Women: Learn to Program This Summer - <AUTHOR> http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/women-learn-to-program-this-summer <comment><USER3> Here's the blog post explaining why Jessica is doing this

[http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the- summer...](http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer- hackers-program)

</comment><comment><USER4> All: there's room on HN for good-faith debate, but not for ideological flamebait (regardless of which flavor), so can you please not post that? It's tedious, off topic, and boy does it suck the oxygen out of a thread.

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.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER5> hey dang, ask yourself how much intellectual curiosity is there in this promo post?! quite disingenuous on your side.

<comment><USER4> It's true that moderation comments are out-of-band for the site. But they're necessary, because the system can't right itself without them. If it helps at all, they're even more tedious to write than they are to read.

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.

<comment><USER6> the person you're responding to here is trying to point out that the article is disingenuous and so only can generate the same. I don't agree/disagree. just clarifying.

<comment><USER7> What about the article is disingenuous? It doesn't even seem to be making any arguments.

<comment><USER8> Seriously. It's 100% factual. "I'm ponying up money for so-and-so program. Here are the qualifications and stipulations."

It's only disingenuous if she's lying about these things and actually not doing this, which seems like an absurd accusation.

<comment><USER9> The downvoted user clearly claims dang is disingenuous, not the article...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> EDIT: To clarify that the money is going directly to private individuals, as per Austen.

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.

<comment><USER11> > arbitrary euphemisms for gender / racial bias like 'bad culture fit'.

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.

<comment><USER12> That's not exactly what OP means. What's actually going on is that we have certain expectations around candidates' behavior and the wording they use on their resumes and the way that they respond to technical interviews. These are behaviors that are ingrained for most white men but tend to be less ingrained for women and non-white men. So our hiring processes are subtly biased against anyone who isn't like us.

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.

<comment><USER13> >non-white men

I assume Asian men are actually "white men" for the purposes of your example?

<comment><USER12> Can you explain a little more what you mean by this or where the disagreement is? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Thanks!

<comment><USER14> If you ever make it out to the bay, you'll see that white men, Asian men, and, to a much lesser extent (though much more represented than everyone other than the first two), Asian women make up the majority of the engineering workforce here.

<comment><USER15> Which clearly demonstrates that just because you belong to a minority, it does not mean you will be "oppressed" or whatever the current narrative is. There are successful groups of people belonging to a minority, i.e. it is not the fact of belonging to a minority that is the problem, is it?

<comment><USER16> What consists of a minority is of course contingent and relative. A group that is a minority in one setting can be the majority in another. In one situation a group can be the oppressed, in another 'they' (different individuals but of the same 'group') can be the oppressors. Unfortunately that's human nature, but it doesn't mean we have to just sit back and accept it.

If course it's also possible to overcome obstacles like these. Some people are very successful at doing so, but unfortunately others are not and shouldn't really have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own, built her first (basic) website ([https://www.nataliepeterson.dev](https://www.nataliepeterson.dev)) and is applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was elated.

Programs like this really work.

<comment><USER18> For whatever reason this website feels so personal. Instant flashbacks to the 2000s. I love it.

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.

<comment><USER17> Great suggestion. I will pass along the feedback to the developer :)

<comment><USER19> A carrousel could work as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some of the comments in this thread is a master class of how discrimination and gatekeeping work not just in our industry but in society as a whole.

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.

<comment><USER21> This, I feel, is a disingenuous summary of the concerns with explicitly discriminatory policies voiced in the comments here. The issue is not that people don't want to make coding more accessible. The issue most serm to be taking is that many places are pursuing diversity by deliberately making it less accessible for undesireable demographics. See my company's policies for one example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19464944)

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.

<comment><USER22> Is there any evidence of a "general attitude" that white and asian men are bad in technology? Because if they are, they must be incredible at what they do as they keep getting hired in droves. I think the view is they're overrepresented, but the "bad" part of that is the overrepresentation, not the race or gender.

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.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but are they explicitly discriminating against women in hiring teachers in order to increase the percentage of male teachers? Because more and more that's what's going on in tech companies (with the genders reversed).

<comment><USER23> Of course. If a man and a women apply for the same primary school teacher position with the same skill level, they will hire the man.

<comment><USER21> But do they explicitly deny women jobs for a position where they would have hired a man? As in do men get two chances to pass an interview when women get one? Do they have blanket policies to not hire women of certain backgrounds where they do hire men of those backgrounds?

<comment><USER23> I don't know that. But even what I described disadvantages female teachers, and rightfully so.

<comment><USER21> Well in my company we are using those policies. And besides just because it's happening to women in other industries does not make it any less immoral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have several female friends who find Affirmative Action campaigns so off- putting, they decide against joining the industry.

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](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.

<comment><USER25> I am also a woman and feel similarly, although it didn't deter me from working in the industry (or at least adjacent to it).

<comment><USER24> Thanks for chiming in. I'm not a woman, but I think it's important to highlight these opinions because people like you and my friends _do_ exist, although you'd never think it from the typical discourse on this topic.

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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recently completed a very difficult job search where I unfortunately had to lean on my ethnicity (I'm Mexican) to pass through very overt screening against white men. I was shocked to hear from multiple companies, large and small, that they did not want men and white men in particular.

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.

<comment><USER21> I can confirm your observations. At my company we have a couple policies.

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.

<comment><USER27> > Diverse candidates get two attempts to pass the technical phone interview, > non diverse get one.

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.

