- Don't give ideas away, they're valuable, and your creative skills should be as valued as much as a lawyer's legal skills.
and
- Giving ideas to people when they're not going to give you anything if they do well with them is letting yourself be taken advantage of.
I'll leave the former to others, but I think the latter, especially, really misses the point that getting compensation isn't the only way to benefit from helping people. Nicole talks about the tendency of women "(and compassionate people)" to like to help, but not value their help enough to ask for compensation.
I think a related tendency, especially when women feel that they have to project an image of being ultra-capable / self-sufficient within the startup world, is to not ask for others to give / reciprocate favors. It's not a bad thing to ask for people you've helped in the past to help you.
As a woman who gave away lots of advice/information for free for many years and didn't get much back, I can sympathize with part of her point about "Pay me". I am still trying to figure out how to monetize what I have to offer. It's clear that I do some things very well that other people usually don't do so well and that there is a "market" for what I know. But, yes, I feel like I've been used and I don't like it. I feel that way in part because I have had people give me flak for having ads on my websites. There does seem to be more expectation that women are supposed to just give away their time, energy and knowledge than there is for men. I'm a person with a generous nature but I'm becoming rather burned out and cynical. So far, being kind-hearted and generous hasn't done anything to solve my financial problems or further my career goals, at least not that I can tell. I sometimes wish I could grab someone by the collar and go "What is the goddam SECRET???!!!" Of course, that wouldn't get me anywhere.
In short, I can understand why a woman would post this point of view. Men frequently complain about having to pay child support in a divorce. In such discussions, both men and women seem to largely overlook the fact that it costs women a great deal more financially than it does men when kids come in to the picture. Women have lowered salaries, take more time off to care for the kids, lose out on career opportunities, and it is generally assumed that if she has a kid and gets a job, the child-care expenses are part of "her" costs of having a job (not "their" cost or "his" costs). I think this underlying assumption probably influences a lot of social transactions, from both sides: Other people assume "she" is supposed to give out of goodness and not expect anything in return, and "she" assumes she can't ask for anything in return either and/or doesn't know how to do so effectively. I think women are probably going to continue to struggle with this thorny issue for many years to come. We definitely don't have gender equality yet.
- Don't give ideas away, they're valuable, and your creative skills should be as valued as much as a lawyer's legal skills.
and
- Giving ideas to people when they're not going to give you anything if they do well with them is letting yourself be taken advantage of.
I'll leave the former to others, but I think the latter, especially, really misses the point that getting compensation isn't the only way to benefit from helping people. Nicole talks about the tendency of women "(and compassionate people)" to like to help, but not value their help enough to ask for compensation.
I think a related tendency, especially when women feel that they have to project an image of being ultra-capable / self-sufficient within the startup world, is to not ask for others to give / reciprocate favors. It's not a bad thing to ask for people you've helped in the past to help you.