[beeboop]

I am not sure feeling uncomfortable around someone or not having a connection with them is a reasonable excuse for a company that wants to encourage diversity and reaching out to disadvantaged groups. Racial bias in workplaces is largely the result of people hiring those who are most like themselves. I think if your goal is to really to be inclusive, you should take people on their merits and abilities, not on the minutia of how you personally feel about them.

Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Pinboard and hadn't even heard of them before this voting.

[potatolicious]

Very much agreed. Allowing vague, largely unexamined "gut feels" to drive decision making is antithetical to what we want tech culture to be, and also precludes objectivity. It is by a very wide margin the most common tool used to restrict diversity - in all its forms - and keep something a closed club by making its decisions vague, nonspecific, and by its nature unchallengeable either from within or without.

Gut feels are often valuable signals, but without further examination and specificity they are a gigantic bias bomb waiting to explode.

An organization that widely permits this type of vague assertion to pass unchallenged is institutionally incapable of improving inclusivity or diversity, and one has to wonder if it's institutionally interested in the same at all.

Some concrete questions: what is YC's policy on ensuring employees/partners have received training re: bias? Have YC decision makers all participated in de-biasing education? If not, how does this reflect on YC's apparent dedication to improving diversity in our field?