Not too long ago, founders were often seen as mere grist for Silicon Valley VC mills - essential but hardly most vital to a startup's success. This has changed.
Founders today have significant control of their company’s formation and development. They no longer have to locate in the Valley but can operate from almost anywhere worldwide. The web has given them vast amount of knowledge about how things work, where they were once relegated to trying to pick up scraps around the water cooler. The infrastructure build-out has significantly reduced their capital needs, where they once routinely needed immediate large funding just to launch their basic product. The desktop PC is no longer a primary software development platform, where it once dominated and defined the range of startup opportunities available. The barriers are down, and there is much more room for sheer drive and talent to hold sway and define the path to success.
The dark side has always been there, as noted in this fine piece, and it will remain - doing startups does "suck" if one compares it to conventional ways of making a living but that is why the rewards can be large as well.
But demographic diversity is today quite pronounced in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural mix (the white males among the founders I work with are today a distinct minority). Only on the gender side does it continue to lag. On that side, I am not sure how much will change in the near term. Given the otherwise radical changes that have occurred, whatever is causing this state of things to persist must be pretty deeply ingrained.
> My beef with the discourse of “diversity” in a nutshell: it screams “give us more women” and whispers “give us more women like us”.
The real lack of diversity in startupland doesn't seem to me to be in chromosomes or melanin, but in experience and target markets. Everyone's building general-purpose to-do lists and twitter clients instead of researching and finding underserved markets.
Exactly, I think the prevalence of to-do list type apps shows a huge bias in the startup world. Looking at the successful website few of them target people building startups. EX: Facebook / Twitter (extroverts and stalkers), EBay (people who have or want stuff), Google (people looking for things), Fark (people with nothing to do).
IMO, the most important questions are “what type of person would actually use this?” and “Why would they use this?”
In a bit of spectacularly poor planning I resolved to write this after I got home for the day. Then I got off work too late to get home for the day. So I thought I would dash this off at the Internet cafe and then check into the hotel before they close the doors at 2 AM. That will be inconvenient for commenting -- my apologies in advance.
On the subject of social pathologies and the idiot men who sign up for them: T minus 30 work days until I am no longer a salaryman.
There is a lot of lively discussion going on last couple of days on HN about diversity, and I very much like Patrick's take on the whole issue, putting it into perspective.
I was a contractor at a large company that prided itself on diversity, and from what I could see, the were successful in their hiring and promotion. What they were not successful in is accepting or promoting diversity of thought. Once you were in the door, you needed to get on board with their way of thinking.
In "Built to Last," Collins observes that the great companies have a certain uniformity in who they hire. "Fits like a glove or ejected like a virus" was something along the lines of how he described it. So lack of diversity of thought is not necessarily bad.
Post-modern, really. We have long ago exited the modern era, which was rational, progressive, and all that. Or even, according to some far-out academics, completely by-passed it, and gone directly to the all-apearance and buzz post-modern.
you can hire a stay-at-home mom with a graduate degree in Middle America for less than $10 an hour. If you figure out a way to exploit that, you’ll end up very, very rich.
First, just to get this out of the way, it's kind of embarrassing that pornographers are once again in the vanguard. Now that that's out of the way, the author has an excellent point. There must be a lot of educated moms who are having second thoughts about staying at home, for economic reasons or otherwise, but they look around and think, "Crap, how the hell can I get a decent job here? I'm stuck in Middle America, nobody cares that I'm an excellent writer and researcher, and even if I wanted to work as a receptionist, I'd be ridiculed by my coworkers for the lack of return on my graduate degree in anthropology." When people have second thoughts about their lives, maybe they persuade their families to turn their lives upside down, or maybe they decide not to. Telecommuting from home is a great option for those who don't. I suspect there's a culture gap between educated stay-at-home moms and ragingly ambitious (and sometimes very narrowly educated) twenty-something software entrepreneurs, but they're basically from the same class and should be able to get along without too much effort.
I just finished reading "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt which has an interesting discussion of what "diversity" means and this post reminded me of that.
Haidt argues there's two kinds of diversity: demographic and moral.
People who want demographic diversity are arguing for he inclusion of previously excluded groups.
Moral diversity is a lack of consensus on normal norms and values, and Haidt argues no one can coherently want moral diversity (e.g., if you are pro-life, how can you want there to be a diversity of views on abortion with none dominating?)
