[bobosha]

Can't speak to the Duck Dynasty guy, but the skewering of PG is perfect example of the pc lynchmobs preventing a conversation about the absence of women in tech.

As a techie, I see think there's significant truth to PG's opinions. Surely it takes two to tango, the tech industry is keen to hire and encourage women entrepreneurs, but it's not like women are being turned away at the gates, by sexist VCs.

[borski]

I'm genuinely afraid of stating opinions about women in tech, almost no matter what they are. Being a white male, I have a lot of fear of being completely ripped apart in TechCrunch or ValleyWag for stating my opinions or making suggestions, because I'm never sure if I'm totally PC or not.

It sucks, because I want to help somehow, but I don't want to be misunderstood and have my name be raked through the coals either.

[1337biz]

Same here. It is pretty much pointless to discuss this issue. Any opinion that doesn't align with a hyper PC standard is getting framed as "controversial".

Votes/Flags are the silent voices of those who can't afford to get drawn into a battle with potentially severe consequences about an issue which they have personally relatively little to gain from.

[smadge]

There is a pretty easy solution to your problem: get informed. Your opinion is worthless if you don't know what you are talking about enough to not infuriate people who do.

[borski]

That's incredibly myopic. You have no idea how informed I am or am not. My point is not that I'm uninformed; my point is that often anything I say gets misconstrued into something I didn't mean, and then torn apart. So I avoid it, because that scares me.

I'd like to discuss it, without judgment, and come to a way I can help. The process of getting there is hard when it's so easy to jump the gun and assume that I, as a white male, am definitionally likely to be discriminatory. That occurs a lot.

[DoctorZeus]

And how does dismissing critics as "pc lynchmobs" advance the conversation?

Some people have oversimplified Paul Graham's perspective; doing the same to other people's perspectives will get no one anywhere.

[skylan_q]

The PC lynchmobs are the ones stopping the conversation. Instead of saying "prove yourself" they shout "bigot!"

The OP itself says that PG is saying "Crazy" things. How are they crazy? He doesn't point out how this is the case. Instead, he's made a final judgment and anyone that disagrees must also be crazy. There is no reasoning with those who shun reason and react to disagreement with accusations of craziness and bigotry.

[smadge]

But women chose not to join the tech industry because it is not an appealing option. It is not an appealing for any reason intrinsic to either women or the tech industry, but because the tech industry is currently dominated by men who are unable to create a comfortable work environment for women and because the tech industry enforces the norm that it is not for women. When an influential leader in the industry says that there is an intrinsic reason women can not be in technology, it is propagating that norm and preventing women from entering the industry.

[bobosha]

"But women chose not to join the tech industry because it is not an appealing option"

The point I am making is, people (women, blacks, latinos etc. and that includes the rabble who whine about "greedy companies hiring foreign workers") should not expect things on a platter. There is no giant conspiracy to make things "uncomfortable" for women or minorities.

A case-in-point is the success of Indian-Americans & other Asians in tech. I recently read that nearly 1/2 of startups in the valley has an Asian co-founder. It's not like tech had welcome buffets & red carpets laid out for the Asians.

While I too find the absence of women and non-Asian minorities in tech troubling. That change can only be wrought by starting up (pun intended). Reminds me of the saying by Gandhi "Be the change you want".

[smadge]

The dominant American stereotype of Asians is that they are intelligent and hard working. It's called the "Model Minority" theory. It makes sense that the industry would be inclusive of Asian Americans.

[bobosha]

Yes, but this "model minority" had to work for it, hard-work, perseverance and grit. It's not like, a group of elites decided one fine day "OK, today we anoint Asians"

[dragonwriter]

> Yes, but this "model minority" had to work for it, hard-work, perseverance and grit. It's not like, a group of elites decided one fine day "OK, today we anoint Asians"

The comparative difference is closer to the latter than the former, actually, though neither is complete and the reality is more complex: the difference in racial stereotypes is not mostly due to real differences in the groups to whom various racial identities are ascribed, but due to different perceptions that are a combination of deliberate engineering (in the case of Asians, by elites who had a positive interest in importing their labor to undercut domestic wages for the "hard working" bit -- in the case of persons of African descent, by elites who had an interest in keeping them in "their place") and different responses of not-necessarily-representative subsets in often non-equivalent circumstances, plus subsequent reinforcement through confirmation bias.

