> The founder's wife story also reminds me of episodes I've heard involving the wife cabal. It's nothing as sinister as the GitHub story, but I see a lot of the same structural issues reflected in these telling anecdotes.
If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach. If you are a man, chances are your wife does more to build the business than you ever do.
I see nothing wrong with the involvement of founders' wives in the business.
> The lack of an overt chain of command means that power asserts itself covertly.
Thats the whole point of bossless environments and both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.
> In both cases the companies also boast a level of success that makes it hard for them to evaluate whether elements of their company culture is detrimental to their continued development at this stage of their existence.
I don't think any company can evaluate that. Culture arises from the grass roots and that means that the floor employees are the ones who ultimately decide company culture.
> I'm waiting for a hip rebranding of the term 'management' once these no-management companies realize they have issues that cannot be resolved by hiring supposedly perfect people.
I don't understand why saying, "people will call me sexist for this" immediately validates your statement as "not intended to be sexist".
>"If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach."
It's pretty clearly a sexist statement is it not? Am I confused about what makes a statement sexist?
Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife and establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience?
>"If you are a man, chances are your wife does more to build the business than you ever do."
And this one doesn't even really make sense(as in where are you pulling this random ass statement from), not to mention stating it as, "If you are a founder, chances are your spouse does more to build the business than you ever do." feels literally 10x better to me(even if it still sounds false). Even the punctuation in that sentence makes the word man stand out when it could have easily been written without said punctuation.(well without the comma at least :-p ).
I realize this is super overly sensitive by the way. I normally wouldn't comment, I had already posted "this post really bothers me somehow" though, and felt an explanation was warranted. Definitely curious if anyone else felt the same.
Lastly, I'm a 21 year old white male; the only adversity I've ever faced is being called a ginger, so don't think this is coming from a longstanding feminist, just a human.
To be honest, I am living in a very different culture now from the US culture where social gender roles are more significant but also somewhat flexible. I do expect the post to bother Americans because it goes against what I call the myth of interchangeability, the idea that gender equality necessarily reduces to the idea that the sexes are interchangeable. I don't believe this and I think that equality has to be more substantive than this because interchangeability tends to mean that a male-normative model gives you hidden sexism. Exhibit A is Marissa Mayer's maternity leave duration. There is nothing equal about that.
The point is that when you look cross-culturally and cross-historically, where you don't have women certain things like rule of law don't happen (you see this develop in the American West for example as gender rates stopped being so lopsided).
I would suggest that recognizing that the genders do have differences in terms of social aptitudes and needs, and different positions relative to life choices is the first step in reducing the male-normative view on our economic model (i.e. "if you work like a man, and wait to have kids like a man, you will get paid like a man").
> the myth of interchangeability, the idea that gender equality necessarily reduces to the idea that the sexes are interchangeable.
This always drove me insane - people seem to confuse value equality/congruence and strict identicality. The latter seems to either try to create a female default and punish men for not living up to it, or create some weird fuzzy default that nobody really fits comfortably.
What we want is to say that women are as valuable as men, and then let individuals figure out who they want to be.
The answer isn't to change the (currently relatively male-normative) norm, it's to defenstrate the idea that having a norm in the first place is a remotely good idea.
> This always drove me insane - people seem to confuse value equality/congruence and strict identicality. The latter seems to either try to create a female default and punish men for not living up to it, or create some weird fuzzy default that nobody really fits comfortably.
It creates a female default and punishes men for not living up to it in some areas (like public school in the US), but it creates a male default and punishes women for not living up to it in other areas (academic careers in life sciences, the job market, etc).
> The answer isn't to change the (currently relatively male-normative) norm, it's to defenstrate the idea that having a norm in the first place is a remotely good idea.
Agreed.
> What we want is to say that women are as valuable as men, and then let individuals figure out who they want to be.
Agreed here too. The question then is, how we address this.
> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife
Objectify is a really overused term that has lost all relevant meaning. How can saying that someone is better than you at something possibly objectify that person? Maybe I'm overly sensible as well, but it's really sad that this is where PC has led us.