In his article Patrick touches on this I think. Some people want Silicon Valley to be more demographically diverse for reasons of justice; but they would not feel comfortable if that diversity led to moral diversity. People want to associate with others who think and believe like themselves.
...if you are pro-life, how can you want there to be a diversity of views on abortion with none dominating?
I don't think it's incoherent to recognise that I don't always have all the answers, and that I need occasional or frequent reminding that I might be wrong---which will presumably not come unless there's someone who disagrees with me.
Furthermore, thoughtful people change their minds on things (which is why accusations like "flip-flopper" are so ludicrous), and if I agree with everyone now, what will happen when I change my mind on something later?
I, at least, really do value moral diversity as well as demographic diversity.
First off, I doubt you would say that about anything you feel very strongly about, otherwise what is the point of holding that belief?
To expand a little bit, Haidt argues that too much moral diversity leads to anomie, in which the condition in a society with no clear rules, standards or norms. This is the case of when there is "too much" individualism, and it is very difficult to achieve happiness without a coherent social structure.
"In an anomic society, people can do as they please; but without any clear standards of respected social institutions to enforce those standards, it is harder for people to find things they want to do. Anomie breeds feelings of rootlessness and anxiety and leads to an increase in amoral and antisocial behavior."
Though he is a liberal, one of his points in the book is that the relentless pursuit of individualism without regard to shared values leads to unsatisfying lives.
Dude, please respond to what I said, not to what you think I must have meant. It is not incoherent to acknowledge that one's beliefs, even one's very strongly-held beliefs, might be wrong. Yes, I think that I'm right, I'm pretty darn sure I'm right, but what if I'm not? And I'd never find out unless I, at least sometimes, let people who disagree with me try to convince me they're right.
Sure, that makes sense. That's not what I'm saying about anomie though.
Do you want to live in a world where your strongly held beliefs are dominant (not exclusive, but dominant) or in one where you are in the minority?
Haidt is saying a person would not want to be in the minority. They may _believe_ in a minority moral opinion but their goal is for that moral opinion to become a majority opinion, not for it to languish forever.
Here's a related take on why there are no more women in startups from an evolutionary perspective.
In reproduction, which is what evolution is made of, men and women are very different. A woman can only have one baby every nine months, and realistically maybe every other year. This limits her choices for reproduction so she has to find the right man for the job meaning someone that has the resources to take care of the kid and make sure he grows up and has offspring. Men on the other hand can reproduce as much as they like given they can find a willing woman. This has some interesting consequences on evolutionary selection.
- Women are risk averse and look for security, knowing that they only have a few shots at successful propagation.
- Since men can have many women, but women can have only one man (a women with many men will not produce more offspring, but a man with many women will) the offspring of the men will be unequally divided. The bottom of the pack won't have any offspring at all while the top of the pack will have a lot. Ghengis Khan had lots of children with many wives, and so do people with harems. This means there are men that have no offspring at all.
- Women look for men that can take care of their offspring. They care more about them since they have fewer chances than men do. This is why women go for rich men, and why only rich men have harems.
What this means is that a woman is somewhat guaranteed to find a man that she can produce offspring with if she is conservative in her choices, and that she will tend to mate with the most successful man she can find. Men, on the other hand, don't have this guarantee and have to play a risky game of trying to make it to the top. The more success a man has the more women will want to mate with him. On the other hand if he is conservative there's a risk he won't find anyone to mate with at all thus ending his gene pool.
I think this combined with Patrick's post explains pretty clearly why there are no more women in Silicon Valley. It's simply too risky.
This is an example of what anthropologists and evolutionary biologists call "adaptive storytelling." Just because human beings or any other organism have a particular feature or behavior does not necessarily mean that it is an adaptation and does not necessarily mean that natural selection has acted upon it. You've come up with an interesting story but that is all it is -- there is absolutely no reason to believe it is correct.
Your point is worthwhile, and spandrels certainly do exist, but you weaken your point by linking to a paper in which Gould was involved, even if Lewontin (who actually knows what he's talking about in evolutionary biology) was the co-athor. Also, spandrels would be expected to be ephemeral over evolutionary time, while the much greater skewness of male reproductive success over female is practically a biological universal. The optimal reproductive strategies will thus differ, and higher male risk tolerance seems one of the more plausible evo-bio "just so" stories.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kv/beware_of_stephen_j_gould/If you've read anything Stephen J. Gould has ever said about evolutionary biology, I have some bad news for you. In the field of evolutionary biology at large, Gould's reputation is mud. Not because he was wrong. Many honest scientists have made honest mistakes. What Gould did was much worse, involving deliberate misrepresentation of science.
