment amongst groups of every race and gender.

The journalism industry which writes these articles is often much less diverse
and much less welcoming to outsiders than the tech industry that they are
constantly criticizing and accusing of chauvinism and sexism. I do have a bias
against these authors, because they tend to not have much to showcase in the
way of their own forays into making any sort of technology stuff, and restrict
themselves to writing about an industry whose fundamentals they probably don't
understand.

~~~
cupcake-unicorn
It sort of sounds from some of your posts that you think that there isn't as
much of a problem with sexism in the tech industry as people make it out to be
- is that correct?

If you haven't been a woman in the tech industry it may be hard to understand.
African American friends have told me things that I was shocked to hear about,
and I could barely believe what I was hearing, given that I live in a very
big, liberal city, in this day and age. It's very hard to put yourself in
another's shoes like that if you haven't had the experience of living it - and
moreso if you're a decent person who isn't sexist, racist, etc. and have a
very hard time even imagining someone seriously showing that kind of bias.

~~~
felipe
> "given that I live in a very big, liberal city"

I don't know what city you are referring to, but your post alludes to a good
point which is the fact that people normally associate Silicon Valley and San
Francisco as liberal, and this is very much a myth. San Francisco in specific
is actually a very conservative city: Gays are accepted only in a limited area
of the city, the homeless are taken as a tourist attraction, the educational
system is biased towards privileged kids (for example: latino kids are
excluded and bused around to other areas of the city), there is no modern
urban planning such as a decent public transportation plan (BART sucks, MUNI
sucks, Caltrain is not connected to BART for example) while areas such as
Pacific Heights and Palo Alto love to talk about environmental issues but
actively lobby for not allowing BART in their neighborhoods.

Don't take me wrong: SF Bay Area is not a horrible place to live. All I am
saying is that this notion that SF is liberal is wrong.

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joe_the_user
Somehow it doesn't surprise me that the Twitter board is a men's club.

If this was merely a chance phenomena, that would be one thing but this is
platform that has something of a history of being a mob-enablement tool in a
bad way.

That's not to say Twitter hasn't done or couldn't do good. But a company like
Twitter or Facebook is doing two things - making a significant amount of money
and changing the world "social terrain". It seems reasonable that Twitter
should be aware that they're doing this and should send signals showing they
considering their impact. Now, the number of women on the board is probably a
pretty poor marker _by itself_ of whether a group is aiming to be sensitive.
But one's willingness to send even a poor signal is different matter.