I think it might bother you because the author assumes that's his own inability to navigate complex social relationships is innate to his maleness. In fact, many men are adept at understanding social and emotional subtexts very well. There's no magnitude-order difference in innate ability as described, or if there is, it's not a permanent, unlearnable gulf.
This comment bothered me because OP is fetishizing and tokenizing women in a way that purports to be admiring and supportive of them. In fact, he simply has weak social skills; for example, this post.
See, the problem is that the people who complain about this are also the ones who say it's valuable to add women to a group of men (or indeed the reverse), because it results in more balanced decision making.
It can't be both. Either men or women are (as groups, i.e. averages) innately differ on the social vs analytical axis, and diversity is a net plus, or gender is entirely socially constructed, and adding women to a group shouldn't do anything in aggregate.
Studies point to the former rather than the latter.
Stupid analogy: I hate it that only tall people seem to design store displays of pants. Remarkably, tall people don't seem to notice that putting the small sizes on the top shelves and the larger sizes lower does not make sense. It's because they have a different experience of reaching for things on shelves. Height diversity, though, makes for a better user experience.
It is true in my stupid analogy that tall people and short people do have genetic differences, as on average they innately differ in height. But it is not their innate genetic traits that makes these tall people ignorant both on the social and analytical axes when designing store displays.
There's a big difference between "on average, women are more socially adept while men are more mathematically adept" and "women socially understand things at a level most men will never achieve". The former is a statement about averages; the latter is a statement about absolutes.
It's okay to make generalizations based on imperfect correlates - like gender - as long as you understand they're generalizations, and are open to revising your judgment if new, more specific information appears. The comment that sparked this thread didn't evidence any of that understanding.
You have a weird definition of 'innate'. Socially constructed effects are still effects. You still want a mix of people that have different traits and skills, even if they have nothing to do with biology.
So your demand of advocates of inclusiveness is to either a) concede that their support for female participation stems from a belief in the existence of a sensory mode or organ which only females have; or b) concede that women have nothing to offer which cannot be replicated by men and therefore there is no need to include them?
You can't see a third possibility in between those two?
> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife and establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience?
Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this? Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?
Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.
>Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Completely true, valid point.
>Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this?
I would argue that there is something ethically wrong with this. Take this statement:
>" women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach."
Yeah, on it's face it's a compliment(I guess?), but all it really serves to do, in this context,(for me, might read totally different to you) is illustrate the differences between the two sexes. Where's any evidence that his assertion is true?
Anecdotal evidence is by definition flawed. I don't really understand where you're failing to see the potential for harm in this.
> Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?
Do you have a source stating that females raised in the same environment as males exhibited a higher level of social complexity? Because, yes, I would like to see that before changing my worldview based upon this persons statement.
>Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.
Not at all; what I find offensive is when people try to extrapolate meaning and form social constructs based upon differences that often aren't conclusively proven or even relevant.
When I'm talking about these differences I don't mean boy-penis girl-vagina, I mean boy-brave/courageous/smart girl-cute/supportive/geeky.
In my opinion these social constructs are already so ingrained in our society that this will be just as long and drawn out a problem as racism. I mean just define Masculine and Feminine in your head.
I'm not trying to make a point here, or to white-knight, my original response was just how that post genuinely made me feel, I didn't like it.
This study is so flawed as to be scientifically worthless.
The experimenter who was interacting with the babies and measuring the time they spent staring at faces knew the gender of each baby - in other words, it wasn't double blind. This is a well known recipe for allowing the experimenter's bias to influence their recording of the results. This is just one of several basic flaws in the study; see the analysis starting on page 113 of Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender."
"Delusions of Gender" has lots of similar analyses of the research "proving" innate gender differences. The takedown of Louann Brizendine's references starting on page 158 and the one about the frozen salmon MRIs on page 150 are particularly hilarious. One example:
"Casually, Brizendine notes, 'All of the therapists who showed these responses happened to be women.' For some reason, she fails to mention that this is because only female therapists, selected from phone directories, happened to be recruited for the study."
Not being double blind doesn't make it scientifically worthless.
