http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer...
Here's a test: ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity there is in your comment or your motivation for posting. If you don't find much, please hold off until you do. Intellectual curiosity is the reason this site exists [1], and it's a fragile factor nowadays amid the rage and hysteria online. Keep HN curious.
Edit: mlevental points out that you were referring to the article, not my comment. I think there's plenty of intellectual curiosity in what Jessica wrote, especially in the blog post explaining why she did it. In fact, I'd say it's obvious. That commenters don't always respond to curiosity with curiosity of their own is a separate issue.
Certainly it's also a promotional post in the sense of wanting to call attention to the program, but that sort of mix is common on HN, and it's where it is on the front page because users upvoted it.
Incredible, thanks for putting your money where your values are @jl.
As for the numerous comments in this post around reverse sexism / reverse discrimination:
1. This is a private individual giving personal capital to other private individuals, supporting a personal cause. It is hard to both claim principles of free market and rally against this.
2. Private companies making hiring decisions are correcting for an indefinite history of bias. That doesn't mean they're hiring unqualified individuals, simply that they're making sure they put in measure to correct for biases and can identify individuals with the great qualifications that in the past would have been past up due to arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'.
3. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company (Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment. And that should be ok.
You make it sound like there are people out there saying to themselves, "I know I should stop discriminating against under-represented minorities, but I just can't seem to stop myself" as if discriminating were addictive like smoking. If somebody used to discriminate and wants to stop, the solution is to stop discriminating, not discriminate in the other direction. But this isn't somebody who used to reject people under vague euphemisms and needs this "nicotine patch" to help them kick the habit - this is somebody who's creating new euphemisms to discriminate in a way that's socially acceptable.
The interview process is all about being biased against certain candidates. But what often happens is that the biases we hold when interviewing and working with candidates don't matter to the job but happen to exclude people who would otherwise do quite well.
It's not like interviewers are all twirling their waxed mustaches and snickering about how many women they've excluded. But what they do is listen to how someone describes a problem or how they behave during a whiteboard interview and interpret that negatively simply because it's different from what they were expecting. And so they don't hire the person because they're a "bad culture fit." Some women have been trained by our culture to use less assertive terms to avoid showing dominance in a discussion. And they tend to wait for you to finish before they talk.
Or suppose that the people at the company tend to wear a certain gamut of colors because they're all white and blue-ish and grey-ish colors tend to look better on white guys. So when someone shows up with a redder shirt that person might be taken as "too flamboyant" when in reality they're just picking a good neutral color for their skin tone. It just happens to be a significantly different tone from the rest of the office.
It could even be as subtle as discomfort with inexact or flowery speech. I had a lead who would get very uncomfortable when I would talk in metaphor and use metaphors and different words to describe things in terms that he wasn't used to. He would try to get me to tone it down. But everyone else on the team was perfectly okay with it so I kept doing it. That's another form of useless bias, because I was understood and could do my job but probably wouldn't have been as hire-able if I had talked like that during my interview.
My point and OP's point is that discrimination is frequently not overt. We have to look past these superficial differences and really think about whether someone can do the job. And we also need to be exposed to more candidates who are not like this. So a program like this stuffs the pipeline and gets us more exposure, and it's now up to us to challenge our existing biases and try a more diverse array of people out.
Perhaps at some companies but not at mine. We do deny employment on the basis of sex and race, in order to increase percentages of women and URM. It's not just including women and URM that would otherwise be left out. It's also about making that a significant chunk of qualified white and Asian males don't get offers.
I think you summed up perfectly what causes people to have knee-jerk reactions against correcting biases.
Just because one effort doesn't address all issues at once, doesn't mean its futile.
Progress isn't instantaneous. It takes many attempts over long periods of time to move the needle. I'm not sure why people feel the need to criticize any and all attempts at doing so.
So this is helping those who are already privileged, while the actual underprivileged are ignored once again.
Jessica is giving people money directly to help them be able to participate.
Lambda School is also making the course work available for free.
Lambda School is not being paid by anyone, and no money is changing hands, other than Jessica literally giving money away.
You never heard the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right?"
Programs like this really work.
Hint for picking a random image when clicking on the image: The currently shown image should be excluded from the list of images to draw from. This prevents the problem that sometimes clicks appear to do nothing, although in reality the same image was randomly picked again.
It's https and 100 speed score on https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=.... I'm guessing this is on something like Netlify, as it's fast and there is HN hug of death.
Good luck to the author :)
The courses and self teaching went a long way. I started at a crappy digital design agency and now work at a company many people have heard of!
Good luck to your girlfriend! I'm inspired by her.
She can send a oneliner PR to get her site included on https//fullname.dev if she wants, and if she hasn't yet started using GutHub this would be a good learning opportunity for it.
Talk about relatable. 10 years in and I still feel this way.
Do you or your girlfriend have any advice for her? A good tutorial or course or book that's been really helpful to your girlfriend and can help mine ship something soon?
Haha what a fun website.
How can we simultaneously be an industry built on free an open source software and yet try to put up walls around our industry when efforts are made to make it more accessible to others?
The barriers to programming are being lowered and this is an excellent thing. More diverse companies, different types of people to bounce ideas on, new perspectives. This is what our industry needs more than ever, and yet so many feel a threat veiled by concerns of affirmative action and 'reverse discrimination'.
We need to acknowledge the barriers that have existed in our industry but may be blind to you personally because you never had to deal with it. For one, access to a PC for a long time was restricted to those with low incomes. My mother saved her income tax refund for two years to buy our first PC, the one I learned to program on. The schools I attended didn't have a computer lab until my junior year of high school. It's a great thing that programming is being spread to those who did not have access before. If software is eating the world everyone had better become familiar.
I don't take any issue with boot camps that are exclusive to women, but I can definitely see how people are worried that it reinforces the general atttide that "white/Asian men in tech = bad, women & URM in tech = good"
Barriers aren't just being lowered. The're also being erected for some types of people.