That paper I linked to is a classic that every graduate student in evolutionary biology and has read and discussed. I honestly don't know how to respond further without being offensive.
If you want to educate yourself on evolutionary theory, here are some papers to get you started (note that Gould and Lewontin is one of them).
Also, spandrels would be expected to be ephemeral over evolutionary time, while the much greater skewness of male reproductive success over female is practically a biological universal.
I don't agree with either of these. Please explain your reasoning, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the points you are trying to make.
Why not be offensive? My dismissal is based far more on my state of knowledge than on that of true or aspirant experts. It took me an hour to get through the Hardy-Weinberg Equation and that was recently. I'm relying upon the fact that Tooby, Cosmides and Pinker among others do not respect Gould.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html
I see no special reason to rate Gould as an evolutionary biologist. As an essayist and polemicist, I rate him, and I'm as qualified to do so as anyone else. As a palaeontologist, I rate him because Harvard did. As an evolutionary biologist, ttbomk his contributions boil down to coining "punctuauted equilibrium" i.e. adaptation does not proceed always and everywhere at a uniform speed.
Why would I, currently ignorant as I am, read the work of someone who I do not trust to put science before ideology? If I ever reach a stage where I can say I'm not ignorant I'd obviosuly read Lewontin first.
Spandrels: Complexity that is not conserved as such but that arises as a consequence of some feature that is selected for. Thus any mutations that effect the spandrel but not the parent feature will have no selective advantage or disadvantage. As such the spandrel will decay or be repurposed in some adaptive fashion. It will not be conserved as such.
Male reproductive skew: How many calories does it cost me to deposit some sperm and then bugger off? How many does it cost a female to bring a child to term? How many more to bring it to sexual maturity and/or independence? Given the diference in minimum investment, and the 1:1 sex ratio that arises as a consequence of Fisher's Principle a very small advantage in mating will have a much greater effect on males than females in terms of number of surviving offspring, and will as such be more strongly selected for.
Alternatively, why do we have males and females rather than interfertile hermaphrodites? Given that we do, why do we have so many males when a tenth or a hundredth as many would do to fertilise all the females?
Or maybe it's possible that virtually none of what you wrote is meaningfully correct, which would account for the dearth of women in CS despite the huge market for practically risk-free CS/IT jobs in the US.
I think if you re-read my comment carefully (with my apologies, as I seem to have worded it obtusely), you'll see that I'm actually addressing your point, and not changing the subject to CS.
In my experience people who've never been in a startup don't know what it's like. Therefore their decisions are based on prejudice. And since most men, as most women, also refrain from trying to start their own company or follow their passion (even though both are very common desires) due to their fears and the social context they've grown up in, I think that if one were to alter the growth of startups from women (as men) one must focus first on deconstructing the prejudices and, in particular, just helping people to start.
Definitely. Regarding the "diversity" issue, I think there's verifiable evidence that first-generation immigrants tend to be far more successful in the startup / small business enterprise than those who've been in the US for many generations.
Where I grew up, there is a saying for logic like this, "horse manure." I apologize -- I know you and Tom are cozy. He thinks very highly of you. You get an "A" for effort, but you're missing the point. Joining start-ups does not suck. Lemme 'splain.
I survived that whole dotcom boom watching all of my male internet buddies start, get hired at and then cash out of start-ups. As many times as I privately asked to be considered, I was denied. My male friends networked for jobs, got references. I asked for the same and got hems and haws and shufflings of feet. I had to marry one of them, just to get that opportunity. It worked: I've stayed with MTSO for 3 years -- longer than any place I've worked since I left high school. Sounds bitter, doesn't it?
The truth is, I never let myself be bitter. And I've always told the women who do whine to suck it up. Whining sets a bad example.
So let's review:
- I'm exceptionally motivated. You put yourself through college scrubbing toilets and see how motivated you are. So far there is nothing I've tried that, in time, I did not excel at. Pardon my hubris. But it's impossible to be at the top of a game you cannot play, right?
- I would have loved that job. I kept applying and kept getting turned down. The closest I could get was as a contractor, which is kinda like a temp who can script instead of type. Sun hired me to train full-time employees. Contracting came to a swift end when I became pregnant. To quote, "We think you should reconsider your fit within this organization." You don't forget words like that.