Not does it invalidate male/female roles being consistent across over 200 cultures.
If you accept that men build muscle different from women, and have different hormones, could you not also accept that the differences in gray/white matter proportions, size etc are not 'cultural'?
> Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Women objectification is about treating a woman like an object, a belonging, a resource.
As it turns out, the person writing the parent comment defined a founder's wife as "one of your most valuable business resources". That person should have said, "some of your most valuable business insights will come from your wife". It wouldn't be objectification, but it would still establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience.
Assuming unproven differences between the sexes to be true has always been ethically borderline from a scientific perspective. From a social perspective, it artificially deters persons of each sex from doing something which is then implicitly considered "unnatural" for them.
Things look different removed from context. In this case, the relevant context is the history of marriage as a property agreement arranged between the husband and the father of the bride.
There are plenty of scientifically well-documented cognitive differences between men and women, though the OP doesn't sound informed on them, and yes it is considered impolite to know about them if you're not working in a psychological research lab.
> If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife.
Um, I'd say that your spouse (of whichever gender) is one of your most valuable business resources, period - if they're someone who can hear your side of the story who aren't actually involved in the situation and someone who knows you better than you know yourself.
But that person should never proceed to involve themselves in your business situation, unless your colleagues approve of their involvement. That appears to be the issue here.
If your spouse is helping contribute to the business on that level, you should hire them. Otherwise you're really doing a disservice to everyone by having your spouse work without compensation or recognition.
"I see nothing wrong with the involvement of founders' wives in the business"
This is nuts.
If person A works at a company then obviously their significant other (male or female) will likely talk with them about work situations and that may be more or less helpful to A and the company. But the idea that as a general rule a female significant other's contribution will be so significant just by virtue of the "level of complexity" of the "social thinking" is just absurd.
therom reading the article, I got the vibe that the wife may have felt innatelyterritoriallyly?) threatened by the thought of a (pretty) female in the company getting close with her founder husband in a more intimate, rather than professional, typofof way. Thoughts?
If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife.
If you are a male founder, you might not be married and you might not be straight. Also, one way to kill romance is to tell your significant other that they are your most valuable business resource.
>> The lack of an overt chain of command means that power asserts itself covertly.
> Thats the whole point of bossless environments and both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.
What, their point is to encourage death-match power struggles? And that's their strength?
In nature, the fittest survive, but that's because nature is cruel (indifferent, actually). But a business must nurture its employees and make them feel safe – not send them into a battlefield.
If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach. If you are a man, chances are your wife does more to build the business than you ever do.
I've definitely seen this in the past. At startups where I've worked or friends have worked, the founder's wives have played important support roles in ways that are easy to observe but hard to quantify.
When one spouse is a startup founder, then it's a true "family effort" whether the other spouse likes it or not. And if it's "or not" ... well, then, that substantially hinders the chances of success.
Getting outside counsel on your business decisions is one thing, but either dispatching an outsider to internal business affairs as your hatchetperson or having them take it upon themselves to do so is not good business. As seen in Exhibit A, the original article.
I guess I'm too jaded, but I question getting married. If
you hit the lottery and you become a successful Founder, your wife will own 1/2 of all those aching hours sitting
in front of that screen. If she's the type of chick that
will stick with you when you loose everything and work
the paint booth at HD, by all means marry her, but those
women just don't exist anymore. Women look at men so
differently than we judge them--it's not worth taking a chance.
I seriously hope you consider rethinking this position. There are a tremendous number of incredible women in the world, and most of them are not looking for a sugar daddy. Many women also work hard for their careers, passions, or some combination of both, and understand that both success and failure happen.
I will also say that in many instances, if you have this opinion about women (or any group of persons), it's probably somewhat evident in your interactions with them, and you may not be treated quite as well as you would be otherwise. This can be self-reinforcing, but unfortunately the responsibility lies with you to pull yourself out of it and get some perspective.
If you don't, well, get a strong pre-nup, I guess, or stay single forever.
What advantages would marriage provide over a non-legal partnership? The latter seems to carry all of the benefits of marriage without any of the risks.