<comment><USER21> To be fair, the tech companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The media has been heavily pushing the narrative that women are underrepresented at these tech companies - and they are compared to the general population. But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers that are women. Same sort of deal with URM.

Ironically, the concern over discrimination in tech is itself the cause of a significant amount of explicit discrimination.

<comment><USER28> > But I've seen plenty of stories, even from reputable sources like the NYT, > criticizing tech companies for only hiring 20-25% women while failing to > mention that this is exactly in line with the percentages of tech workers > that are women.

If the industry is systematically unfavorable to women, hiring at the same percentage as the industry as a whole (which is what matching the "percentage of tech workers that are women" is) is indicative of being fully on-line with the average degree to which the industry is systematically unfavorable to women.

It would be inconsistent to criticize the industry but not firms that were dead in the middle of the pack.

<comment> kyle-rb I don't think the person you're replying to is criticizing the industry though. From what I can tell, they're saying it's not the industry's fault that it lacks women.

That's how I see it anyway: mainly based on the fact that women make up only around 20% of CS majors, I don't think the issue lies in the hiring practices of most tech companies.

<comment><USER28> > I don't think the person you're replying to is criticizing the industry > though.

No, but the people _they_ are criticizing for criticizing firms hiring at industrt-average proprotions _are_ also criticizing the industry, which is the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science.

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.

<comment><USER30> What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome?

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.

<comment><USER31> It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.

<comment><USER30> > There is no problem to solve.

Which is exactly what people said about unrepresented demographics in career XXX, for _literally every XXX of the past few centuries in which the representation has since normalized_. The example above was medicine, but we can play it with any high-status career you want: law, government, corporate middle management, academics, finance... Back up a hundred years and there were effectively no women (or african americans, pick your demographic) in those careers. Now they're much closer to parity.

And in all those cases, small-c conservatives interested in preserving the status quo trotted out all sorts of arguments just like this. _And they were wrong every time._

So tell me again how your cool bit of jargon makes this all go away like magic?

<comment><USER32> The gender equality paradox is the observation that offering men and women more freedom increases the degree to which they self-select. In other words, offering people more freedom of choice increases the under-representation.

The alternative - shaming women who do not go into tech - is unpalatable to most.

<comment><USER30> The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. It's being vastly misapplied here, and the authors of that study (it was one study) would be horrified to see this rhetoric.

Go back and look at the scatter plot. It's a weak, but real correlation. The random deltas between nations are well above the significance of the gender signal. There's good science to be argued about there.

But it's being used here _to justify an outrageous outlier_. Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude. Nothing from that study argues for this kind of effect, nothing at all.

<comment><USER33> >The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. Lumping everyone who mentions it together and othering them does not seem constructive.

>Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude.

How can you be sure? Men are on average more interested in working with things, and women are on average more interested in working with people [1]. "...non-biology STEM majors showed lower [people-orientation] and higher [thing-orientation] interests than biology and health majors."[2] Self- efficacy and competence beliefs tend to be a factor that keep women away from tech [3]. The Gender Equality Paradox also mentions competency as a factor.

1\. [https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364](https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364) 2\. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00018...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879115001062?via%3Dihub) 3\. [https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/will-i-...](https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/will- i-fit-in-and-do-well-the-importance-of-social-belongingness-and-selfefficacy- for-explaining-gender-differences-in-interest-in-stem-and- heedmajors\(2365274b-6054-49ac-a75b-12285c508204\).html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A while back I saw a coworker virtue signal about the parallels between tech and nursing. There were gender problems in both, and it was the same cause, he said.

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.

<comment><USER35> I don't quite agree, but I see where you're coming from. Instead I tend to see them as being just different behaviors, with bystanders (clueless rubes and cynical manipulators alike) causing conflict in order to support their own inflated diversity bureaucracy.

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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think this is wonderful.

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."_

</comment><comment><USER37> There will be benefits to this program for those who participate, and I wholly wish those women who have the opportunity to participate the best of luck.

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.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism)

<comment><USER38> I don't understand why you're getting down voted for this comment. Isn't the goal equal opportunity? Providing artificial silo'd environments seems at odds to the goal of an unbiased, fair workplace.

But I guess I'll just get down voted too.

<comment><USER21> In much of silicon valley, the goal is equal outcomes not equal opportunity. Often times explicitly unequal opportunity is necessary to achieve equal outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> California's Unruh Civil Rights Act specifically outlaws discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation. This law applies to all businesses in California.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act)

<comment><USER40> This doesn't apply here. It's no different from me writing a check for someone to go to college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, this brings up some questions in my mind:

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.

</comment><comment><USER42> I like to take the most positive outlook on these sorts of things... What a fantastic opportunity for 40 women!

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

</comment><comment><USER43> I honestly do think this is a good idea. She saw a need, identified a way to help, and is generously contributing. And if some women feel more comfortable or learn better in a boot camp for women only, I wish them the best.

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-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-of- beto-orourke)

2: [https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto- orourke...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke-and- the-other-white-male-dems-running-to-be-president-in-2020-can-you-not)

3: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah- jeon...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeong-new- york-times.html)

<comment><USER44> > _That cruelty toward men is acceptable._

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-...](https://www.metro.se/artikel/anna-bj%C3%B6rklund-dumpa-inte-din- kille)

<comment><USER43> Psychologists telling a man who is being abused that _he_ should change?

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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> black-tea People: do whatever you want to do this summer. There are virtually zero barriers to entry for programming today. They've been minimal for a good twenty years now as it is.