- I used to program, decades ago. I quit, but I don't exactly remember why. It's a mystery, because coding does not feel like work, and I get paid for that, now. Instead, I spent those decades as a sysadmin. I have a lot of grey hair and innumerable scars on my arms and legs from running cable and shifting heavy equipment.
- I worked 100 hour weeks, anyway. Even now I try to cram work into every small time slice available (today, that meant coding while waiting for an x-ray appointment). I always was paid less than my male peers, so the threat of being paid next to nothing is meaningless to me. I wouldn't trade what I do now for anything short of "independently wealthy." What does crushing defeat really feel like? When a famous do-no-evil company interviews you and asks what your kids will do all day while you're at work. Or a recruiter mentions she hears your kids in the background and asks for reassurance that you can work 40 hours a week. That's the moment when it hits you that all the blood, sweat and tears that flowed from you while you were paying your dues count for nothing. A friend of mine quit the industry for two years to work as a roofer. He walked right back into a six-figure salary. Note that I've never had a six-figure salary, but I know what most of my old co-workers made then and make now.
- No, sir, the pinnacle of my career comes at the ripe old age of 40 when I really don't care if we ever cash out. I'm sure Tom does, but not me. Risk tolerance? All our eggs are in this one basket. Even though I know that, if something goes wrong, we can get "regular jobs," this is just too much fun. Not in it for the money... in it for the bragging rights.
When I went back to work full-time, Tom didn't quite have a sense of what I was up against. Though I think he got an inkling when I was interviewed by someone who showed me a picture of his ass during the interview. Heck, I was even SURPRISED to find out that it was illegal for to be asked what my kids would be doing while I was at work. And I called that recruiter's boss -- a woman, also. She peed all over herself, verbally, apologizing.
Your ideas to make startups more palatable are not bad, but they are expensive. Startups need to run lean. And as for women, a lot of the time we're trying not to aggravate bias by whining. As my grandmother said, "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar." Nobody likes a whiner. It's a dignity thing. But I don't have anything to lose. So if you want to hear more of the gory stories of my work experiences, feel free to track me down and email me.
Oh, and sorry for the really long response. It was a long post.
> Your ideas to make startups more palatable are not bad, but they are expensive. Startups need to run lean.
Zuh? His ideas are 'make products to sell,' 'locate somewhere besides SV,' 'don't seek funding,' 'don't overwork people,' and 'don't take advice too seriously.'
I have no idea which of those things you think is 'expensive.' Maybe the part about not overworking? From the rest of the post, it seems like you're responding to things other people have told you over the years, rather than the OP.
I must say, I have a taste for this sort of drama. I seek it out, enjoy reading it. I enjoy the fact that people, like this elptacek, willingly make fools of themselves online for the amusement of others. I watch with rapt attention the springs of a tightly wound life pop off when the tension gets too high. My interest in the subject is that of a scientist observing some remarkable natural phenomenon. It appears to follow a pattern which he can, perhaps, predict but not yet quite articulate.
I'm sure the readers of this post, are skewed towards the work-life balance believers. I don't. Most of the best entrepreneurs I know, don't. Apple. Facebook. Microsoft. Paul Graham as well.
Despite how much you might want to succeed, consistently working beyond 40 or 60 hours a week is going to degrade your productivity below the level you would achieve with 40 hours a week.
There are several factors
- You make more mistakes
- You have trouble applying yourself
- You loose the ability to think creatively, so you don't see solutions
- You don't make the intuitive leaps that used to save so much time
- You stop coming up with as many great ideas
The best way I know to reduce this effect is to make sure you spend your leisure time doing productive business stuff. Network, discuss business plans, email, twitter, blog, research - just don't expect to do any one thing (code for example) 60-80 hours a week for months and not get bitten on the ass by your own exhaustion.
> [...] it [Silicon Valley] has its peculiar jokes and rhythms and closely-held shadow beliefs which owe a bit more to repetition than they owe to empirical reality
The problem is that those beliefs include a broad perception of women as less than equal. Lack of diversity is a self-perpetuating prophecy in that way.
--- Broader reply:
I also think that Patrick is severely underestimating the benefits of a diverse environment. There are reasons Silicon Valley is next to SF and not Dallas; many of them have to do with the vibrant mix of cultures there.
