Comments on: Women, Men, And Other Things Done Wrong By Silicon Valley

By: mbt outlet

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By: lynn

lynn — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:33:50 +0000

I’m of the liberal arts grad pool, but I majored in Spanish (yes, I know, somebody slap me!). In my defense I did end up taking 12 credit hours of CIS courses later in life, when I was already working full time for a dot com (here in Middle
America, not in Silicon Valley – and yes, there are dot coms everywhere, not just the Valley). It was a few years ago, and I only took one programming class, so I’m not ” a stay-at-home mom with a graduate degree in Middle America <> for less than $10″. Granted, I’m not a stay at home mom at all – I’m just a low level clerical worker in Middle America with aspirations to microISV-hood. I hired a dude (I guess you would call him a “developer”?) on Rentacoder.com to make me some software, for under $50. He lives in Egypt, so you could basically hire him for under $2 an hour, which sort of makes the ten-buck-an-hour stay-at-home-moms of Middle America already obsolete…

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:48:21 +0000

What if the true diversity is the shocking difference between people who migrate to SV and everyone else in America. Whether you believe in the concept that SV is a haven for Aspergers (ASD, ADHD, etc), you have to understand that for many of us the world around us is insanely intolerant of divergent thinkers.

Many of us do startups because we are smart but are incapable of operating in a large corporate environment. Here in SV, the predilection for challenging received wisdom is valued. In the rest of the world, it is scorned.

The world is amazingly un-diverse when it comes to accepting people who don’t accept “the way things are done”. Silicon Valley makes the world more diverse by its very existence.

Given that Autism Spectrum Disorders are 4.3:1 male to female, that is at least correlation.

By: Deyan

Deyan — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:11:46 +0000

I think you put forth a good argument, except for the constant attacks on the Silicon Valley model of innovation. Nothing is wrong with “big risks for big wins” innovation as long as you understand the risks associated with these big swings. There is definitely something to be said about DHH’s (and yours) emphasis on getting paid, but both of you are simply taking the argument too far and certainly missing the point on disruptive innovation, which is what the Valley is all about.

By: Arun

Arun — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:19:42 +0000

Wonderful post. Finally a sane voice in the midst of all the madness around starting something ‘now or its never’. It also addresses some concerns like gatekeepers to a novice like me. Thank you!

By: Listen to Women, Men, And Other Things Done Wrong By Silicon Valley - MicroISV on a Shoestring - Hear a Blog

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:36:43 +0000

[...] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/23/women-men-and-other-things-done-wrong-by-silicon-valley [...]

By: Rob Walling

Rob Walling — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:10:13 +0000

“Make stuff for people who pay money for stuff.”

Brilliant as always, Patrick.

By: Closer To The Ideal » Blog Archive » What is the point of diversity?

Closer To The Ideal » Blog Archive » What is the point of diversity? — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:31:55 +0000

[...] This is pretty funny, except, sadly, it is wrong: Strictly speaking the complaint was phrased in terms of “diversity”. This is the peculiar diversity of the American academy, where a gay Jewish man in New York, an Englishman in London, a 4th generation zainichi kankokujin (ethnically Korean who was born in Japan), and an Irish Catholic dogmatist living in a rice field in Central Japan are so close they are practically brothers. True diversity, of course, is the 5-member iStockPhoto of attractive twenty-somethings sitting on the college quad who check different boxes on the demographic inventory and think alike in every way that matters. [...]

By: Nicholas Hebb

Nicholas Hebb — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:02:36 +0000

Your off-hand remark, “yay, liberal arts degree — there was a buy-one-get-one deal the day I majored in CS” completely gobsmacked me. Its the biggest bargain / discount / half-priced sale that most of us will ever see in our lifetimes. Of course, college kids don’t look at it that way, but it’s definitely an idea I will be pushing on my kids someday.

By: Stephen Cagle

Stephen Cagle — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:59:15 +0000

Your post seems to have three separate sections. 1) Women and startups 2) The reality of startup life 3) What could be done to ease startup life.

My gut instinct was the same as yours as I was reading the list in section 3. It would probably result in more people in startups, but I really don’t know if it would actually result in a higher percentage of women.

Fact is, startups are tough, no two ways about it. It takes a divergent-from-the-norm type of personality to consistently reject the “easy” riches of stable employment, much higher take home pay, and (comparatively) normal hours. I assume startups have more men basically because the type of divergent personality that startups require is more prevalent in men. Simple as that.