For example the American Association of Educators is trying to encourage more men to become elementary school teachers, where women are drastically overrepresented (It makes tech look like a utopian melting pot). By doing so, they're not saying women are bad, but they are saying the profession would benefit significantly from more male participation, particularly when addressing concerns specific to young boys who are more likely to struggle in school.
Secondly, I'd also disagree that about the general attitudes of folks pushing diversity initiatives. No one is trying to eliminate white and Asian men from the workforce. This is more about bringing people in, not excluding populations.
1. no degree is required, not even a high school diploma
2. a Windows laptop can be had for $100 at a pawn shop
3. an incredible amount of programming tutorials exist for free on the internet, including a complete CS degree course from MIT
4. a business license can be had by just filing a bit of paperwork with the state
5. operating a business on the internet means nobody needs to know what sex/religion/age/whatever you are
6. programming tools and SDKs are available for free
7. you can work from home
How much more can one ask for?
You want "the other side" to acknowledge the barriers existed in our industry, and yet do not want to acknowledge that reverse discrimination directly hurt people. Being rejected for the identity you are born with hurt on a very personal and primal way.
Then we have cases like my own perspective. I have seen this kind of gender initiative for about 30 years now here in Sweden. Gender segregation in this industry has in the 30 last year gotten worse. I know for example a woman who took a "women only programming course" in the 90s, and she is now the single person left still in the programming profession out of every single person that graduated (she got a job before she graduated but that might be beyond the point). Study after study report the same where if a person belong to the minority gender in the work place, the risk that they will switch work place to one where they are majority is significant every single year. If I recall right it actually increase for each year, in particular after they graduate. Regardless if Men or women are the minority in the study, the result is similar.
The only effective measure I have seen to prevent this pattern is mentorship programs. I have not ready any in-depth explanation why they tend to work, through I strongly suspect it addresses some of the core issues behind gender segregation. An observation I made is that you can offer mentorship to both majority and minority segments of a group and the minority will more likely join and participate, which still focus the effort on the minority but does not exclude if any individuals in the majority have a similar need for the service. Obviously not everyone of that identify as belonging to the majority is identical and individuals have different needs.
All the top comments I see are supportive and encouraging. Maybe there were some negative removed comments, but overall this thread doesn't seem to demonstrate gatekeeping and discrimination.
Also, who is putting up walls? Be specific please. I too come from a low income "unprivileged" family and got my first computer in high school.
And the tech industry has always been diverse. It has been the most diverse and the most meritocratic industry for a long time. It's the industry where minorities and immigrants like Jerry Yang and Sergei Brin can thrive unlike more establish industries like news, media, oil, finance, transportation, etc.
Why are you painting a false image of what the tech industry is like? There are no barriers to programming. It is the most available and meritocratic and fair industries around.
Also, your entire comment had no relevance to the article. You just went on a stereotypical virtue signaling rant.
Also, do you really want diversity, or do you want a "diverse" group of people who all think like you?
I just can't handle the hypocrisy. All over HN, you support H1-B visas and claim the tech industry's success is due to diversity provided by H1-B visas. And elsewhere, you claim the tech industry is not diverse and the problem with the tech industry is the lack of diversity.
Which is it? You can't have it both ways just to suit your agenda. Be consistent.
One friend recently complained to me that all the AA enthusiasts just want to talk about feminism and women in the workplace, and not about actually writing code. She was incensed because she was invited to a 'Girls Code' meetup, where women would learn about algorithms by modelling their own menstrual cycles[0]. She was (understandably) frustrated, saying that her interests extend beyond what comes out of her genitals.
This is anecdotal, sure, but amongst my social circle, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
I sense a bazillion downvotes coming my way. You may think these opinions I am passing along are incredibly incorrect, but they are the opinions of women.
[0]: https://imgur.com/a/jFLU0C8
EDIT: It took no time at all for the downvotes to arrive, as expected. There is no such thing as the sisterhood. Feminists will immediately cast out any woman who doesn't hold the "right" opinions.
Insane reasoning looking back, but hey 17 year olds are often principled nutcases. I can definitely imagine doing what you describe re compsci if I was a 17 year old girl in 2019. Hope any principled girls (in my biased opinion the brightest/best people in the end) we lose from information tech go into something else useful, kind of a sad thought.
From the discussion/debate I’ve had in the past, I perceive a strong overlap between people who would aggressively dismiss these women’s opinions, and also people who say we should “just listen to women”.
I have no agenda to push women into tech specifically, but coincidentally most of the people I have mentored and brought into tech have been women. This is likely because I’m in tech, and I’ve always spent more time with women. It puts me in an awkward position when I encourage a woman to attend an event like Rails Girls (which I had heard is an excellent experience for women), and then that woman comes back and says she hated it, and that very few of the women there actually wanted to do any programming, and that most of them just wanted to talk about gender politics.
In any case, I’m glad you weren’t deterred.
Now we see a YC co-founder giving 40 women $9000 to learn to program.
Where does it end? I was really sad that while I personally can survive in this environment (if I abandon my ideals of not being judged by my genetics), many good men who are passionate about their work are being pressured from all sides.
I honestly don’t see how any of this is legal but it’s such a taboo to talk about that fixing the problem seems impossible without a major shift back to valuing skills above demographics.
1. We only accept applicstions from candidate from non-traditional backgrounds if they're diverse. Diverse is defined as any of the following: women, black, Hispanic, or native American - maybe also veterans but I'm not sure. Non-traditional background means coming from a coding boot camp, or majoring in a non-computing related field. I think after 3 years industry experience candidates are considered traditional even if they came from one of those two.*
2. Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview, non diverse get one.*
That said, when it comes to the hiring decision we don't discriminate. No disrespect for those candidates considered diverse, just take what you get. And I'm Cuban myself (but not visibly Latino) so I may have benefitted from that part of my identity myself.
