Althouse: "It was largely the men of the class who became the true creators, founding companies that changed behavior around the world and using the proceeds to fund new projects that extended their influence."

December 23, 2014

"It was largely the men of the class who became the true creators, founding companies that changed behavior around the world and using the proceeds to fund new projects that extended their influence."

"Some of the women did well in technology, working at Google or Apple or hopping from one start-up adventure to the next. Few of them described experiencing the kinds of workplace abuses that have regularly cropped up among women in Silicon Valley."

From Jodie Kantor's NYT article "A Brand New World In Which Men Ruled/Instead of narrowing gender gaps, the technology industry created vast new ones for Stanford University’s pioneering class of 1994."

30 comments:

David said...: Well, there was a war on, and the men volunteered for the war.; 12/23/14, 9:09 AM
David said...: Having already commented, I'm starting to read the article. It has some gems.

There were just a handful of women at The Review, and some were peeling away. “I didn’t think I could stand up” to Mr. Sacks, Samantha Hamlin, formerly Samantha Martinez-Colson, said in an interview, adding that as a Latina she found the social penalty for being a writer there to be too high.

The author just lets that drop without comment. Pardon me for drawing conclusions.; 12/23/14, 9:18 AM
David said...: It's an interesting article. I may even read it twice.

Have already sent it to my 12 year old granddaughter, and to her aunt, who works in tech for Peter Thiel. Should be fun.; 12/23/14, 9:21 AM
khesanh0802 said...: I can't read it beyond the intro. Don't women ever get tired of reading whinny writing about themselves? Whinging (as the Brits say) gets you nowhere.

In a competitive world there are going to be winners and losers regardless of gender. The winners are going to be few, the losers many. I always told my kids that my lesson in life was that: no matter how good they were, at some point they were going to run into someone who was better, be prepared to accept it and move on.; 12/23/14, 9:21 AM
Anonymous said...: Well, we know the solution to this problem: More activism, more articles, more laws, and more equality!; 12/23/14, 9:26 AM
David said...: Another one:

Ms. DiLullo blew past those limits; at 24, she threw herself into an idea for an online gift registry. When she and her business partner met with one venture capitalist, he looked at them and said, “I see the pretty girls. Beyond the pretty girls, what do you have for me?” They ignored the slight, took his money and dropped out of Stanford Business School to start their company

The author takes that as a slight. DiLullo made it into an invitation. Vive la difference!; 12/23/14, 9:28 AM
David said...: Actually, the article is not whiny. It's descriptive. I think she actually made it more effective by passing up on making the points that I draw from some of the quotes I've posted. It's quite a good article. It lets you draw your own conclusions. It's not a call for "activism" except for an implicit call for females to be more active on their own behalf.; 12/23/14, 9:38 AM
Laslo Spatula said...: Women even make the man responsible for thewoman's lack of an orgasm. It all extrapolates from there.

I am Laslo.; 12/23/14, 9:41 AM
madAsHell said...: Women even make the man responsible for thewoman's lack of an orgasm.

....and what exactly is your job?; 12/23/14, 9:56 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: So the world is to be judged by how well upper-middle-class women feel it has served them.; 12/23/14, 10:12 AM
mccullough said...: I graduated college in 1994. Congrats to these Stanford grads. I was too into baseball to even notice the growth of the Internet. I think I sent and received fewer than a dozen emails in college.; 12/23/14, 10:28 AM
Anonymous said...: This anecdote is just a little too perfect to be believable:

Ms. DiLullo arrived as the beneficiary of another aspect of Stanford’s diversity drive, an effort to recruit students who were less privileged. In her first week, she ran into the valedictorian of her high school class, who was so surprised to see her that she blurted out, “You have got to be kidding me.”

This is straight out of "Legally Blonde." High school kids going to top schools know where other kids in their class are going to college. When I seen these too perfect anecdotes, I suspect the entire article.; 12/23/14, 11:03 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: KheSan, you're right about all but one thing; the winners don't necessarily outnumber the losers. If you count only enormous success as "Winning", then you're correct. If making a decent, stable living in at least the middle to upper-middle class counts as "Winning", then i beliive you'll find many more winners than losers.; 12/23/14, 11:15 AM
khesanh0802 said...: @David;

Maybe I have just gotten tired of the general whininess. I'll have to force myself to read the whole article!; 12/23/14, 11:16 AM
khesanh0802 said...: @kyzernick

I think that your point is the one I tried to make to my kids ( and myself!) I agree with you wholeheartedly that winning has a much broader definition than whether you had a successful IPO or not.; 12/23/14, 11:20 AM
Steve M. Galbraith said...: I'd like to read one story about something that doesn't have to involve gender disparity or women's frustrations.

We now know what would happen if women shared power with men or had positions of power comparable to men.

We wouldn't be any better and we'd spend half our time listening to complaints.

