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Comment by vaishaksuresh | Hacker News Reader

Sexism is something that is rampant in the whole tech industry. I feel bad about it, but I don't see how YC or HN is responsible for policing the posts. Sure, you could have a report button and couple of mods to look at them and approve or reject. That model however is not scalable and downright silly. The bigger issue is with the society and people's mindset and it is up to the people to not be sexist. Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc. Businesses run on profits, talent generates profits. Sure, capable people should not be denied opportunity, but incapable people should not get preferential treatment and held against a lower standard.

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"...incapable people should not get preferential treatment and held against a lower standard." That is a fallacy. Certain types of sex/race/genders get special treatment now, often called "privilege", because of a history of systematic repression of other people. People are just trying to make the field actually level, not give preferential treatment to "incapable people".

So in the process of making it level, the playing field is being changed to be favorable to certain individuals? If something changes by giving away opportunities to less qualified people, because their predecessors had been systemically repressed, it is probably the ego/guilt of the perpetrators. Provide extra opportunities to the current generation to develop and improve , but don't take it away from qualified people in the name of diversity/inclusivity. If a man and a woman apply for a job in all male startup, hire the most qualified person, not the person who makes your workforce more diverse.

THEY are being repressed, not only their predecessors. And to "hire the most qualified person" "denies the role of personal connections, wealth, background, gender, race, or education in an individual's success"[1]. It is overly simplistic to just say "hire the qualified person" when the person is qualified due to a huge amount of historical advantages. Do you really think there are so few women in tech because all the men are just more qualified?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646...

The right thing then would be to enable such individuals with disadvantages to become qualified. We can go on and on about how it is a vicious circle and all that, but IMHO, the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people, but take measures to educate and make them competent. Relavant initiative [1] [2]

[1]. https://developers.google.com/women-techmakers/ [2]. http://www.google.com/diversity/for-the-future.html#research...

"the remedy is not providing opportunities to less qualified people"

You keep saying this like it is a fact or that anyone is arguing for this. It is a complete fallacy.

>Having said that, I don't think any business has to do anything special for being inclusive to sex/race/gender etc.

That's nice.

The guy in charge of Y Combinator disagrees with you. Which is the whole point of the post.

http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups

Wonderfully said. People are failing to realize that the point is that YCombinator is being internally inconsistent.

Edit: allegedly being internally inconsistent

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