I'm sure many of us can empathize with your struggles, but starting a gender flamewar is not a valid way to express them on Hacker News, so please don't do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The article itself is not starting a gender flamewar. The author is reflecting on her experiences. It's interesting. The flamewar starts when some users find parts of it activating and rush to the comment thread to reflexively vent their activation. Better options would be to reflect on one's own reactions long enough for them to turn into something thoughtful [1], or simply not to post. If you don't find it interesting, there are other things to read and discuss here.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

> There's a significant number of VCs and funds which only invest in female founders, which is a huge advantage.

I understand your reasoning in saying this, but please try to understand that being taken seriously as a female founder is much more difficult being taken seriously as a male.

These VCs exist to combat this preexisting inequality.

Is the inequality between men and women, or between people on the inside who incidentally are mostly men, and people on the outside who are also mostly men but include a relatively higher fraction of women?

How do people get funding for nothing-apps? If anything that's evidence that being on the inside is what matters.

(P.S. You forgot to check the username, I'm not the parent commenter.)

Being a "likable person" is, for better or worse, pretty significant in sales / pitching / persuasion of any kind. If you really feel you lack this and have limited ability to improve, then a partner who fills this gap would be indispensable for your endeavors.

Yep, that's why I gave up.

Sounds like your gender is not a problem, since you concede that an investment in your venture would likely be wasted

It may be that this path is not for you so you've probably done the right thing. The market isn't fair and it's up to you to exploit your advantages (unfair or fair) and overcome your disadvantages (unfair or fair). If you find that infeasible, you can't play the game.

Indeed, so I guess I'll get a job or maybe just suicide because what's the point. I don't really feel like working hard so someone else can get rich off my labour anymore.

I'm not a clinician, but you replied to my comment so I feel obligated to say this: go see a mental health professional.

You sound clinically depressed. I don't think being a man is why you failed. There is nothing wrong with working a job and slowly building wealth, especially someone who is supposedly a highly skilled software engineer - you can make retirement money in not-so-many years if you live frugally and save wisely. I seriously think you need some professional counseling.

For sure this thread was a poor place to change the subject in that way and the commenter should not have started a flamewar (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23605490). But crossing into personal attack is also a big step in the wrong direction, and also toxic. Please don't do that on HN, regardless of how wrong another user is or you feel they are. It only contributes to destroying this place further. There's also something to be said about not responding to a mention of suicide by aggressively hammering a person.

Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd be grateful. Note the most important one: Be kind.

But of course if a female CEO works the system and exploits it the way men does she is highlighted online for lacking morals and ethics even though plenty of men run businesses the same way all the time and are either not even noticed for doing it or otherwise glorified.

People online are insignificant. Online Peter Thiel is some sort of vampire who feeds off the lifeblood of young men and governments while suppressing the press. In real life, Peter Thiel is a respected businessman who is considered one of the archetypes of a successful entrepreneur.

In the story, there are parts she openly regrets as having optimized for appearance: returning to work so soon after having given birth. There are parts she doesn't express regret over but mentions (the miscarriage, pumping in the car instead of a mother's room and the ensuing feelings of humiliation).

There's probably a balance here but it appears that optimizing for appearance isn't of much value except when you need people to believe in your appearance: meeting investors, talking to your team. Since most people online are neither, they are not important.

Do you have any data at all to show that the bar is much lower? Can you please provide it.

Both can be true at the same time. OP being not as good as others and the industry being gender-biased.

If the industry was gender-biased, then that would mean you would see more female founders, not less.

Between this and the issues black CEOs face [1] the industry isn't biased in favor of minorities. As an aside, when we see articles like these and people jumping in to say 'if I were a woman, things would be easier' the implicit argument at play here is that she didn't get to where she's at because of her own ability, she got to there because she's a woman.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23540162

Studies do indicate a statistically significant difference in response rates from VCs in favor of women. But only ~10% difference, not something decisive: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/01/10/do-ventu.... But claiming that just because there are more male founders than female founders there's bias against women is a very simplistic approach. As other commenters point out, there's already a disparity in representation among the applicants.

And you go too far in your last sentence. Saying that there is an existence of bias is not saying that people's achievements are the product of their identity rather than their ability. Just that their identity played a factor in having that opportunity. E.g. one of my past employers gave women and URM 2 chances to pass the phone screen and move to the onsite instead of one. This is definitely a bias. But the people that got hired still had to demonstrate the same level of ability in the onsite interviews. Bias just let more of them have that chance. It didn't result in unqualified candidates getting hired, it reduced the false negative rate for a certain segment of candidates.

> If the industry was gender-biased, then that would mean you would see more female founders, not less.

Not necessarily.

Males and females are different, our hormones are different and it's reasonable to think that our minds and interests are different. In fact, practically all scientific evidence shows that personality trait differences between male and women are statistically significant.

I don't know if things (overall) are easier for women. Some people are prejudiced against women, some others are prejudiced against men. The first group used to be much bigger, but at this point I'm not sure which one has a bigger influence.

> If the industry was gender-biased, then that would mean you would see more female founders, not less.

No, because the base population is not uniformly distributed to begin with. I've participated in interview rounds for software engineer positions where the volume of candidates was already showing a gender ratio of around 20-to-1 male/female ratio, where half the male candidates never had a single CS lesson in their whole life. If in the end you get only 1 female-led startup for each 20 male-led startups that doesn't mean the VC world is biased.

how many women do you think there are in the world?

This is a very simplistic approach. Over 90% of people killed by police are men. Does it follow that police are heavily biased against men? Over 90% of pediatricians are women. Is pediatrics heavily biased in favor of women? No, because even though men and women make up roughly 50% of the population each they make different choices. Men are much more likely to commit violent acts. Women are much more likely to go into pediatrics.

Why are you talking about women in the world? The parent's argument is on the vc world, which is pretty different.

I think their point is unless you are seeing 50-50 ratio in everything, there is descrimination and bias. Not that I support this view but I think he could have put it more clearly.

> how many women do you think there are in the world?

If you had any interest in having an intelligent discussion on the gender ratio in IT you would have asked relevant questions such as "why are entry-level IT jobs seeing a gender ratio of 20-to-1", or "why are women deciding not to work in IT".

But no.