Untimely I think the lower representation of Black and Hispanic people in tech roles is reflective of education rates. I suspect that were incomes and education more equal that would make representation in tech more equal. There also geography. Not many tech companies in the south where most black people live.
As for women thats a more difficult situation. I think that there's strong evidence to back up the claim that women may not choose to enter tech on their own volition. I think the solution to that is to emphasize the value of fields other than tech. Being coder at Google doesn't make a person any more valuable than a lawyer, marketer, salesperson, etc. Sure they may make more money, but that's the product of the labor market. And not to mention the average lawyer probably makes more than the average coder.
I've anecdotally seen a growing portion of coding boot camp that are exclusive to certain demographics. I wonder how much of that is due to policies like these. Especially for boot camps that only charge if the graduates get jobs in tech, I can see how it would be disadvantageous to admit white and Asian men.
* Edit: I just checked and these policies also apply to people with referrals. So one could justify this by saying we treat diverse candidates as though they have a referral.
These rhyme with soviet era policies circa 1950-1960 in Eastern Europe. At universities, there was an admission exam for 'healthy origin' people for the majority of the spots, and then another exam where everybody, including those failing the first time, could compete for the scraps. We all know how that turned out economically speaking.
Seeing the same policies in XXI century USA is surreal.
You are ultimately selecting the factors which could affect the outcome of that opportunity.
How is that not discrimination? How do you pick and choose what you consider diverse?
When you select the factors you're ultimately not an equal opportunity employer anymore in my opinion.
Next time I apply somewhere I am going to check Cajun or other since we have 'ethnic status'. I am certain we Cajuns aren't well represented in tech.
I must be really awful if I can't get hired as a Mexican, eh?
If you are interested in the program, it seems like you could identify yourself as female and apply. Especially if there's no in-person interview.
Cynically, if enough [biological males who identify as] men elect to identify as women for this application, the selection team will have some very difficult decisions to make.
Because, you know, most companies look up the profile of candidates on LinkedIn, social media etc. Unless you actually consider yourself transgender, you would quickly be caught and removed just as quickly.
I left not too long after that.
I am appreciative of every opportunity I have been given and will continue to take advantage of any opportunity afforded to me, even if it is on the base of my gender. If an investor wants to help a certain group of people, I will value that they are providing opportunities even though I may disagree with the idea of providing opportunities based on immutable characteristics.
This farcical system can't go on forever as is. Either racial preferences in hiring will be banned under the 14th amendment, or the US will adopt a Brazil-style racial preference system, where they will actually test your blood and have technicians measure the tone of your skin and the shape of your face in order to fit you into a category.
I've already resigned myself that I must tell him to always check those minority boxes and he may want to consider only using his mother's surname on his resume, instead of the traditional dual surname he legally has (Example: Lopez, instead of Smith Lopez).
It is illegal to discriminate for jobs on the basis of sex in the US (as per the Civil Rights Act of 1964). If you believe yourself to be the victim of discrimination, then submit a complaint the the EEOC [1] who will investigate.
That being said, a large gap between the number men and women (or whites and blacks, etc) working at companies exist can be considered evidence of systematic discrimination. Increasing the pool of unrepresented applicants is a great way to ensure that a diverse pool of qualified candidates get interviews, thus reduce the likelihood that a company appears to be practicing discrimination during hiring.
It is illegal to discriminate based on sex.
By not discriminating based on sex to fix a ratio/percent you could be found discriminating
No it can't unless you show that there are an equal number of qualified candidates, which there aren't in tech. CS grad rates for women are much lower.
Society is worse off for having barriers that prevent anyone who wants to code from being able to do so. That includes the inefficiencies of the job industry not placing you into a productive coding role faster. But it also includes the lower salaries, lack of support/representation, belittling, and near-universal campaign of horrible harassment that every woman I've talked to in the field has experienced.
Everyone in the field of software development struggles, and I don't want to take away from that. We should be making life easier for everyone. But doing so involves recognizing problems specifically and succinctly, and building solutions that fit those problems. One of society's many problems is that women in tech have to contend with a nightmarish swirl of negative distractions that I've never had to think about as a white man. In the face of such a problem, giving resources to the effected population makes total sense, and it's a good thing that more organizations/companies are doing so. Even more than that, it brings us closer to meritocratic equality.
It’s not apparently obvious what ethnicity I am based on looks. I had already been told there was a focus on diversity at the company I ended up getting an offer at and they “really want to build a diverse team from the ground up”. The conversation had been dragging for months and I resisted bringing up my background out of principle. I saw the hiring manager tweeting about a Latinx conference (I hate that term) and bit the bullet and told them I’m Latinx. I had an offer by the end of the week. This was after months of similar discussions with other companies where I stuck to my ideal of being hired for what I’ve accomplished and the skills I can prove I have. Ultimately I was running out of money and got desperate. I still feel terrible and angry but I have to put food on the table.
Let me help you, fellow Mexican:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xm...
The reason it's legal is because there are laws that explicitly allow this for certain underrepresented or disadvantaged groups.
Espero que esto aclare tus dudas.
It's also worth mentioning why the term "underrepresented minority" or "underrepresented group" is need in the first place. Considering how sexist and racist people claim tech is Asians seem to be doing perfectly fine which is exactly why the term URM is needed in the first place.
However some people I have met from southern Asia coming from a farming family background likely have had much worse conditions growing up. But they get lumped into the Asian mass where you must truly excel to get noticed.
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...
Do you have any statistical evidence that proves white men are being discriminated against?
[1] http://fortune.com/2019/01/28/funding-female-founders-2018/
And yet, the OP is openly and blatant 'men need not apply'. How is that ever OK?
Stats like this are so useless. Obviously if males make up 95% of the pool they're more likely to have founded some of the unicorns, therefore skewing the average. If one of the 5% of females founded a unicorn I bet they'd have a greater share of VC dollars.
If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.
I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents' generation.
So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.
Edit, here's an article explaining this since judging by subsequent comments I may have done a poor job: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this.
