Why doesn't her advice apply to men? Why isn't the title of her article, "Stop encouraging young bright males interested in SW from doing startups"?
It's just interesting that it's fine to push men into potentially lucrative careers, but do the same for women and then there's tons of controversy.
She tries to offer a counterargument w/ what she's thinks is absurd: "Men could change the world by staying home with their kids and parenting them. Men would provide a totally different perspective as the lunchroom parent. They would ask for totally different after-school programming. Men would hire different babysitters and different SAT tutors. Because men are different than women."
As a father who does do a lot of this (although not a stay-at-home dad), actually we can have huge impact in these types of settings. I've literally had several other parents saying they wish there were more people like me involved as deeply as I am. I've single-handled been able to change the tone and attitudes of lot of interactions apparently. And based on the poor behavior I've seen from a lot of children of "executive" dad stay-at-home mom parents -- something clearly isn't working with their model.
People are pretty good at making choices for themselves.
With all due respect to the author, that's not consistent with reality. If that were the case I wouldn't have so much feedback in code reviews. We wouldn't have child protective services, the incarceration rates we have, poverty, high HS drop out rates (and not just for the Thiel money), etc.... People are generally really bad at making decisions w/o guidance. No one is saying hand hold, but provide some basic guidance so that people can see all potentially avenues.
I have never seen someone encouraging young bright males specifically into starting a business. The words we hear target "bright people", "bring minds", sure, but never "bright males" or "bright men".
We either see people saying "people should try running a startup" or "women should try running a startup". Thus, the author's point is that the latter is unnecessary because the former covers both bases.
She's written similar things. For example, that Silicon Valley is overrated, grad school is overrated, New York is overrated and especially that pursuing art over commerce usually sucks.
It's just interesting that it's fine to push men into potentially lucrative careers, but do the same for women and then there's tons of controversy.
She tries to offer a counterargument w/ what she's thinks is absurd: "Men could change the world by staying home with their kids and parenting them. Men would provide a totally different perspective as the lunchroom parent. They would ask for totally different after-school programming. Men would hire different babysitters and different SAT tutors. Because men are different than women."
As a father who does do a lot of this (although not a stay-at-home dad), actually we can have huge impact in these types of settings. I've literally had several other parents saying they wish there were more people like me involved as deeply as I am. I've single-handled been able to change the tone and attitudes of lot of interactions apparently. And based on the poor behavior I've seen from a lot of children of "executive" dad stay-at-home mom parents -- something clearly isn't working with their model.
People are pretty good at making choices for themselves.
With all due respect to the author, that's not consistent with reality. If that were the case I wouldn't have so much feedback in code reviews. We wouldn't have child protective services, the incarceration rates we have, poverty, high HS drop out rates (and not just for the Thiel money), etc.... People are generally really bad at making decisions w/o guidance. No one is saying hand hold, but provide some basic guidance so that people can see all potentially avenues.