If one person is drawing a paycheck and another is supporting them in that role, then the supporter is putting in a ton of resources, but if the marriage ends, the breadwinner owns the entire "career". So the breadwinner reaps the long term benefits of the career, and the supporter loses everything but whatever skills they gained.
For the supporter, the advantage of legal marriage—where the supporter owns half the assets plus some rights to future earnings—is obvious. Smart, capable supporters know this, and won't make that investment without legal protections. Anything else would be reckless.
The advantage to the breadwinner is that this is a way to get a smart, capable supporter. If you're not willing to provide the legal protections, you're just going to get someone who doesn't really understand the situation and doesn't understand the risks. There's some chance you could find someone who was generally capable, but who was naïve on this point, but that's a smaller dating pool. And I'd argue it's ethically wrong, and the unfairness will eventually degrade the quality of the relationship.
People think alimony is just someone sucking someone dry while doing no work, but it's really just a dividend being paid out from a shared venture that you were both equal partners in.
If someone believed that they could attain a smart, capable supporter without offering those legal protections, however, then you agree that it would be rational for them not to provide those protections, right?
Not to mention the sizable portion of men who don't care about the intelligence/capability of their partner, or those who don't believe that wanting a legal upper hand correlates positively with the type of intelligence/capability that they desire.
To name a few: Joint filing of tax returns, Medicare, Social Security, immigration and residency for partners from other countries, sick leave to care for partner.
In your 20s its fine, put off getting married, but the 40 something guy who introduces you to his girlfriend sends a totally different signal than someone who introduces you to his wife (and vice versa if the genders are swapped). It says you're noncommittal, bad at relationships, maybe previously divorced, constantly shopping around, maybe breached partners trust repeatedly, whatever, take your pick. What it never says when someone is judging your book by its cover though is "this is just some guy who's been hedging against marital risk for a couple decades", any other snap judgement requires the person know you better.
The US government will help them take half your property after a breakup even without a marriage license, if they determine you were "acting married" so to speak.
That's a fair question. I think the biggest benefit would be the recognition of commitment, both by the partners, their families, coworkers, etc., zooming out ad infinitum. It can make a lot of things easier, from a practical perspective--for example, in my line of work there are a lot of couples (shared drive and passion, assortative mating), and employers will often create a second job for the spouse of a person they really want to hire. I think that sort of similar things can apply in other situations. If you, say, want to see your partner in the hospital or have certain other rights it's easier if you're legally bound to said partner.
See the recent arguments about same-sex marriage for a fulsome discussion...
I chose marriage, because I was really f'ing excited about calling my partner my wife. Now, I am really proud to call her that. Note that financially, she is far more well-off than me, but we have similar lifetime earnings potential. YMMV.
You couldn't be more wrong. If you don't know any women who treat their spouses as other people, who have ups and downs, women who can't take "for richer or for poorer" seriously, then you're in the wrong social circles.
Hell, my wife has offered to let me quit my job, where I make nearly twice as much as her (her electrical engineering salary would be enough to get us by), just so I can work on art full time, because she knows it will make me happier. I haven't, yet, because I also want her to be happy and I'm not so unhappy with my work yet that I can't earn us some more savings and hopefully make an exit for both of us.
If you are male and a founder, one of your most valuable business resources is your wife. People will call me sexist for saying this, I expect, but women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach. If you are a man, chances are your wife does more to build the business than you ever do.
I see nothing wrong with the involvement of founders' wives in the business.
> The lack of an overt chain of command means that power asserts itself covertly.
Thats the whole point of bossless environments and both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.
> In both cases the companies also boast a level of success that makes it hard for them to evaluate whether elements of their company culture is detrimental to their continued development at this stage of their existence.
I don't think any company can evaluate that. Culture arises from the grass roots and that means that the floor employees are the ones who ultimately decide company culture.
> I'm waiting for a hip rebranding of the term 'management' once these no-management companies realize they have issues that cannot be resolved by hiring supposedly perfect people.
What do you think of WL Gore and Associates?