Surely this is a more plausible explanation why there are more women in medicine than in programming?
also seems like a hard-to-believe hypothesis.
See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... for an outline of the 'interest' hypothesis - essentially, women are stronger than men in both verbal and math/science domains, but prefer the former, so will pick subjects that more closely align with their interests when society lets them do so. In countries with worse egalitarianism and social security, they'll gravitate towards subjects that bring them more economic freedom.
Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.
But that is not the case. In 1984, 37% graduates of computer science were women but in 2017 only 12% were women [0]. How can it be that with so much more focus on diversity and inclusion today so many women are choosing a non-computing career than in 1984? The tech industry does seem to be on a fundamentally different path to medicine and law in this regard.
A second point is that writing computer code seems to have a strong appeal to people close to the autism spectrum - people who love to close the door to their private office, put on their headphones and write code for 6 hours without any interaction with another human being. And men tend to be greatly overrepresented on the autism spectrum.
[0] https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
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We synthesized evidence from interest inventories over four decades and found large sex differences in vocational interests, with men preferring working with things and women preferring working with people.
---
Engineering can be said to be involved with "things" and "med schools" with people?
Informally we could perhaps translate that to "Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees (a small pun on Google's hiring practices https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en) that everyone else, namely women, should enjoy doing same". I mean, they might and many do, but it is not an obvious thing like it is often presented and it should be discussed. Of course, we can then ask where do those interests come from and some will say because of how people are socialized and others will say because of hormones and other biological differences.
There are fewer women doing coding despite no barriers to entry, more opportunities (like this one) and preferential selection (thanks to people like you).
Just look around you for the evidence. Men spend their free time on hobbies, building things, playing with machines. Women call men boys for doing this. They do not want to do it. They do not understand why men do it.
Every study that actually bothered to ask that question?
1.
For example, there was an ACM study that asked both men and women (most studies do not). To their surprise, they found that women reported greater levels of support from their management than the men did. One of the few things they asked in terms of attitudes where there was a statistically significant difference between men and women was, drumroll, "interest in technology".
And that's for people actually in the profession!
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...
2. Then there was the study that looked at why women leave engineering. #1 reason? "Didn't like the work/not interested in engineering". #2 reason was starting a family, #3 was didn't like the environment.
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...
(Note: look at the actual numbers, not the headlines, because the headlines are very, very selective and do not reflect the actual numbers)
3. There was a study about high school students taking (or not taking) CS in Israel. They looked at all the factors that are usually trotted out, support, role-models, etc. No difference. The one point that showed a difference: "interest in CS", with the boys taking the class at 100% and the girls at 43%. For kids not taking the class the level of interest was gender-neutrally low. Interestingly, this was reported as "no statistical difference", which is...odd.
(Semanticscholar actually has the table in question, it's table 7 in the gallery)
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issue...
4. The ROSE project showed that non-interest in science and engineering starts at a very early age. It also shows that interest dropping generally in countries with higher HDI, not just for girls, though for girls it drops even more quickly.
So it's not just the Gender Equality Paradox already mentioned quite a bit here, but also a more general Development vs. interest in STEM issue.
https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjob...
And of course there are the more general studies that show that a difference between people vs. things (empathising vs. systematising) is one of the largest and most robust gender differences that has been found (in the same category as the difference in aggression).
Ha. Anecdotal evidence? I thought we had better than that (especially when talking about stuff such as other people's subtle, unconscious biases, as judged by someone who has had a job application accepted or rejected..)
> What is this “object vs. people” distinction?
> It’s pretty relevant. Meta-analyses have shown a very large (d = 1.18) difference in healthy men and women (ie without CAH) in this domain. It’s traditionally summarized as “men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people”. I would flesh out “things” to include both physical objects like machines as well as complex abstract systems; I’d also add in another finding from those same studies that men are more risk-taking and like danger. And I would flesh out “people” to include communities, talking, helping, children, and animals.
> So this theory predicts that men will be more likely to choose jobs with objects, machines, systems, and danger; women will be more likely to choose jobs with people, talking, helping, children, and animals.
In there, there's a link to a study, though that link appears to be dead right now. Here's the study's abstract and a different link https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004....
> How big are gender differences in personality and interests, and how stable are these differences across cultures and over time? To answer these questions, I summarize data from two meta‐analyses and three cross‐cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men).
> In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people‐oriented and less thing‐oriented than men. Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender‐egalitarian societies than in gender‐inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.
Anyway, while it's not an open and shut case, it's very hard to explain why these preferences are stronger in more egalitarian/less sexist societies, rather than weaker, using conventional social progressive thinking. If the idea behind these preferences and decisions is "well, that's because of societal sexism", why are the least sexist societies doing the worst there, and the most sexist societies the best?
I'm socially progressive on most issues, but I find much of the arguments and reasoning from other social progressives for this topic to be fairly disingenuous. They often strongly give the impression of having decided that basically all strong gender preferences must be because of some kind of oppression or stereotyping, any scientific inquiry that indicates otherwise is morally unacceptable, facts be damned.
This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind.
I don't think there is any problem (shortage) of women in tech, but this is a substantial deficit of women in startup tech. There could be many reasons for this, but I suspect this is due to the personalities needed at an early stage startup and some degree of narcissism or self-interest that many developers (particularly women developers) find less appealing.
Except, it's not the same cause at all, it's just the same blame. Watch:
Not enough women in tech: "men, it's your fault, stop being so crude and competitive. Change your working style to suit and attract women. Stop making crude jokes and having arguments."
Not enough men in nursing: "men, it's your fault, stop being such cowards who think a social job is not manly. Don't listen to your friends if they mock you, it's toxic masculinity."
What would actually be equality is if the first was paired with:
"Women nurses, stop being so catty and learn to be more stoic to attract men in the workplace. Change your habits and social style to be more factual and problem oriented."