</comment><comment><USER45> In general, making it easier for more people to get into programming feels feels like a good thing to me. Programming is a game-changer in terms of its ability to amplify talents and interests. It's the longest lever I know of.

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.

<comment><USER46> My personal 2c is that it is a lot about perception and awareness. You need to be aware a certain thing exists and how it works before you can aspire to do it. I'm sure you've met people in the past that had jobs you didn't even know existed. And invariably since some populations have been less present in tech, less of that population will be exposed to it, and thus aspire to work in it.

Sometimes the smallest influences can have a big impact, both positively and negatively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Spreading this as far and wide as I can. Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years and there are too many programs and teachers that teach it poorly, alienating large segments of the population. Lambda is among the best. I hope they can scale past 40 students for this in the future.

<comment><USER48> > Coding is as critical as literacy for the next 20 years...

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.

<comment><USER49> Jessica made a really good point, that female founders without any coding knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or her. Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.

<comment><USER48> > Jessica made a really good point, female founders without any coding > knowledge can't even assess whether a coder is any good before hiring him or > her.

If I followed this line of reasoning, then I couldn't hire a lawyer without knowing law, I couldn't hire a marketing person without knowing marketing, I couldn't hire a sales person without knowing sales, and so on and so forth. I would argue that knowledge in law, sales and marketing are far more important to a founder, yet people obsess over coding.

> Getting the fundamentals in an intense summer course will not only enable > someone to develop a prototype on their own, but also assess who is a good > potential hire and who is just good at bullshitting.

I don't think that's true. To _accurately_ judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level. Secondly, it's credentials like work experience and education that you go by when hiring. I'm aware that a lot of software developers are often forced to pass lots of silly programming tests, but that's known to not result in better hiring.

If you are a founder and non-technical, you shouldn't hire a random developer anyway. You should have a technical co-founder that you can trust and you should focus on literally everything else. You'll need to do a thousand things, but writing code isn't really one of them.

<comment><USER50> >To accurately judge someone else's competence, you have to be at least on their level

If you want to be as accurate as possible, then yes. But there is a whole spectrum of accuracy in-between those two options, and being "somewhat ok" (which is what this program, I assume, is supposed to help the attendees achieve) is better than "completely guessing, because I have zero relevant knowledge"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There was a lawsuit in 2018. I'm not sure what the outcome was:

[https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech- scholarships-m...](https://www.thecollegefix.com/women-only-tech-scholarships- man-tax-violate-california-discrimination-laws-lawsuit/)

<comment><USER52> The plaintiffs lost.

> 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...](https://unicourt.com/case/ca-sd-allison-vs-fs-isac-inc-861010)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I am working on an effort to build a course for my younger daughter. Its less ambitious than this, but she is having a lot of fun learning.

I am targeting visual programming with Scratch 3

</comment><comment><USER54> If it's an online programming class, then why not extent the offer to people based outside the US? This US protectionism thing is driving me crazy.

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.

<comment><USER55> It says why in the article. You should read it.

<comment><USER4> Could you please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? They include: _Please don 't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."_

(This is nowhere near the worst guideline violation in this thread, but it's such a precise one.)

<comment><USER55> Are you insinuating I didn't read the guidelines?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm trying to figure out on what side of the debate I fall on this 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.

<comment><USER11> > discouraged from learning, or opportunities denied because of gender.

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".

<comment><USER57> I was once sitting on a plane wearing a shirt branded with a major tech company. The person next to me asked if I was a software engineer and I said yes. They excitedly started telling me about how they were doing all this work to groom their young son (age like 6) to go into tech. This person also had a similarly aged daughter and he was doing none of this for her.

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.

<comment><USER58> > The research community does not have a better explanation for the disparity > than social bias

That's not really true. There is a lot of research showing that men and women have different interests and make different life choices, and that these choices impact career demographics. One of the most well-researched differences is that men tend to be more interested in "things", especially mechanical things, and women tend to be more interested in "people".

Here is a journal article from Frontiers in Psychology that investigates how these differences-in-interest impact STEM field participation: "All STEM fields are not created equal: People and things interests explain gender disparities across STEM fields" (1):

> In the current study, we investigated the gender differences in interests as > an explanation for the differential distribution of women across sub- > disciplines of STEM as well as the overall underrepresentation of women in > STEM fields. (...) We found gender differences in interests to vary largely > by STEM field, with the largest gender differences in interests favoring men > observed in engineering disciplines (d = 0.83–1.21), and in contrast, gender > differences in interests favoring women in social sciences and medical > services (d = −0.33 and −0.40, respectively).

> Importantly, the gender composition (percentages of women) in STEM fields > reflects these gender differences in interests. The patterns of gender > differences in interests and the actual gender composition in STEM fields > were explained by the people-orientation and things-orientation of work > environments, and were not associated with the level of quantitative ability > required. (...)

Some studies show that these things-vs-people differences begin to manifest extremely early in life, before humans could be influenced by social factors. One famous study of this phenomenon is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" (2):

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present > study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of > biological or sociocultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human > neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and > cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking > time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). > Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the > physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger > interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that > sex differences are in part biological in origin.

It is also known that testosterone levels affect decision-making and career choices, and that women tend to be more financially risk-averse than men. Since men's testosterone levels tend to be much higher than women's, and since men are less risk-averse, that results in demographic differences. For an investigation of this, see the article "Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone" (3). For another study on sex and brain differences see (4). There is a lot of research out there exploring the differences between men and women, and how those differences play out in our lives.