Men have our faults, boy do we, but we never whine like this. Just do the damned job, stick to it, and get at it.; 12/23/14, 11:37 AM
MadisonMan said...: The underlying assumption in the article is that to succeed one must be rich.

Why?; 12/23/14, 11:45 AM
Jupiter said...: The first thing I notice about all of these extremely wealthy and successful people is that none of them are me. Then I take a broader view, and note that none of them are related to me. Finally, none of them are friends of mine. So, there is no good news here for me. Too bad.

Am I supposed to be delighted that they are male, and I am too? Why would that delight me? What kind of idiot sees the world in terms of how the other members of his sex are doing, relative to members of the opposite sex? Am I supposed to be upset because an unrepresentatively large proportion of these guys are homosexual? Is that something that requires fixing?; 12/23/14, 12:06 PM
Henry said...: David wrote: Actually, the article is not whiny. It's descriptive.

That is true, but the article is a weird read. Most of it is straight reporting, with the gender gap issue awkwardly framed around it.

There's an excess of attention spent on David Sacks' politics, which has nothing to do with why (some, few) Stanford Men of 1994 were successful entrepreneurs vs (none, mostly) Stanford Women of 1994.

The reporting is interesting. The analysis is incoherent.; 12/23/14, 12:17 PM
libertariansafetyguy said...: Testosterone helps in the hunting world. And Silicon Valley was a target rich environment for smart, ambitious men.; 12/23/14, 12:30 PM
Skyler said...: And none admitted that the man in the cubicle next to them did all the design work for them, or told them what managerial decisions were best. And all they had to do was a little flirting.; 12/23/14, 1:16 PM
Left Bank of the Charles said...: "Correction: December 23, 2014

An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that David Sacks was in a fraternity at Stanford. He was not."; 12/23/14, 1:47 PM
Alex said...: Jupiter said...
The first thing I notice about all of these extremely wealthy and successful people is that none of them are me. Then I take a broader view, and note that none of them are related to me. Finally, none of them are friends of mine. So, there is no good news here for me. Too bad.

Am I supposed to be delighted that they are male, and I am too? Why would that delight me? What kind of idiot sees the world in terms of how the other members of his sex are doing, relative to members of the opposite sex? Am I supposed to be upset because an unrepresentatively large proportion of these guys are homosexual? Is that something that requires fixing?

The logical conclusion is you should be filled with burning envy, join up with the Communist Party USA and agitate for the overthrow of the capitalist system comrade.; 12/23/14, 2:33 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I'm in the middle of reading this and I'm thinking, "What is this Stella & Dot? I've never heard of it." So I look it up, and it's an MLM. My perspective on this aspect of the story changes.; 12/23/14, 2:35 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/23/14, 2:53 PM
Anonymous said...: The women I know founded their own companies and were/are successful, not on the level of Apple and Facebook, but still.

The winnowing process starts early, however, and there is def a gender bias. It can be as innocuous as there not being as many fellow women who are solidly focused on founding their own companies to join with, making communication less fraught, and ensuring a lack of bias. Bad experiences early on can completely jack your trajectory, so that when kid time comes around it suddenly seems like the best choice to step off - different gauntlet with different temptations and traps.

It may actually be worse now than in the previous generations due to the whole 24/7 porn/gamer culture. Much different than before, but I can't say since it is not my world. I assume the younger gen will have the capacities to deal with it.; 12/23/14, 2:54 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Choosing home life over work is a personal choice, not a cultural bias. Who can possibly judge that the choice of a man or woman to prioritize family over career is wrong? Those guys on the board aren't going to be taking care of you when you are old. They don't love you.
The practice of open gender discrimination is carried out by the State when it automatically places children of divorce with the mother rather than the father. That's one of the few things that feminists don't whine about.; 12/23/14, 7:02 PM
Joanne Jacobs said...: The entrepreneurial woman started at community college, then transferred to Stanford. That's why her ex-high school classmate was surprised to see her there.

The article said the male grads were risk takers, while the sci-tech women chose the less risky path of medical school. And some stepped down their work commitment to raise kids. Now that their kids are older, some are going into entrepreneurial ventures.; 12/23/14, 7:12 PM
Joe said...: "Few of them described experiencing the kinds of workplace abuses that have regularly cropped up among women in Silicon Valley."

Is is possible that the claimed abuses are a wee bit exaggerated in kind and frequency?

Rhetorical question.

One thing I've observed is that when are treated like shit, they typically curse, perhaps get in a fight, but then suck it up and go on. A woman gets treated EXACTLY the same way and it's harassment, abuse and discrimination. Women, in general, need to realize that to become an executive, you usually have to be a bit (or a lot) of an asshole--get over it.; 12/23/14, 10:06 PM
cubanbob said...: I was using computers and email and chatting on BB and commenting in newsgroups in 1994 and it didn't occur to me to figure some great internet thing and make a billion bucks. Does that make me one of the woman of Stanford 94?; 12/24/14, 12:07 AM