Or the second paired with:
"Women in tech, stop listening to your girlfriends who think tech is not glamorous and cute. Value your own self worth and improve your self sufficiency. Don't be a mean girl."
The fact that this very simple gender swap is treated as invalid demonstrates how intellectually bankrupt the diversity movement is. Their justifications only come after the fact, after they've already decided who qualifies for sympathy and victimhood, and who doesn't.
Despite all this concern about subtle implicit bias, about societal pressure and messages invisibly reinforced by society... Somehow gender studies experts have still not noticed that some of the most implicitly gendered terms are expectations that only men are meant to live up to: to not be a coward and not be a creep.
If a woman values her own comfort and safety over self sacrificing? That does not make her a coward. If a woman expects to be welcomed and to be able to join a social interaction a priori? Not entitlement, not creepy.
50 years of gender studies, and society is only more willing to entertain such pandering and double standards at the expense of men.
H L Mencken was right: men are stupid because they actually think concepts like honor and duty are real, instead of just a stick used to shame them into submission.
No thank you. "Historically marginalized" and "traditionally underrepresented" is a giant excuse built upon the soft bigotry of low expectations. The only people consistently marginalized have been the poor, and I've never seen more spoiled, clueless, unaware adults than at "diverse" tech events.
The only thing that really has to be noticed in order to see the problem here is that almost all of the women writing blog posts about how women should go into STEM did not themselves go into STEM. Yesterday I saw a video about an organization trying to get women to go into STEM. All of the women involved in the program had degree in _____ studies, communications, etc.
It's OK to be extremely cynical about this.
That said, I don't have a problem with women working whatever job they want. Just don't expect me to play along with the self-esteem parade and grievance bureaucracy that tends to come along for the ride.
Makes me think of Eleanor Roosevelt. She started by focusing on a group. But there were a lot of problems in her times and she recognized that, and she went on to tackle so many things like anti-poverty and unemployed youth.
I wonder if Jessica Livingston will do something similar, since it's written in the FAQ: "Since neither I nor Lambda School have tried this before, I wanted to reduce the number of variables. If it works this summer, we may expand it next summer."
However, I also worry about the motives behind the program. A huge part of feminism is a push towards gender equality[1]. Discriminating against half of the population while aiming for equality is an odd way to behave.
I know the blog post did not mention gender equality as a goal, but I just completely fail to see how discrimination like this will lead to anything but increased inter-gender conflict and the persistence of stereotypes in the field.
But I guess I'll just get down voted too.
There are philosophical cases to be made that the wrong must be righted asap, or that this approach is an instance of two wrongs not making a right.
For me, assuming good intentions, I choose other things to be upset about than people being selectively nice or helpful to others who are dealing with a problem.
I can understand the concern that leaning too hard in to this kind of thing can get out of hand, so as with everything, probably best to do our research and decide case by case.
And so, to further the goal of equal opportunity, one must balance an already unbalanced set of scales. Not to do so is merely to accept its bias as the status quo.
1) Who is it being offered to? Clearly, women in college. The majority of people in college are privileged (in this country, anyway) so you're offering free money to potentially privileged people. Is it possible to prioritize women who need the money over ones that could pay for it?
2) If I offered $9,000 in training for welding to someone in college, they might take that too. It's well known that the things people study in college and careers they prepare for often don't always result in what they do for the rest of their working life. Is it possible to prioritize individuals who demonstrate a consistent/continued interest in being in the industry, rather than random students looking for a free ride?
3) Where is this being marketed? To insiders who already are in a position to want to be in the industry and find a place there? Or underprivileged and minority communities that might need more of a hand to find out about such opportunities before they can work towards them?
Basically, I think it's a nice idea, but I think it can be tuned to optimize doing the most good with some minor tweaks.
In my career and life, I've been fortunate to have a lot of great opportunities - some that I sought out and some that fell into my lap. I've tried to pay it forward when I can and I am sure that these women will too given the chance.
The impact of these 40 scholarships could be 40 more technical cofounders or mentors or inventors - and that is a great thing for the community. I hope that 1+ of these ladies offer me a great opportunity or create an amazing product that I love :D
And yet it makes me and many others angry, not for what it is, but because of the social context in which it occurs. There's an all too common attitude these days that success for white people, men, and above all white men is something to oppose.[1,2] That cruelty toward men is acceptable.[3] That "it's impossible to be racist toward whites or sexist toward men". That sitting comfortably is "manspreading" and masculinity is toxic.
The world is divided in part because of efforts like this. Is more division really something to celebrate?
1: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-...
2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke...
3: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeon...
To be fair, in more socially progressive countries, this is actually being countered/fought against[0].
The article linked is in Swedish, so you can use your choice of translator to decypher the text; but this is a demonstration of not only your point but the fact that people are actually starting to take a stand against the narrative that cruelty towards men is anywhere near being acceptable, in an equal and just society.
[0] - https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-...
Was the widespread social justice outrage lost in translation? Where are the public calls to revoke the psychologists' licenses and shut down the website where they give advice?
All I see is one article that doesn't mention any significant public response at all. While it's nice that someone is speaking against it, it's not nearly enough, and only confirms my point that abusing men is still generally tolerated.
What stops people from getting into programming, however, is a bit more difficult to determine, but there does seem to be patterns. Less women and blacks compared to asians and whites.
Oddly enough, trying to figure out the causes of these differences intersects a broad range of fields from evolution to sexual discrimination to access to resources.
And because there's so much uncertainty, the explanation quickly turns into politics.
Sometimes the smallest influences can have a big impact, both positively and negatively.
I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders. You need sales, marketing, accounting, management, HR, legal - and even the IT guys often truck along fine with little to no coding skills.
If you need code written to perform your task that usually just means the UI of your application isn't powerful enough. So get a coder to add that feature to the UI. You don't need to become a coder yourself.