Every person should be supported in choosing whatever career interests them, and should not be judged based on demographics. I'm not advocating for any kind of discrimination. I am just observing that even with total equality of opportunity, if there _are_ biological trends in interest differences, then we will see differences in overall job demographics.

(1) [https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00189/full) (2) [https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf](https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf) (3) [https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full](https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full) (4) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/)

<comment><USER59> How does this explain for example, the following two points I will assert:

1\. Software Engineering has become more social over time. The idea of the loner software developer has sort of vanished as open offices become the norm and the collaborative nature of software engineering grows.

2\. Women majors in computer science has dropped like a rock over the past few decades [1]

These two points seem to refute your explanations, considering software development at one time had a signiciant amount of developers that were women. If women were somehow biologically uninclined to be software engineers, the statistics don't seem to follow this train of thought.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> IMHO, this is the right approach to boost the ratio of women in technology. That is, by teaching coding to those women who don't know it.

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.

</comment><comment><USER61> Off topic, but I found this circular reference apt for a post about learning programming, and thus quite amusing too. This post links to "Why I started the Summer Hackers Program" [1] and that post has a link to this one.

[http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the- summer...](http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/why-i-started-the-summer- hackers-program)

</comment><comment><USER62> I can tell you that my female, former classmates that graduated CS are earning way more than the males do. It's trivial to get a male developer with a 5-year degree, but a female one? If media focused on that instead of the negative things, more females would go into the CS-programmes, which would solve this debate once and for all.

</comment><comment><USER63> How are the 9000 dollars given? Because someone might be in the US under certain visa issues. (For example, OPT, F1, etc).

</comment><comment><USER64> I read the blog-post, but it does not make clear to me why Jessica chose to offer the money to _women_ only.

> " 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.

<comment><USER65> > 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 ?

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 - <USER2> 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_

<comment><USER66> That is not enough of a reason. Don't punish me for mistakes done by somebody in the past. Punish me for my mistakes alone.

"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...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-less- gender-equity-have-more-women-in-stem-huh/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I don't think throwing money and free services at women while we sit on our knees begging them to join us the best way to get them interested.

I'm generally against equality of outcome, and support equality of opportunity, which this is not.

</comment><comment><USER68> People are only learning to program because they saw good money, every other person now a days is just learning to program to get into programming job even though they have 0 interest in programming. Due to all this, CS is very saturated, and there will be one day when every other person will be a programmer, jobs will be few so competition will be high but pays will be less. If you were that interested in programming you would have known it when you are choosing your career paths. You saw money, you came in, nothing else. And what's with this women learn to program, I never saw any Men learn to program. They say it like CS schools do not accept girls when they apply, idiots.

</comment><comment><USER69> A great message. I love HN for this very reason. Just today I noticed an article about an Army interrogator turned concientious objector. At the latter portion of my military career I too was an interrogator. I avoided posting because I realized the topic was too hot and likely to become political. It didn't hurt my feelings, I simply moved on with my day.

<comment><USER4> We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465697) and marked it off-topic. Nothing wrong with your comment at all, it just shouldn't be at the top of this thread. Mine shouldn't either, but it's up there for different reasons unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Isn't programming a skill that can be learned alone in a fairly straightforward manner? I mean, most programming languages have extensive documentation, tutorials and so on (at least FOSS dynamical languages like Python, Rust, Perl...). From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to learn.

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.

<comment><USER71> _From my personal experience and what I can guess about hackers I 've talked to for instance on IRC, that's how most guys learned it : the web is full of resources for whoever wants to learn._

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](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?

<comment><USER70> > Men can talk to other men casually and get loads of useful information that > is simply not accessible to me.

That is just hard to understand. If your gender is an issue, why even make it public in the first place? I mean, ever heard of the saying "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." ?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog)

<comment><USER72> Her username here is Doreen, and I assume that's her name. Why should she have to hide it?

If she has to hide her sex in order to get meaningful answers, that right there is a huge impediment us men in tech never have to experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> 'breaking into the startup world' \- sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience?

What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?

<comment><USER49> Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they can't code an initial version of the product.

<comment><USER73> My comment was in regards to a young daughter asking how she could break into the start-up world. The author suggested that coding was a good idea.

The author went on to mention that learning in the span of a summer would help pick a good team member or even build a prototpe him/herself.

We know from both studies and personal experience, that tech interviews just don't work all that well. This is tech interviews done by professional programmers and managers. We don't know how to pick people who are good vs talk like they're good!

This is not anecdotal - it is well known via studies, done by top psychologists.

Given that - how would a summer coding bootcamp help pick a co-founder? It's certainly better than nothing. It is also not clear how much one would benefit from 3 months versus taking one of the many excellent online courses and working at your own pace, such as Harvard's CS50, freely available on youtube.

Regarding building your own prototype after 3 months of programming - I just want to throw my hands up in the air of this wishful thinking that 3 months is anywhere close to enough time. You will need someone who's tech savvy, and then you're right back to the same difficulties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> There are so many women I know that are cognitively over-qualified for the jobs they are in, and kind of stuck because of finances. I am sending this to all of them.

</comment><comment><USER75> I think this is really commendable. When you put your money where your mouth is you really show that you're serious about your values. All the best to the forty future winners of this grant!

<comment><USER76> This is excellent marketing at best, and nothing to do with values. Lambda school is a YC portfolio company, and this program/post has gotten YC and LS oodles of positive press. The gender of this batch is designed to generate positive buzz, there was never any restriction on admissions before this announcement, no bias in getting into LS. So what exactly is this supposed to achieve?

