It's good to see the apology, it's very well written and dang has seemed consistently genuine throughout this process. My respect for him has increased because of this episode, and I think he does a great job shepherding HN.
I wish I could say the same for YC. Kevin's post about why Maciej wasn't accepted was a textbook example of the sort of thinking that leads to the terrible lack of diversity we have in tech. Nothing about this changes that. 20k is relatively little money for both YC and Maciej, it's nice to see it go to what looks like a worthy cause but it doesn't really address the core issue at all.
The arguments about diversity in tech are normally framed in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation etc. But in this case the issue was in diversity of ideas relating to startups. I think Maciej makes some very compelling arguments that the sort of model that YC promotes is seriously flawed, and was basically rejected because of that. I think his arguments are ones that many young entrepreneurs should hear.
If you replace the first couple of sentences of Kevin's post with "The simple answer is that ${the woman | the black person | the gay person} was clearly the best candidate, but just made me feel uncomfortable in the end. It’s touchy feely, I know, but the truth." they could have been successfully sued, and for good reason. Think of the 20k as settling out of court.
I generally agree with Maciej's assessment of the startup world, and it's sad to have one of my major prejudices about it confirmed so clearly. My estimation of YC has definitely sunk even lower after this.
Do you have a link to Kevin's post and Maciej's responses at all? I (and I suspect a lot of other readers) completely missed all this, and whilst I'm not very interested in the drama, I am interested in the points you bring up in this post.
The right thing to do seemed pretty obvious, and it would have been easier to just give it to Pinboard in the first place. The skeptical view here is that they're only fixing things because they were so vocally called out for screwing up.
So yeah, taking responsibility is great, but doing the wrong thing and taking responsibility only you're called out for it, isn't so great. When possible, just do the right thing in the first place.
You have to give people a path to get apologize and get better. Sometimes, it takes getting yelled at to realize that you are wrong. That doesn't make the learning any less real.
Otherwise, we just live in a world where everybody demonizes each other and we are knives out all the time. Oh, wait...
You can't ask for much more than a full apology and an offer to make it right. This was as good as we can expect to get.
I'm not sure I agree with that in general. There should be negative consequences for doing the wrong thing. Companies shouldn't be able to do whatever they want and say "Oops, our bad! Look how awesome we are for owning up to it!" Otherwise there's no motivation to do better in the future.
I'm not saying YC should go out of business, or YC funded companies should be boycotted or anything like that, but some negative publicity is well deserved. The parent comment seemed to be sweeping the whole thing under the rug.
The consequence is closer scrutiny next time, and less likelihood of "getting off" as easily next time.
Being allowed to go "oops, our bad" every time would have bad consequences, I agree. Being able to go "oops, our bad" every now and again because you usually do ok is another matter entirely.
One of the incentives to do good can very well be that it makes you more likely to get off easy when something occasionally goes wrong - it's good insurance.
It boils down to trust: You get off easy with a "oops, our bad" when people believe it is a genuine, occasional mistake, rather than a regular case of "shit, they caught us, better backpedal".
I wish I could say the same for YC. Kevin's post about why Maciej wasn't accepted was a textbook example of the sort of thinking that leads to the terrible lack of diversity we have in tech. Nothing about this changes that. 20k is relatively little money for both YC and Maciej, it's nice to see it go to what looks like a worthy cause but it doesn't really address the core issue at all.
The arguments about diversity in tech are normally framed in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation etc. But in this case the issue was in diversity of ideas relating to startups. I think Maciej makes some very compelling arguments that the sort of model that YC promotes is seriously flawed, and was basically rejected because of that. I think his arguments are ones that many young entrepreneurs should hear.
If you replace the first couple of sentences of Kevin's post with "The simple answer is that ${the woman | the black person | the gay person} was clearly the best candidate, but just made me feel uncomfortable in the end. It’s touchy feely, I know, but the truth." they could have been successfully sued, and for good reason. Think of the 20k as settling out of court.
I generally agree with Maciej's assessment of the startup world, and it's sad to have one of my major prejudices about it confirmed so clearly. My estimation of YC has definitely sunk even lower after this.