Here's why we really need "more coders" all the time:
- the web frontend is getting reinvented every year
- the latest trends in infrastructure design ("terascale micro-micro-micro-services as a service") need attention
- the latest devices and platform SDKs need to be dealt with
- the insane amount of technical debt accumulated through all this churn needs to be paid off
Which is all fine only as long as the money keeps rolling in.
> I think this is an absurd and tired meme. Most shops who employ coders also employ about 75% non-coders
It would be absurd if coding skill were only useful to people whose job title and central role is “coder” (just as viewing literacy as central would be absurd if measured by the number of people employed as “writers”.)
Coding at 100 IQ level will be automated away very soon the same way anyone can have a facebook account without knowing HTML.
Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
Also, please stop posting flamebait, especially ideological flamebait, to HN. It fuels flamewars, which destroy what we want to preserve here: thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity. Assuming those are things you also want, you're welcome to post here in that spirit.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships-m...
> Judgment was entered as follows: Judgment entered for FS ISAC Inc and against Allison, Rich ;Hamilton, James
https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-86101...
I am targeting visual programming with Scratch 3
I'll offer my services to Lambda School and/or YC for free if that means I can extent this offer to EU people, provided that my living expenses are covered. I'm in between jobs so I have the perfect schedule for it.
I'm from the EU.
(This is nowhere near the worst guideline violation in this thread, but it's such a precise one.)
On the one hand, women have obviously been disadvantaged in many ways, for many years, which is wrong. The gender disparity in software development is well documented, and should be fixed. No one should be discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender.
On the other hand, a for-profit company deciding to offer free services to individual women, who may or may not be disadvantaged, simply because they're women, doesn't sit well with me either. Frankly, it seems likely that anyone who applies to lambda school (either gender), probably lean towards the more advantaged end than the less advantaged end. So it seems likely this is going to result in women with plenty of advantages already, receiving $9000 worth of education for free, while explicitly denying this opportunity to men, and continuing to disadvantage members of both groups.
So, I guess my question is, why is this morally OK? If this was targeted specifically to disadvantaged people, or disadvantaged women, or if it was a non-profit, it seems like this would be an easier call for me.
Is there any evidence that this is happening, though? I've never seen anybody, even anecdotally claim "I'm a woman (who is qualified) and I've been unable to find employment". Mostly what I see is people trying to work backwards and say, "if group X makes up Y% of the population and only Z% of programmers, that in itself must be evidence of discrimination".
I can anecdotally confirm that I've witnessed women in software engineering be discouraged from learning software engineering at the undergraduate level, often from TAs/Professors.
I can also point to other reported anecdotes, such as the big Riot Games article, several blogs/tweets confirming the article, the Uber NYT article, etc.
The literal quote 'unable to find employment' does not coincide with the quoted portion 'discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied'. Employment is one of the last opportunities that can be denied or discouraged towards women- we have a wealth of educational, internship, volunteering, etc. opportunities that can serve to winnow the pipeline of appropriate female candidates before discussing employment.
Note: I'm not arguing that this is universal to all women in the engineering field, merely providing some response to "I have never even heard of this phenomenon anecdotally".
Perhaps the son really did love this stuff and perhaps the daughter was given the opportunity to do other things. Perhaps this was a one-off coincidence. But my experience is littered with this stuff. It happened even to me. I've got two parents who were both software engineers and I was given toys as a child that were designed to develop technical skills and my sister wasn't.
The research community does not have a better explanation for the disparity than social bias.
EDIT: Here's one paper that talks about how "widely shared cultural beliefs about gender" affect early decisions people make wrt to their careers https://sociology.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9501/f/pu...
"The results of this study show that males assess their own mathematical competence higher than their otherwise equal female counterparts"
"self-assessments of task competence were found to influence career-relevant decisions, even when controlling for commonly accepted measures of ability. For males and females, the higher they rate their mathematical competence, the greater the odds that they will continue on the path leading to careers in the quantitative professions. However, since males tend to overestimate their mathematical competence relative to females, males are also more likely to pursue activities leading down a path toward a career in science, math, and engineering."
I can tell you why. In part, it's explicit sexism and goal keeping from men, sure. But a far bigger reason there are less women in tech?
Step into any engineering course at a 4 year university. Come back and tell me how many women where in your class. Get the picture?
Of COURSE there are less women in engineering jobs. They are less women in engineering classes! So while there are definitely sexism problems, far BIGGER issues exist with reforming gender roles CULTURALLY.
Women should be encouraged from a young age to pursue science if it interests them. They should not be given artificial leg ups to help balance a problem which will never go away without addressing the root cause.
And the same could be said for other fields. Step in to a construction site/auto dealership/mechanic shop/sports field and tell me how many women you see. Are all those fields dominated by sexist men as well?
And for men, how many are nurses/teachers/social workers/counselors/human resources vs women? Are all those fields dominated by sexist women?
Could it be that women enjoy jobs with more human interaction and men are more content to sit in front of a computer screen?
If your contention is correct, the absence of male teachers for impressionable young children must be a massively damaging thing? Much worse than a preponderance of one sex or another of students in a lecture theatre?
Because it’s a for profit organization it makes total sense for them. It has marginal cost but acts as huge marketing factor.
Now, it may turn out that you might want to evaluate an aggregate measure of disadvantage per person, so you can sort people by level-of-disadvantage and apply that first. But that method may be brittle; if you choose the relative weighting of various forms of disadvantage wrong, then you're applying your benefit in a way that deviates from the "true" perfect-information order anyway.
One way of resolving this is to say "we're not going to attempt to apply this benefit in a perfectly Rawlsian order; we're just going to pick a main effect to attack and, while doing less good than a perfect-information solution, will still almost certainly do more good than harm.".
This thread, and past threads on this subject turn into an absolute shit-show and cause tribalism/division. I feel like that is evidence enough that these policies are harmful.
When you do/don't get a job there's uncertainty around the reason. Was it my experience/skill-set, or race/gender/sexual orientation/religion? It feels like we're trying to fix discrimination by forcing everyone to feel like they might be experiencing it.