Great marketing, guys and gals!

Cheers

<comment><USER77> Well, that's one way to look at the world.

Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday, so if this was a marketing stunt it was a very inefficient and expensive one.

<comment><USER78> > Lambda School's traffic is down 20% today as compared to yesterday

This seems weird; did you account for the time (since it's only around noon?)

<comment><USER4> Fridays are lower traffic on HN too. Maybe that generalizes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Day Comcast's Data Cap Policy Killed My Internet for 1 Year - brown9-2 http://www.ozymandias.com/the-day-comcast%E2%80%99s-data-cap-policy-killed-my-internet-for-1-year

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always confused by the people who depend on their services for work: "Even worse, today Comcast disconnected me from the ever-evolving cloud services I use each and every day for life and work.", yet don't actually pay the extra money for "business-class" services. If your internet connection is that important to you, isn't it worth the extra $20-40 a month to ensure you don't have this issue, and you (presumably) receive faster/better support when you need it?

<comment><USER2> Whether the extra money is worth it depends on the kind of business that you're running.

Also, for the same price you can (at least here in the netherlands) have a second, mobile internet connection. Which both provides the needed redundancy and can be used on the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The entity that controls content should not be allowed to own the transport. Transport is a Utility. We the ratepayers paid for it and we the Citizens of the towns and cities that the cable or fiber pass thru own the rights-of-way. The local physical plant of the Internet should be owned by the Citizens. The physical plant of the Internet must be open access with no restrictions on content.

A vibrant marketplace will emerge on top of the Internet Physical Plant if these basics are enforced, just like public roads, water and sewer plants enabled life as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The advent of bandwidth caps like Comcast's is vile and indefensible.

I'm all for bandwidth providers coming up with new pricing models if it's what it takes for them to remain profitable and compete with other providers. That's fine. AT&T says I get X GB/mo for $Y/mo, and that's fine. It might be a bad price, but if I don't like it, I can try another wireless carrier (until AT&T buys them all), or I can pay more money for a larger cap, and when I hit the cap, I can pay an absolutely retarded amount of money for more bandwidth. But if I want to use the internet, I can.

Comcast pulled an arbitrary number out of their collective asses, didn't talk to any customers, and have now decided that if your usage (measured in a way they won't disclose, over time periods they won't disclose, and the measurement of which they won't disclose to you) exceeds that arbitrary number, they're free to terminate your access to their service. They offer you no way to compensate them for overages, no way to buy a higher cap, and no way to ensure that you remain below the limit.

If _I_ want to terminate my Comcast service because _I_ feel they have wronged me in some arbitrary way, I must pay fees to terminate my contract, but they're free to do this for any reason they come up with.

Ultimately since every Comcast customer signed 500 pages of inscrutable legalese in order to get internet access (even if there are no other internet providers in their area, they're still free to not sign), Comcast is legally in the right by doing this.

But they're still enormous scumbags and I'll say so to the face of anyone who works there. (I'm sure you're wonderful people, personally.)

<comment><USER5> Regardless, the author broke the rules after being warned and received the punishment which he agreed to. That he should [and inevitably will] get special treatment for a post-hoc "internet access should be a right" post borne of no altruism rubs me the wrong way.</comment></comment>


Ring's work with police lacks solid evidence of reducing crime - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/features/rings-work-with-police-lacks-solid-evidence-of-reducing-crime/ <comment><USER2> " Crime analysts don't doubt that Ring has prevented crimes -- but that's a far different assertion to make than that the doorbells have actually reduced the crime rate, Asher said."

Huh?</comment>


Ask HN: Advice for Canadian looking to move to US for IT work - <AUTHOR>

In a nutshell, I've decided to see just how hard it would be to obtain work south of the border, but I have absolutely no idea where to start. I keep getting told that it's both easy (because of NAFTA), and yet quite difficult (from personal experience trying to obtain work in the US) to be sponsored for employment. So I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for how I should proceed, and if it basically boils down to "no job offer, no chance".<p>Thanks for any response to my inquiry. <comment><USER2> My first advice as a Canada to US immigrant is, don't attempt to come down on a visitor visa or visa waiver (i.e. visa-less entry) and get work. It sounds like this would be obvious to you based on your question, but so many people think they can just adjust their status later once they're in the country, and by and large they are very mistaken.

As a Canadian, you can, however, apply for TN (NAFTA) status at the border.[1][2] You need a prearranged job to do this, though, and it has to fit one of several categories defined by NAFTA[3]. Typically, you must have at least a Bachelor's degree.

I'm a family-based immigrant so I don't know how hard it is to get prearranged work on a visa basis. I do see a lot of postings that require permanent residency or citizenship, though I believe such immigration classification discrimination is illegal.

[1] [http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1274.html](http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1274.html)

[2] [http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=bac00b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=bac00b89284a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD)

[3] [http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in- america/...](http://canada.usembassy.gov/visas/doing-business-in- america/professions-covered-by-nafta.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links, they're pretty much what I was after. Although this line here...

"Typically, you must have at least a Bachelor's degree."

...has me concerned that I'm pretty much screwed (one of those self taught programmers, no college....silly me). I'll see with the consulate this week if computer based positions fall into that requirement this week.

