Re:Why People Feel Like Victims
by renewiltord on Thursday May 06, 2021 @08:55PM
(#27070720)
There are systemic injustices. If you're chasing pure outcome it is advantageous to be aware of them so that you can access underpaid underprivileged people or back people whose performance is boosted by privilege.
If you think that a founder being black makes it very hard for him to access debt because of systemic bias and his company plans heavily on debt financing, then yeah, it makes total sense to pass on it if you think the risk is too high.
On the other hand, if you're a black founder and the company you want to build requires you to heavily rely on debt financing, it makes perfect sense for you to spend less time worrying about injustice and more time making this thing work however you can knowing full well that people will pass on you (perhaps "unfairly"). After all, you can play and maybe lose or not play and definitely lose.
A founder I knew used to look for schools that had strong candidates but had low social cachet. He believed he would have an advantage hiring from there.
One particular liberal arts college had him hire almost their entire founding CS year. Almost all of those graduates were great. Other times the strategy didn't work out.
Re:Why People Feel Like Victims
by rayiner on Thursday May 06, 2021 @11:19PM
(#27071747)
That’s a good point—there is a difference between knowledge you’d want policymakers and academics to be thinking about, versus how you socialize children to view the world to maximize their individual potential.
If you think that a founder being black makes it very hard for him to access debt because of systemic bias and his company plans heavily on debt financing, then yeah, it makes total sense to pass on it if you think the risk is too high.
On the other hand, if you're a black founder and the company you want to build requires you to heavily rely on debt financing, it makes perfect sense for you to spend less time worrying about injustice and more time making this thing work however you can knowing full well that people will pass on you (perhaps "unfairly"). After all, you can play and maybe lose or not play and definitely lose.
A founder I knew used to look for schools that had strong candidates but had low social cachet. He believed he would have an advantage hiring from there.
One particular liberal arts college had him hire almost their entire founding CS year. Almost all of those graduates were great. Other times the strategy didn't work out.