It's a partial solution to a small part of a big problem.
Clearly not IMO, there needs to be a morally defensible reason for restricting the field by physical characteristics; sex and skin colour/race are not good reasons in general.
> If this was targeted specifically to disadvantaged people
You already accepted women have been disadvantaged though.
There's nothing in this release saying they want to offer this to disadvantaged women, they simply want to offer it to women.
Most companies seem to focus on improving ratio of women in their company itself, by targeting say female CS undergrads, which doesn't help increase the ratio of women in tech(as these women have already made the choice to be in tech). To be clear, this approach makes perfect sense from the company's perspective, but it ain't helping the greater cause.
http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer...
> " Specifically, she can’t build the first version of her product and is forced to find a cofounder who can. Because she can't judge technical ability, she'll often choose the wrong person for the job. And in a startup, if you choose the wrong programmer or cofounder and have to replace them, the delay alone can be enough to kill the company. …"
I have met a number of people who cannot program, but believe that they have a great idea (only if somebody could just build that app for them …).
Even random neighbors who learn that I write mobile apps just sort of assume,
that I do not have my own ideas -- and instead, just program somebody else's ideas into life (sort of like I am a typist, but an author of the novel, I am typing -- has to be somebody else).
All that gender-bias in recent, US, tech grants does, is re-enforces the stigma that women in US are 'special-needs', as far as it comes to technology.
This is not a good stigma to have, and it cannot be broken by appeal to a moral high.
As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ?
As few on this thread, I think there are better way to identify people who born into (or became over time) into a very unfair and disadvantageous environment.
And giving those, the extra help, offering them generosity -- is nothing but heart warming. And deserves huge applauds and replication.
There are boys and girls from disadvantaged environments, some lost parents to cancer, to car accidents, to wars, to terrorist attacks.
Some are in different countries suffering from horrible illnesses (that were caused by environment catastrophes).
Some were unlucky to be born to drug abusing parents.
---
It does take more work, may be more passion, to reach out to those -- but I think it would better society more.
There are explanations, but whether they are valid or not is a matter of debate. Here is one possible explanation: Women have faced all kinds of discrimination which has, for the most part, kept them out of the industry. Even if we're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still remains in this male-dominated industry. Therefore, it's necessary to do something in order to bring women back in, and we all have to do our part - in some cases this could mean men making way for women. This is the basic principle of affirmative action policies - it's about doing what we can to correct our historic mistakes. For it to work we must all play our part, and sometimes we must make small sacrifices for the greater good
"Even if we're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still remains in this male-dominated industry."
This rhetoric is just to confuse people. Any non-active discrimination removes the burden on those who are not facing the bias. Period. Getting equality by stepping over other's heads and pushing them down? Sorry, that is not equality. That is oppression. These non-active biases are something women have every right and power to overcome by themselves. They should not be served in platter. They should burden themselves to do so.
"Therefore, it's necessary to do something in order to bring women back in, and we all have to do our part - in some cases this could mean men making way for women."
Its funny how we write "we all have to do our part" only to not see women sacrifice anything in the end. The word "all" is clever way to escape this sexism against men. Also the word "small" downplays the sacrifices of men in the due process and assumes patronizing attitude in deciding the pains behind such sacrifices don't matter for men. If in order to support your livelihood, I have to kill my hunger, my opportunities, my chances, my support to family then you are part of the problem, not me.
"...it's about doing what we can to correct our historic mistakes."
Past is past. History remains and can never be corrected. It is the present that we should correct and see to it that there is no further active discrimination.
I do think women should stop blaming others and put their efforts to the point of testing their limits instead of insulting men but I am slandered with 'victim blaming'. Ha!
These people cannot make the whole world believe their perpetual victimization just so they can steal free affirmative action. Either prove your mettle and talent to get your money or get out.
Studies have shown that women move away from STEM, both in studies and career as countries are more gender egalitarian. Countries with less egalitarian societies have more women in STEM[0].
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-l...
I'm generally against equality of outcome, and support equality of opportunity, which this is not.
Now, if for some reason women don't take this road and "need" someone to hold their hand in order to learn programming, I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources.
Not to mention that programming can be a tedious and lame job (sitting in front of a computer all day is often mentioned as a genuine nightmare), so if you have to do it, you'd better love it in the first place.
It's the difficulty of keeping yourself motivated and do what you need to do. Making a commitment, such as joining a class or education, is massively helpful.
> I would argue that maybe those women don't have the intrinsic motivation to do so and trying to force it upon them may be a gross waste of time and resources.
It may come as a shock but most people don't work with their ultimate passion. And often even if you start working with your passion you'll have to deal with the ugly sides and you might lose the passion. Sometimes a job is just a job.
The problem is that people learning programming for the first time, who don't have a passion for it, can find themselves in a class with those who do. I have witnessed, first hand, people who were beginners getting left in the dust by their classmates on a group project and ultimately dropping out of CS/SE entirely.
No?
Stuff like pointers, for loops, threads, interface design, data structures, idempotency, source control, working on a linux command line, etc. all present reasonably challenging roadblocks for a burgeoning developer, and I think many of us benefited from having someone around to help walk us through this the first time.
Depends on how much you think anything else sucks. Compared to physical labor you're not breaking your back over things.
Compared to other jobs you get paid relatively ok (EU centric view).
Compared to some jobs the hours aren't that crazy: hey McKinsey folk! How are you doing? :D
Really, it isn't that simple. It depends.
It helps if you like it, but a job is a job and if you can perform it, then why do you need to like it?
Moreover, did you ever read about the overjustification effect [0]? Long story short, if you like something, you might dislike it after you get paid for it.