<comment><USER3> This is silly. Why would you go ask a consulate when this info has been on the web for ages. When I got a TN visa in 1997, all the info needed was on the US embassy's website including detailed lists of requirements for the different classes of jobs covered under NAFTA. Many countries including Canada, discourage people from going to the consulate or embassy just to ask questions. The guards won't let you in, and they refer you to a 900 number where you pay a few dollars per minute to talk. Do your research online. In general, the embassy will publish an application form (PDF), a guide to filling it out, a FAQ and often a tool for determining eligibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Why would you go ask a consulate when this info has been on the web for ages."

Well my thinking at the time was because I found their website (at the time) to be a maze of legaleze and the consulate was two blocks away from my current workplace, while the closest embassy is a five hour drive away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have a bachelors degree, TN for Canadians is easy. If not, I don't have any good suggestions. If you are rolling in money, you can get an investor visa. I'm not sure but the requirements for that are steep - million bucks invested, perhaps. There is also the H1B visa but the lack of a degree will hurt. Finally, there is this thing called the green card lottery. I've met two people who actually won that thing - while the odds aren't something to bank on, they are definitely far better than winning the lotto. It does matter where you are born for the purposes of the lottery so do your research.

One final note: if you have significant family/friends in Canada and are close to them, think very hard about moving south. I put career first when I was younger ... wish someone had told me that nearness to the people you love should be a critical factor in the place where you live.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya the H1B has pretty much been crossed off my list for those reasons. I think I looked into the Green card lotto, and if I recall right being from Canada, I'm at the back of the bus on that, but I'll have to look into it again.

As for family/friends, I get where your'e coming from on that. I learned it quickly when I lived out in Charlottetown, PEI for a few years. That being said, I have a decent base of friends in the US, mainly in the Philadelphia area which is where I've been mostly looking for work (most PA companies usually find my resume in their inbox soon after posting if I have the qualifications).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's your passion? \- south-ness of the border? \- great job? \- nice pay?

Pick ONE (not two or three)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I had to pick just one, this posting wouldn't have been made, because I can already get that here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not work remotely?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried that for the last few years. Most remote places are A) Based in the US and b) have the cavaet of "Remote....if you're in the US" as part of their job ad. There are exceptions (deviantart instantly comes to mind), but they are uncommon, and remote positions from Canadian based companies are as rare as hen's teeth.

<comment><USER6> Flat out ridiculous for an industry dealing in 1's and 0's isn't it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Your'e preaching to the choir on that one. The amount of companies I've seen posting the same job over and over again up here because they aren't in a major market and won't accept remote developers makes you wonder about their business processes....or if they're still thinking business computing is stuck in the 1980's.

<comment><USER6> I have actually managed to find some remote contracts - it's hard and I have not got a pipeline yet. But it is possible - don't think that jobs that are advertised on jobsites are the only thing. Try this: set up canadiancreed.com, put that you make Canadian xxx software for Canadian businesses.

Attack chambers of commerce, other digital agencies. The work is out there.

(In not sure what xxx is for your line of work or experience - pick something you like:-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


After Last Couple of Weeks, It's Clear There Is Big Opportunity In The API Space - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apievangelist.com/2013/04/25/after-last-couple-of-weeks,-its-clear-there-is-big-opportunity-in-api-the-space/

<comment><AUTHOR> You really should bear in mind the author's disclosure at the bottom of the article ;)

Disclosure: I work for 3scale.</comment>


Ask HN: Any ideas for a Hackathon? - <AUTHOR>

I'll be participating in a Hackathon next week. What are some cool ideas that could be implemented? I want to hack on something which is usable in real life. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Here are some ideas: [https://medium.com/design- startups/49acac7c3405](https://medium.com/design-startups/49acac7c3405) [http://blog.anujkumar.com/post/27913522655/please-steal- my-s...](http://blog.anujkumar.com/post/27913522655/please-steal-my-startup- ideas)</comment>


OpenDNS blocked by Verizon Wireless - <AUTHOR> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/OpenDNS-Were-Being-Blocked-By-Verizon-Wireless-111530

<comment><USER2> This is incorrect, as posted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946539></comment>


An isomorphic web framework built on top of Node.js, AngularJS, PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://nodeonfire.org/

<comment><USER2> Man, there are so many choices for things like this these days. Meteor is kinda my go-to, but this does look pretty nifty. That said, I think I'm better of sticking with what I know while it's still in it's infancy than jumping from stack to stack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Meteor is great, too. If you're looking for an integrated A/B testing module or 1st party PostgreSQL support, you should have a look at Node on Fire.</comment></comment>


'Double' (YC S12) Turns the iPad Into a Telepresence Robot - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/double-turns-the-ipad-into-a-telepresence-robot/?hp&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I met the double guys at an event earlier in the summer. They had just been accepted into YC and had brought one of their original prototypes to the party and were driving it around.

It was a prototype, with a rough cut aluminum skeleton and questionable balance, but it was still a goddamn iPad segway, and they were driving it around a crowded space talking to people through the camera. It was awesome.

I can't speak to how big the telepresence market is, or how the price point compares, but I wish these guys the best of luck, because while I'm sitting at my desk coding another web application, these guys are building freaking robots.

</comment><comment><USER3> The quality of companies in this batch of YC is mind blowing. I know PG says the quality increases with each batch, but from what I've seen thus far, YC S12 seems noticeably more impressive.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really awesome.