Personal anecdote: I've moved across the country in search, specifically, of greater diversity. I've turned down jobs because the workplace was a monoculture. And the single biggest negative for me of the space I'm currently co-working in is that it is entirely composed of white guys under 30. I may or may not be the best developer ever -- but the best programmers and businesspeople I've ever met share some of the same values. In other words a homogeneous environment will not only drive away 'diverse' people, but also may be doing the same for the best non-diverse people as well.
"There are reasons Silicon Valley is next to SF and not Dallas; many of them have to do with the vibrant mix of cultures there."
Erm.
As of the census[1] of 2000, the racial makeup of Dallas was 50.8% White, 25.9% Black or African American, 0.5% Native American, 2.7% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 17.2% from other races, and 2.7% from two or more races. 35.6% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Dallas)
In 2000 the racial makeup of the 9 County Bay Area was 58.10% white, 19.01% Asian, 0.54% Pacific Islander, 7.53% black, 0.64% Native American, 9.24% from other races, and 4.93% from two or more races. 19.39% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Demograp...)
I think you're both missing Patrick's point here to some extent. A broad palette of skin colours does not equal diversity. How many evangelical Christians do you meet in the valley? How many stay at home moms? I think urban diversity is highly misleading - while you might look around and see the signs of diversity, how often do you have a conversation with someone who has totally different goals and aspirations to yourself?
I can only speak from a British perspective, but I think London is a good example of this - although it is one of the most racially and culturally diverse cities on earth, it is in practice quite strongly ghettoised by age and outlook. Most people will scarcely exchange more than a few words with anyone outside their professional and social circles. It seems to me that people living in rural communities tend to have more diverse contact as they are much more likely to actually spend time with people who live lives very different to their own.
Out of genuine curiosity, I ask all the folks in the Bay Area - when was the last time you had a conversation with someone who doesn't own a computer (and isn't your mom)? When was the last time you had a drink with someone who is barely literate? Myspace has 51 million users in the US, how many do you know?
> While you might look around and see the signs of diversity, how often do you have a conversation with someone who has totally different goals and aspirations to yourself?
If you are interested in doing so, you have the opportunity.
You wouldn't if you were living in Kansas.
You seriously believe that London's ethnic and cultural diversity isn't a genuine attraction for many who end up there, nor a genuine asset for the city?
I believe (1) may be true for some, but is absolutely false for others.
Also, I think it's safe to broaden (2) to mean "creative culture" -- as in not just restaurants, but galleries, plays, music, nightlife, and so on; along with the indirect repercussions of that -- in which case it remains true, but lacks the shallowness you tried to imply.
Replying again since the parent is getting voted up, and I think it's misleading:
If you compare the Bay Area to the Dallas/Ft Worth area, you will get 58% white vs. 70% white. If you compare the specific city of SF to the city of Dallas, you'll get 45% white vs 50.0% white. In both cases, SF / Bay Area has a greater proportion of minorities than Dallas...
... not to say that jdminhbg doesn't have a point entirely (Dallas itself is more diverse than the stereotype) -- but it was hugely exaggerated by comparing a city to a region.
The problem with Silicon Valley is that it doesn't respect intelligent women any more than the rest of the US. Sure, companies or "startups" will hire women as marketers to pass out badges or tshirts at big I/O events, answer phones, serve lunches, or vacuum the floors, work in the "massage" parlor . . . but being a female professional who actually has talent is about 1000 times harder than any guy who lives there can possibly understand.
I'm a man, but I'm happy to call bullshit on that. There are a long list of successful women who are taken quite seriously all on their own. Leah Culver springs immediately to mind. My wife, who owns a successful accounting startup is another. I've met countless others, including one particularly memorable engineer at Flock (I'll protect her privacy).
The reality is that there are simply very few women that hold the qualifications necessary to be successful in the startup world. When you do find one, the competition for their services is incredibly fierce. In a previous gig I tried desperately to hire a particular woman who had just graduated from MIT. We lost a pretty serious bidding war, not because she was a woman but because her skills were off the charts.
It's funny, there are similar articles written about certain disciplines in academia (like accounting). There too it's just a numbers game. My wife, until her latest birthday, was just 1 of 5 female accounting PhD's in the whole country (including foreign born) under 30. Of course there are precious few female accounting professors, there are very few females pursuing accounting PhD's!
Of course, that means she enjoys a tremendous advantage over her peers. The pressure to promote diversity means she enjoys a better salary and lot more job security than her male counterparts.
The same is true, from my experience, for the few intelligent and talented female engineers that I've met in the valley.
