[tptacek]

I agree with 'harryh that you were being dismissive, but also like 'harryh I don't think that's a big deal. It's just a message board.

Rather than take the time to write a coherent response, I'm just going to hose the room down with bullets:

* If a tech company was heard to be rejecting candidates for not liking sports --- for instance, if well-qualified applicants were turned away for not knowing which teams were in the American League Central --- nerds would be on their lawn with pitchforks and torches.

* There are plenty of "classes" of that aren't protected. For instance, your political affiliation is fair game under the law. Discriminating based on personal politics seems reasonable to approximately zero of us.

* Age discrimination is both not regulated in the class of companies occupied by most startups and rampant across the industry.

* Lots of non-protected behaviors are in reality proxies for protected behaviors; in particular, "culture fit" is an extremely common proxy method to filter out older works and mothers.

* In the post we're talking about, the post linked in this thread, and even in Paul Graham's essays, there's a theme of startups having the privilege to ignore antidiscrimination laws early on. It does us no good to pretend that everyone's on the same page about protected employment classes when the most widely cited writings in the field say that the ability not to hire women who might have children† is a benefit of starting a company.

* Environments where team members can't fit in if they don't drink, don't work noon-9:00PM, don't listen to the same music, don't play foosball, or don't each lunch with the team are common in startuplandia, but aren't intrinsic to the concept of a startup. You say you know people who were happier when they left these kinds of companies. But people are also happier when they leave companies where they're harassed. Surely that's not a justification for harassment!

* You say you picked up emotional language in the post, and thus (we infer) engaged with the content differently. You should be aware that studies show that people --- men and women alike --- engage with women differently than they do men.† In particular, the ability to write a blog post and have it not be read as "emotional" is at least in part a male privilege. Try rereading the post, but this time, instead of coming to an early conclusion that it's emotional, tell yourself "this is a radically different perspective on startup culture than I have; what can I learn from it?"

I'm an arrogant guy, but I'm not arrogant enough to assume everyone is on board with this (yet): it is immoral to reject candidates for reasons other than predicted ability to produce for the team, and it is immoral to rationalize non-performance rejections by inventing grounds to predict poor performance (like "culture fit"). In most circumstances, I think it's probably immoral to run companies in a manner that would prevent qualified parents of small children from contributing. There are real culture fit issues, but the air has been so thoroughly poisoned by startup misbehavior that we're probably going to have to invent a new term to describe them.

† Can you spot the problem with this logic?

†† Here's a recent study pertaining to the sciences: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109*

[ChuckMcM]

I was unpersuaded by the argument shanley put forward that specific phrases in use by startups were in fact code for abusive and immoral behavior. So yes, I was (and continue to be) dismissive of the argument. Until harryh mentioned it, I had no knowledge of their sex.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I care very much about good corporate culture and effective teams. And have worked at various times, and various places, to change behaviors that were antithetical to that. Weeding out and shutting down those 'proxies' you mention. I see that as part of what 'management' does, when its working well. I don't believe I've ever stated that I condone any form of discrimination, direct, indirect, or proxied.

I also recognize in myself a tendency to react strongly to speech which indiscriminately maligns what are generally good conceptual frameworks. A similar example was Steve Yegge's maligning the entire concept of Agile programming. It hits a sort of conversational reflexive kneecap in me, resulting in a nearly involuntary response in rebuttal.

It is, as you say, 'just a message board.'

[tptacek]

I'm not here to judge you. If you think the gender of the author had no impact on you, that's great. I'm just suggesting that we keep our subconscious biases in mind as we evaluate arguments.

I don't know what forms of discrimination you do or don't condone. You point out that love of sports is not a protected class; from that, I infer that you might be OK with the idea of discriminating based on that; you are, in fact, (gently) sticking up for that behavior.

I also don't know what forms of discrimination you're aware of. It is clear to me that the operators of many tech startups are not aware of the impact their "culture" has on their inclusiveness. Most of those operators would claim not to be biased against e.g. mothers, but many would in fact be creating environments hostile to them anyways.

When we start to venture into this discussion, it's important for you to realize that we are also validating the post that you've dismissed. Perhaps we're using language that is more congenial to you; that's a fair thing to point out, but if so, again, I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post, because you may have missed other things in it.

It is all love† with me and this comment.

† And procrastination

[ChuckMcM]

"I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post, because you may have missed other things in it."

This is shaney's thesis statement:

"Culture is about power dynamics, unspoken priorities and beliefs, mythologies, conflicts, enforcement of social norms, creation of in/out groups and distribution of wealth and control inside companies. Culture is usually ugly. It is as much about the inevitable brokenness and dysfunction of teams as it is about their accomplishments. Culture is exceedingly difficult to talk about honestly. The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans."

You agree that this is a fair and true characterization of "culture" ? You were persuaded by her text that this is an accurate description of what motivates a corporate culture?

[tptacek]

I found that asking the questions she asked about different elements of startup culture was in fact a useful exercise.

[ChuckMcM]

You didn't answer my question :-) That's okay of course. When I read her thesis it struck me as so patently false, I found myself asking the question "What sort of event set this off?" not "Are there insights here I should consider?"

A neighbor of mine had his home seized by the bank, it was underwater, and they weren't willing to negotiate the terms of the loan. He posted a piece that was not a whole lot different than shaney's except that he asserted that Banks were an immoral and illegal institution run by the 1% to fleece the rest of us of our money, he made several "points" about how what they said they were doing one thing, when the reality was that those activities were just a cover for taking more of your money. He uniformly ignored any market impact banks had and screamed in rage at their inhumanity.

He wasn't successfully making any sort of argument that banks have no reason to exist other than to fleece us. Nor did he develop any insights about how banks might be improved, or what we could use to replace them. He was angry, and hurt, and sad, and bitter. Banks, and the shadowy 'them' that run them, became the focus of his anger.

I get it that you and harryh saw a deeper question about culture in the article than I did. I just saw what looked, in form at least, venting and anger. Just like my neighbor's bank screed.

[mindstab]

I'll weigh in, I had no problem with her thesis. What about it did you have a problem with?

As for her questions, they weren't a blanket judgement, more sometimes this is how far wrong what you say with good intention can go. It's a warning. And I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to back each up with at least one example which is all that's needed to demonstrate we need to be more careful and more aware of our internal company culture.

[harryh]

Those were all excellent bullets.