However, I wonder if this would be a problem when working with Apple:

Apps that use location-based APIs for automatic or autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or other devices will be rejected

Apps that use location-based APIs for dispatch, fleet management, or emergency services will be rejected

(See also: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199241/has-apple- provide...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9199241/has-apple-provide- reasoning-for-their-location-based-api-restrictions))

Just trying to think of the worst-case scenario, but it wouldn't be hard to attach a (remote-controlled?) weapon to this device.

<comment><USER5> "Apps that use location-based APIs for dispatch, fleet management, or emergency services will be rejected"

Sounds to me like that would get Uber rejected?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dread the day I go to an art gallery and have to jockey for postion amongst a bunch of iPads on segways.

<comment><USER7> Thankfully they surely cannot weigh that much. I wonder what they would do if people got in the habit of picking them up and moving them out of the way.

<comment><USER8> Also: no nerves, so you could do all _sorts_ of stuff to them without them noticing... got a wrench? remove their wheels...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really awesome to see such an awesome use of OpenTok (<http://www.tokbox.com/>)

</comment><comment><USER10> Given the huge need for engineers in SV, I'm curious as to how well one of these robots would allow someone remotely to participate in our team's day-to- day interactions. Particularly pair programming..

I'm not $2,000+ curious, but still has me wondering..

<comment><USER11> And why that would be better to use a strange moving machine rather than usual video conferencing that only requires a monitor/projector and simple camera.

<comment><USER12> I think I got the answer: because you don't have to schedule the conference. This is amazing imho.

<comment><USER13> Last Friday I used the Double to sit at the lunch table with the team in San Francisco (I'm in New York). Lunch is not something the team is inclined to open up a regular videocon session on, but lunch conversation is something I miss out a lot on from working remotely. People talk about stuff (work and non work related) a lot more candidly at the lunch table than in conference rooms. There were a lot of nervous giggles and "that's creepy" remarks but I think its just about getting used to the form.

<comment><USER12> Sincerely amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anybody used a telepresence robot? I'm wondering what the experience is like in real life.

<comment><USER15> Until recently you could do it on the Anybots website. It's like a video call mixed with an R/C robot: you can really explore spaces and interact with people.

However, talking with a telepresence robot from the other side is a completely different experience. You get a terrific sense of being with another entity. It's fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, the promo video is one of the nicest I've seen since Apple and Square. Would love to know who did it for you guys?

Really awesome idea. I assume the robot must be connected on WiFi to move and function?

<comment><USER17> The video was made by our friends over at Mission Control Media: <http://missioncm.com>. Talk to Greg and Ken, they're awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I want to slap a Kinect on it and turn it into a poor-man's (well, relatively) Ava: <http://www.irobot.com/ava/>

</comment><comment><USER19> Previous discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379769>

</comment><comment><USER10> >Double recharges to full capacity in about 2 hours with the provided AC to DC wall adapter.

So someone at the physical location has to plug the robot back in to charge? Doesn't it make more sense to have a docking station so that you can simply drive the robot into a position where it can charge itself?

<comment><USER10> Just saw this tweet :

>No charging dock yet, and the iPad talks over bluetooth, so it will need separate charging. Stuff is in the works, stay tuned!

<comment><USER20> Yeah the lack of a story for how to charge the thing without someone nearby is a deal breaker for a lot of use cases. If they sort that out reasonably I can see a few places I've worked at picking up some of these for remote teams.

<comment><USER10> Agree. That's the use case that I have in mind as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've preordered one, and am looking forward to ordering more.

As a longtime follower of this space, this price point enables many more possibilities than previous robots, and using off-the-shelf computing hardware is the right solution.

</comment><comment><USER21> again, tokbox+robot=AWESOME.

I built something like this 2010 at iOSDevCamp out of legos after the ipad came out. :-) <http://zbowling.github.com/NXTRover/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Love that so many startups are looking at hardware innovation - like this, Square, Ouya, Pebble etc. Even if this isn't a mass-market product in it's own right - only good things can come from building it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Inspired by Big Bang Theory? Pretty sure it'll get the same reaction at first...

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bIoeBpSeU4>

<comment><USER24> The one in Big Bang Theory is Texai from Willow Garage I think, <http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/texai/overview> and has been around from quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seemed pretty dumb until I watched the video. The highlighted art gallery use-case is very, very weak and contrived in my opinion.

Definitely a killer product though. There are lots of very serious potential uses for something like this and it looks to be executed very well.

<comment><USER26> Agree about the art-gallery use case, and as a guy that has been involved in a lot of product companies I think it's important that the initial demo videos show solutions to real problems.

If your initial launch marketing positions the unit as some esoteric solution to a non-problem (especially if it's for a "rich persons" non-problem), people seem more apt to forget about the product overall. Show some demo videos of it being used for REAL applications, and there is a greater chance people will remember it and/or aspire to wanting one (which helps keep you stuck in their subconscious). Nobody is going to go to work and say "did you hear about that robot you can use to browse art galleries remotely?", but they will say "did you hear about that robot that you can use to go grocery shopping?" (or something similar, I don't have a better example because I can't really think of a good use for a telepresence robot, but that's just me).</comment></comment>


Halogy: New startup for publishing multiple websites easily, need your thoughts. - <AUTHOR> http://www.halogy.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Would appreciate your feedback on this.

Do you get the concept? Does it makes sense? Is the pricing appealing and does it seem reasonable?

What reservations would you have to using a service like this?

Thanks</comment>


SCO v. IBM Is Officially Reopened - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2013061516065416

<comment><USER2> Okay, I read this article and what of the comments I could stomach with the awful commenting system on there and I guess it's just that I've tried to flush this entire thing from my mind after spending years of concern about it. I understand that the judge decided to allow a reopening of certain aspects of the case v. IBM because he decided it was improperly closed.