Also, if you love programming you might be biased in always solving a problem in a technical way. You'd become that guy from the LEGO movie that always screams "SPACESHIP!" [2]
Full disclosure: I like programming and sometimes can force myself into loving it [1]. The consequences of loving programming: no social life, no normal diet, sleep rhythm is off. I'm basically just doing one thing as much as possible: programming.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect
[1] As a mettamage I have some control over my psyche and I can quite often, but not always, force myself to like or even love things that I initially hate ;-)
To your second point, not all software jobs are as solitary and asocial as you seem to believe. Pairing, project planning, application product design, are all things that are done with other people. In fact, I am a software engineer and have more than a few days at work where I don't even touch my computer, yet still get a lot of work done.
The archetype of the solitary, 100% self-learned hacker as a representative of all, or even most of tech workers has been outgrown by the industry. Even the use of the term "hand-holding" as I've seen it used is a gatekeeper mentality IMO that needs to stop, or at least be toned back significantly. People that don't pull their weight certainly exist, but everyone learns and contributes in their own way.
Oh that's easy just send a cURL request with header Accept: application/json ..... OK what's cURL, what's a header? So for us that have been in the game it is easier to "learn to code" another language as there are parallels everywhere and you have that baseline knowledge of how things generally work. Just try to explain something that you feel is "relatively straightforward" to a person not exposed to tech... I made the same mistake and thought it was straightforward, it is not as you are making many assumptions about knowledge. I am at the point where I am familiar with a lot of stuff and can Google things I don't know but what if you had no idea what even to search for? That is where instruction helps.
I don't understand why handholding is bad and why it should be used as an argument against women coding. When men do it, it's called mentoring.
I find these kind of "initiatives" quite condescending.
Isn't this true for content covered by the vast majority of all secondary and college courses?
I would love to learn to code. It's the reason I originally joined HN closing in on a decade ago. (Proof: my first post, the day I joined: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713015)
But I have found that one barrier to me getting anywhere is a lack of ability to ask questions and get meaningful answers. Men often have male friends that they can shoot the breeze with and casually mention some coding thing and get some kind of reply from one or more people.
And my experience is that men don't talk to me that way. I don't have any buddies I can shoot the breeze with who will go "Oh, yeah, that thing is a known issue and you need to do yadda." Men shooting the breeze with me are inevitably hitting on me, even if they are married.
I've been here a long time. People here mostly don't hit me up via private email and things like that to just chat about a thing. When I have explicitly said "You can email me to discuss that further." I never get emails to discuss that further. Instead, I get inquiries into when I next plan to vacation in their part of the world and suggestions that I would enjoy visiting their lovely country (and, hint, hint, they would love to have coffee with me should I happen to casually drop by their country on vacay, because that's clearly how desperately poor women who can't pay their damn bills spend their time, globe trotting to hook up with random internet strangers who apparently thought "Wow, a woman speaking to me. She must be looking for sex!").
I've occasionally had brief stints of being able to have casual conversations in a chat environment with a guy who happened to be an IT guy. I found it enormously, incredibly, mind-blowingly useful and valuable to get those casual comments of "Oh, are you doing X? Cuz, you know, X don't work. Did you think of yadda?" But most of the time, I simply don't have access to that kind of conversation.
Nearly a decade of hanging on HN has failed to magically give me such access. Anytime I comment on how frustrated I am about such things, I am inevitably pissed all over by people acting like I am making shit up -- because, yes, clearly, this is how you welcome women into the bro coders club, by pissing on them at every available opportunity.
I still would like to learn to code. I spend a lot of time online. I think men vastly underestimate how much support they have access to. A small comment here and there by someone knowledgeable can save you hours and hours and hours of time by pointing you in the right direction. As a woman, I mostly can't get access to those types of comments. Men are too busy trying to figure out how to ask for my phone number.
I really don't know how to adequately describe the ginormous Wall of China style deafening silence that faces me and that helps keep me poor, unable to figure out coding and a zillion other things that drive me crazy.
To be clear, I'm not posting this to just whine about my pathetic life. That's inevitably the interpretation most people make of such comments by me. It's frankly just another means to shut me out, dismiss me and invalidate my points.
I'm posting it to try to elucidate the fact that guys have more access to support than they seem to appreciate. I can't join a chat or slack channel and count on getting help because I posted a question. I can count on being dismissed, sexually harassed and treated like an unwelcome intruder.
And that's a giant barrier that men mostly don't seem to face. Men can talk to other men casually and get loads of useful information that is simply not accessible to me. If it were, I think I would already be a coder with several published projects.
Edit:
There are multiple people replying here to
A. Tell me "It's simple! Just don't tell people you are a girl!"
B. Generally be dismissive, as if I don't have a real problem and otherwise act like I don't have a point.
To people here actually interested in solving the problem space here: Please note how shitty it is for all the replies to me to be dismissive, not listen, etc. Please note how such replies are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I'm not planning to engage such replies. They are not useful and they tend to not even be made in good faith.
The short version of why I don't hide my gender online: I am trying to make business connections. I cannot hide my gender in person.
If I have to hide my gender to try to connect and then I arrange an in person meet-up and they are shocked and appalled to learn I'm actually a woman and I never told them that, this is not going to go good places for my career by any stretch of the imagination. They will feel lied to, betrayed and like I'm not trustworthy. No, they won't want to work with me if I can't so much as admit to the simple fact of my gender.
I also cannot even get paid if I do work online and need to hide my full name so as to hide my gender. You can only hide your gender successfully if you are basically posting anonymously and not trying to make real world, meaningful connections.
Geez. How is that not blindingly obvious on the face of it?
Why would you assume that a programming course amounts to "hand holding" just because a single gender is involved?
For that matter, why would you assume the women taking this course are unmotivated?
If this exact same program allowed men and women, would you still be casting the same aspersions only on the women, or would you also be implying that trying to "force" the men to program is a waste of time and resources?
What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?
2. Perhaps there are domain experts with 5-10 years of experience in _something_ and them learning to be technical is impactful?
Also one can't get to 5 years without doing the 1st year. So I don't really see your point.
Great marketing, guys and gals!
Cheers