Sure, there are plenty of hard working, intelligent persons of asian descent in the US -- also plenty of hard working, intelligent people of hispanic or african descent in the US.

[ericd]

That's quite a theory you've constructed there.

I've got a much simpler one: getting to the US from their (generally much poorer home country) was a brutal selection game for many people of those races, and they come from cultures that emphasize education as the primary means of getting ahead in life. The ones that made it are naturally going to be the most motivated, educated, wealthy, and/or otherwise lucky people, on average (there are always going to be exceptions). I'm frankly in awe of what the people whose stories I've heard have accomplished from where they started.

The children of those people would have two parents of above-average motivation and belief in education coaching and driving them from a young age.

Viewed in that light, of course they're going to do well in school and be overrepresented in higher education. That's been their explicit, overriding goal, and they've had very motivated coaches helping them along.

Of course these aren't universal things, but they're common enough to have caused a stereotype to form, no convoluted conspiracy of elites scheming to manipulate society necessary.

[csallen]

What? Where did PG say "there is an intrinsic reason women cannot be in technology"? He never said anything remotely close to that.

[smadge]

He said woman cannot be in technology because they aren't interested in computers from a young age. But rather than seeking why women are excluded from technology even as children, he just blames women for not being interested in hacking. Either he believes women are intrinsically non-hackers, or he acknowledges it is a cultural/social issue but refuses to hire or fund anyone who does not have the exact life trajectory of Mark Zuckerberg.

[csallen]

> He said woman cannot be in technology because they aren't interested in computers from a young age.

No, he never said that. He said that there are fewer women in tech, not that "women cannot be" in tech.

> But rather than seeking why women are excluded from technology even as children, he just blames women for not being interested in hacking.

He never did this either. Find me one quote where he blamed women for their lack of interest? The only thing he said was that the real way to solve this problem would be to get girls interested in hacking at a younger age, but that that's a difficult task. Does anyone actually disagree with that?

> ...but refuses to hire or fund anyone who does not have the exact life trajectory of Mark Zuckerberg.

YC invested in me, and I'm black. There were girls in my batch, too.

Rather than actually listen to the points being made, reflect on the nuances, and engage in conversation honestly, you'd rather feign outrage over falsified "facts" and make-believe quotes. This is exactly why discussions like this are always of such low quality.

[smadge]

Ok. I'll drop the feigned outrage and state my point objectively, without indicting PG.

Women aren't in technology because gender norms enforce at a young age that technology is not for girls. The industry perpetuates this norm by being dominated by men who do not make an effort to change the culture to be less of a "boys club." Women who do join technology have their qualifications and contributions second guessed, and have to endure work environments that are more like a fraternity house than an office, including greater chances of sexual harassment. The solution to this problem is going to have to come from within the industry. People within the industry will need to make an active effort to fix the problem, rather than just lamenting the status quo and shifting the blame to society and education.

[csallen]

Many thanks -- this is a MUCH better starting point for having a constructive conversation. I could type an essay in response, but I have to be on a plane soon, so I'll save it til later.

But to generalize, I think it's unrealistic to expect investors et al to shoulder this entire burden themselves.

[hobs]

DO you really think that there isnt a conversation about the absence of women in tech? Really? At least every other day I see a front page article highlighting this fact, people getting upset because some conference's either do or do not contain women (some version of either insinuation of "we need women because we dont have them" or "we have women but they might not be as qualified and that makes some dudes mad") People trying to get women into tech with whatever method possible etc.

Maybe it isnt a pervasive piece of EVERY conversation, but you can literally find hundreds of articles on this site about that very topic. Hey look, right now! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6975533

[mtrimpe]

Yup; and they're all flagged off the front page in no time.

My favourite one is the article about one of the problems with women in tech being that Silicon Valley believes it's more meritocratic than it is, on which PG comments that it's really that meritocratic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795606)

I'm still curious if he spotted my last minute edit just as it was dropping off the front page while an interesting discussion was emerging.