But from what I understood, the decision v. Novell essentially stripped SCO of any claims of copyright to Unix. Now I know the IBM lawsuit revolved around some slightly different issues from the Novell one, but if SCO has no copyright claims, how is it even paying counsel to sue someone?

Is this just a leftover pile of money that's literally doing nothing but funding a series of doomed lawsuits?

I understand from a strictly legal standpoint they are allowed to go on with certain claims but from a practical standpoint, I just don't get it. If there is a leftover pile of money, wouldn't it be smarter to actually, you know, invest this in creating an actual business rather than have it be a lawyer welfare fund?

<comment><USER3> The company is bankrupt. Their only remaining asset of note is this lawsuit. As I understand it, the judge is letting this lawsuit go forward in the hope of extracting enough money to pay off the creditors more fully than they otherwise could.

So yeah, it is a pile of leftover money that is pursuing the lawsuit to the bitter end prior to handing back what little remains to the various creditors.

<comment><USER4> Realistically, aren't they only going to rack up more debt that they will have to pay off, in the form of lawyer fees?

<comment><USER3> I think that they can't rack up debt because nobody in their right minds will lend them money. They will just pay less to existing creditors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a waste of court resources.

</comment><comment><USER6> Okay, time for a serious question.

IBM has money, and SCO's lawyers gave them a fee cap. So this endless litigation is not wrecking anyone's life. Mostly it's just an annoyance to IBM and to SCO's lawyers.

But suppose it weren't IBM. Suppose SCO were suing me. Or you. Being hounded for over a decade by the ghost of a company, which remains in existence _solely for the purpose of suing you_ sounds horrible. And since I/you may very well have done nothing wrong, this is an unacceptable situation.

Now, I would hope that a good judge would realize this. Just about all the articles I've read concerning this case are about the court asking SCO to clarify something. And, indeed, here we read:

> So it's going to go like this:

> 1\. SCO must file a brief statement identifying the claims ....

So I would imagine that our hypothetical good judge would stick up for me/you by simply saying to SCO, "You need to make a clear statement about what you are claiming, and we're not going to waste any more time with you until you do."

But then I wonder why the judge couldn't simply have done that in this case, too -- a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clearly the only sensible thing to do at this point is for the court to grant SCO title to Blackacre in lieu of economic damages.

</comment><comment><USER8> SCO v. IBM, aka "The Thing That Wouldn't Die"

</comment><comment><USER9> _sigh_

Further dragging through the mud of the name of a once great company.</comment>


Throwing cats out of windows - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3974077/throwing-cats-out-of-windows <comment><USER2> This, of course, is a popular interview question, albeit asked with eggs (or bowling balls) instead of cats. Here's a discussion and a solution: [http://20bits.com/articles/interview-questions-two- bowling-b...](http://20bits.com/articles/interview-questions-two-bowling- balls/). I think for m balls and N floors, the number of steps is O(N^(1/m)).

<comment><USER3> _I think for m balls and N floors, the number of steps is O(N^(1/m))._

Almost right. It's O(m N^(1/m)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure if it's interesting, funny, or sad, that almost all of the responses were talking about the cats, and how they do better with higher falls, and almost none talked about the actual question.

<comment><USER5> A lot of people don't seem to grasp the concept of assuming certain things for the sake of exploring a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Problems like these are good for new programmers to think while keeping abstract thought farther away.

Using cats rather than eggs or dogs paints a story that's fun to imagine. I could also ask the question by saying: there is an integer to find and any integer guessed above this removes one chance

I wonder how people might go about constructing their answer if they worry with respect to the cats lives as compared to the abstract version

</comment><comment><USER3> My favourite version of this problem involves 4 eggs and a 10^6 floor space elevator. It's small enough to figure out on a whiteboard, but large enough that you can't do it without figuring out the pattern.

<comment><USER7> The egg will break by the 2nd floor :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The cat can survive a fall out of a low story window, but will die if thrown from a high floor._

This is a faulty postulate that cannot be overcome by even the most rigorous math in the world.

Although controlled studies have not been done (fortunately!), case statistics assembled by New York City veterinarians suggest that in many cases, falls from higher floors may actually be _more_ survivable. One theory is that cats have more time to right themselves before reaching terminal velocity.

<http://www.pets.ca/cats/articles/cat-jumps-off-building/>

<comment><USER9> Of course, the problem with the question is that the OP chose cats, as if it's humerous to think of throwing a cat out of a high window. The problem at its core is the relationship between height, accelleration, and materials. What is the necessary height for a given material to reach a sufficient velocity to cause it to fail upon impacting the ground?

<comment><USER8> I realize that using eggs instead of cats probably would have been more applicable to this problem. But OP inadvertently demonstrated another problem: proofs built upon flawed postulates are not only flawed themselves, but a colossal waste of time. I wonder how many scientists and engineers in the real world are spending so much time calculating the trees that they've lost sight of the forest. Probably more than most people think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perfect situation to drop "defenestration". Wasted opportunity.</comment>


What we look for when we hire designers at Intercom - <AUTHOR> https://www.intercom.com/blog/hiring-designers-at-intercom/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reasonable people can disagree about how to do this best, so I'd be curious to hear any feedback you have. In our case, we're trying to be as open, transparent, and straightforward about what we look for as we can.</comment>