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Comment by ColinCochrane | Hacker News Reader

Here’s an example: while interviewing a man for a comptroller position, he asked me if I was familiar with financial statements, like a balance sheet. This person knew I had been an entrepreneur for years. When I simply replied yes, because I found the question so mystifying, I was met with laughter and a five minute lecture on why balance sheets matter. A lecture that would have been more fitting for a high school level finance class than an interview with a CEO who carved out a precious 30 minute slot to speak with a candidate.

That is brutal. I don't understand how someone could be so tone-deaf, especially in a job interview.

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I don't think I agree. I know many CEOs that aren't familiar with these concepts in silicon valley. Additionally, being on the same page as your interviewer is key, so giving a quick background summary before talking about an item is common.

The author comes across as someone who's looking to find fault so I wouldn't be surprised if she read too much in to this (then again I wouldn't be surprised if she was spot on). I can certainly see people having the same reaction in this interview to men.

I believe the tone-deafness is because she answered "Yes". She knew what they were. The interviewee then laughed and lectured her on something she said she knew about. That's being tone deaf. There's nothing wrong with asking the question, except the question wasn't genuine. It was merely tossed out as an intro into what the individual wanted to talk about... which was themselves (and in doing so also insulted the intelligence and knowledge of the person they were talking to).

From my own experience around this sort of conversation, it doesn't seem like malice to me.

I'm a male and I've given this response before when someone asked me "have you read about X?" In turn, they gave a brief background because they weren't aware of the full scope of my knowledge on the subject.

If instead I had said: "Yes, I've worked on many projects involving X and I wrote a dissertation on it," then there would be no need for explanation.

It seems more like inexperience with the other gender and conflating assumptions in the workplace.

Your scenario sounds okay and reasonable.

However, I think the issue was laughing off the affirmative response. Why would you laugh at the response unless you don't believe someone?

Did they laugh off your affirmative answer?

> Why would you laugh at the response unless you don't believe someone?

It's a way to try and break the awkwardness of just a one-word answer. We can't tell the tone this man had, or how the author perceived that tone, just from the writing, but I like to use Hanlon's razor liberally.

I think it's a moot point using only one datum, especially one as subjective as experience, in argument though.

Can someone with Silicon Valley exp. please confirm or deny that "many" CEOs don't have basic understanding like what a balance sheet is? Because I can't tell whether this comment is comical or if Silicon Valley is comical or both.

If you're looking at it literally, where 9 out of 10 startups fail and the majority of founders are first timers, then it wouldn't be so far-fetched.

I don't think there is any data to back this up and using induction is fair here.

However, if we're labeling "CEOs" as CEOs who are also in-charge of large (100M Cap) companies, than we would need some formal data.

Sometimes people do this in interviews because they get a chance to explain something that they are very comfortable with and get cheap points. In cases like this it will backfire, but in general it doesn't hurt to explain a concept in detail to show that you know it more than the next guy.

I've run a company for six years, and I don't know how a balance sheet works. In How to Get Rich, Felix Dennis said something similar.

I'll eventually learn how, but it hasn't been relevant so far. (Bootstrapped, no investors).

Of course, this is not to excuse the subsequent lecture.

> How to Get Rich, Felix Dennis

Great book. Some of the lessons are dated (less than J.P Getty's How To Be Rich), but a great book nonetheless.

Listen to women talk about man-splaining, and you start to realize that this is really, really super common. Men condescend to women all the time, and for us men, we're simply never exposed to it.

The only way we find out is when women tell us (and they have to trust us enough to know we won't dismiss their stories out of hand).

Mansplaining (condescending explanations in which sexist attitudes are an underlying motivation) is, I believe, a very real thing, but also probably exaggerated; people condescend to people all the time, and it's likely to be perceived as being motivated by dismissiveness across a differential in social position (whether sex, race, or otherwise) where that condescension happens to be directed in what is seen as the "downhill" direction across such a differential whether or not that's really a factor in the particular act of condescension.

I've done it. In slight self defense, though, I didn't presume that she didn't know her stuff because she was female. I presumed it because she was a manager.

But, yeah, not my best moment. I can't undo it, but I can sure try to never do it again...

A theater group made the news a few days ago when they gender swapped the two candidates in the us election and reenacted a few of the political debates. A comment that often got back was how Clinton's speech was received as completely mansplaining when it was repeated word-by-word by a man.

It is very anecdotal counter example, but saying that men never get exposed to condescending from women don't seem true at all.

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