> There are a long list of successful women who are taken quite seriously all on their own. Leah Culver springs immediately to mind.
That's interesting, because Leah Culver is someone who I've frequently heard discussed in the context of who she is dating or who she has dated, with the implication that she's riding on the coattails of her boyfriends. So, maybe that's not such a good example for you to use.
(Disclaimer, in case that wasn't clear enough: I'm relaying things I've heard other people say. I don't personally know enough about Ms. Culver to have any opinions on her abilities.)
I think it's an excellent example. She clearly has the programming ability. She's clearly incredibly intelligent. She's clearly taken seriously. That she also runs in higher profile (At least in the valley) social circles hardly discounts her accomplishments.
Using exec to access object fields? Really? There was also a fiasco a while back where she converted floats to strings in order to compute an average (!). She deleted that post, but if you google "leah culver star ratings" you'll find some discussion of it.
She's a great marketer, but I'd hardly say she has the programming ability.
She's a great marketer, but I'd hardly say she has the programming ability.
Truest words ever written. I can only respect people whose _work_ I admire, and who understand. What has she built? Leah hasn't contributed anything of value to the Internet, unless a few videos or popularity contests count.
Which I find quite interesting. I know plenty of men who are terrible engineers and post pretty bad stuff on their blog, but none get the kinds of evisceration that you are referring to - mentioned over and over again in blogs, forums, etc.
The 'Internet' was/is ruthless in laughing at her and putting her down, in a way that I just don't see happening to guys. Could be just that its more apparent with the fewer # of women - people are more likely to remember these faux pas. Would be interesting to hear of specific technical instances of the same occurring with guys.
I know plenty of men who are terrible engineers and post pretty bad stuff on their blog, but none get the kinds of evisceration that you are referring to - mentioned over and over again in blogs, forums, etc.
Most of those terrible engineers have not been featured in Wired and Technology Review. If Leah Culver were a man, no one would criticize her because no one ever would have heard of her. Do you really think anyone would have cared about her facebook/twitter clone if she weren't pretty?
Would be interesting to hear of specific technical instances of the same occurring with guys.
ESR wrote some crappy code a while back. Comments:
John Graham Cummings: "It's amusing to actually look at the source code of this...Reading it, it looks like a total hack job by a poor programmer..."
Other HN readers:
"He's [esr] certainly a talented self-publicist, but I'd go no further than that. He's the Michael Moore of software. Or the Paris Hilton."
"He's more Nichole Richie. He doesn't rise to the level of Paris, who was surprised by jail, but never surprised by wealth."
"Truth is, he is loud, but... he's not very good at writing software."
Woah! Are you sure that pownce got attention solely because of "Leah's looks"? or do you think its more likely that its because it was founded by Kevin Rose, who has had much bigger press (cover on Business week, TR is peanuts in comparison) and web exposure (like running one of the most popular sites on the Internet)?
(Will grant that ESR is a pretty good example, for Atwood I dont see the attacks reaching as low a level)
I certainly applaud you for thinking that who she associates with is irrelevant, but I'm telling you that there are many people less enlightened. I've probably heard as much gossip about her personal life as discussion of her technical chops, and I see that as good evidence that women in tech generally are not "taken quite seriously all on their own". No one cares who any guy in the tech industry is dating.
Sorry. I left one item of importance off my list: the valley has no respect for intelligent, professional women who aren't camera whores. Leah whatever her name is the worst example you could have cited.
uh, I've had no problem getting hired in silicon valley as a software engineer. They never asked me to pass out t-shirts or give a "massage".
Being a woman and being in tech is certainly different than a man could completely understand, and hard for not exactly the reasons a man would expect. But being a man is hard in different ways.
This article is long and pointlessly avoids saying things in clear text. Your list:
Gay Jewish man in New York, an Englishman in London, a 4th generation zainichi kankokujin (ethnically Korean who was born in Japan), and an Irish Catholic dogmatist
Could be as diverse as anything, but they could also be very similar. I actually think they are very similar, because in foreign countries, the collaboration that usually falls in place is similar to that.
Real diversity happens when age, gender, culture barriers are crossed. English, New Yorker, Irish and even an Australian man of roughly the same age have very similar though processes, because they consume the same media.
It also points at a fundamental misunderstanding - intellectual diversity does not mean bringing in people that think the same as you, but have lived in slightly different neighbourhoods. Intellectual diversity actually starts when you find it difficult to understand the other persons point of view. When the cultural difference is so large that there is a difficulty communicating, then you have created an intellectually diverse place.
These oh-let-me-pat-myself-on-the-back posts are boring and offer exactly the same arguments as the other two posts. If you want to write a blog post where two other blog posts have been written, then make an effort to actually offer a viewpoint that is really unique to the situation.
were all focused on what's happening at the "they are female and want to work for a startup" point. we really need to focus on the steps that happen before that point.
But my gut instinct has always been that people avoid joining startups because joining startups sucks. The question isn’t what are we doing that’s keeping ladies out of the Valley, gentlemen. The question should be why in God’s name are we still here.
The startup failure rate after 5 years is actually closer to 60 than 90%. Two comparisons come to mind:
In a standard company job, career stagnation and unrecognized toil are the standard. If you don't become the protege of someone important-- someone who will look out for you and make sure you're on the best projects-- in the first two years, it's no longer worth it to go to work in a lot of companies. Most people don't become proteges.
So, if you're ambitious at all, there's above a 60% chance you'll be looking for work again in 5 years no matter what you do.
Second, although the boring corporate job is safer, the enjoyment of startups comes from the fact that you're doing relevant, useful work (so long as the product you're working on has a successful launch and trajectory). To do relevant work isn't an option for most people in their early-mid 20s; even if they're brilliant, most companies expect them to "pay dues" before they can do anything interesting, and there are so many arcane, IO-bound permissions systems before even the smallest technological changes can be made.
In the startup, you have a 100% chance of doing relevant work for a product that has a sub-50% chance of ever existing. In the safe corporate job, less than 20% of what you'll do in your first three years is relevant work. It's tough to say which wins.
Personally, I chose the startup route under the belief that, no matter what happens, I'll learn a lot more-- that's a lot more important than what job title I get or what my pay is (as long as I can stay afloat). I figure that I can rewrite my own story a million times-- I've never had to resort to "creative career repair", but if I need to invent more impressive titles or inflate compensation, I can. On the other hand, knowledge and skill are completely impossible to fake. So I focus on a path where I learn a lot, not one where I get my tickets punched.
There's a rationalization used by underemployed startup workers that goes something like, "you're going to lose your BigCo job anyways, so the startup isn't that much riskier".
It isn't valid.
When a startup fails, you are very likely to be broke. The only thing you've added to your resume is a company nobody has heard of. You've been working and networking with people who are going to stay in startups. It's also harder to leave a startup preemptively, because all startups look risky all the time.
When you leave a BigCo job, you are very likely to have a nest egg, because they paid you consistently and generously and you were able to tune your standard of living. You've been working and networking with people who then diffused through a variety of other BigCo's in your area. Everybody you interview with knows the company you worked for. And if layoffs are coming, you saw them coming at least 6 months ago.
The risks involved in startups aren't comparable to the risks of a BigCo career. That's why most people in our industry work for BigCo's, profitably, for the entirety of their careers.
Also, speaking as a long-term veteran of startups: career stagnation and unrecognized toil are the standard everywhere.
Fair enough. Your points are correct, and for this reason I'd advocate not working at a personal loss for more than 6 months, and only for equity (with the caveat not to put money or time into a business that you can't afford to lose).
I'm not advocating working in startups to the detriment of all else, but I think it's worth doing when young, if you'll learn a lot by doing so. That said, if my current project were to fail, I'd probably use the experience to get into grad school or a place like Google (on better terms than I'd be able to get without the experience, I hope).
Founders today have significant control of their company’s formation and development. They no longer have to locate in the Valley but can operate from almost anywhere worldwide. The web has given them vast amount of knowledge about how things work, where they were once relegated to trying to pick up scraps around the water cooler. The infrastructure build-out has significantly reduced their capital needs, where they once routinely needed immediate large funding just to launch their basic product. The desktop PC is no longer a primary software development platform, where it once dominated and defined the range of startup opportunities available. The barriers are down, and there is much more room for sheer drive and talent to hold sway and define the path to success.
The dark side has always been there, as noted in this fine piece, and it will remain - doing startups does "suck" if one compares it to conventional ways of making a living but that is why the rewards can be large as well.
But demographic diversity is today quite pronounced in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural mix (the white males among the founders I work with are today a distinct minority). Only on the gender side does it continue to lag. On that side, I am not sure how much will change in the near term. Given the otherwise radical changes that have occurred, whatever is causing this state of things to persist must be pretty deeply ingrained.