Data Journalism Developer Studio 2012LX Blog
Updated 2010-09-28
As you probably know, I posted a rant Sunday about AngelGate. You can read it here if you haven’t already. Since then, quite a bit has happened.
- The TechCrunch Disrupt conference opened in San Francisco. If you’re curious, the hashtag is #tcdisrupt.
- At a panel on Monday, some of the principals in #angelgate were on stage, and they dodged the issues.
- Today, Tim Armstrong of Aol was on stage to announce that Aol was purchasing TechCrunch.
- A panel of women on “Women in Tech” was “led” by Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda). I didn’t watch the live stream, just the tweet stream, but the comments were quite negative – terms like “catfight” were some of the milder comments.
So I’m reposting this, unedited after the next horizontal rule. I’m very concerned about the nature of the Silicon Valley tech startup scene, as exemplified by what I saw in April at Chirp and what’s been going on at TechCrunch Disrupt. I’m concerned that young men and women are being encouraged to drop out of school and compete in a bizarre “TV reality show” format for funding, and I’m concerned even more that “no one over 38 need apply.” We don’t treat people like that here in Portland, Oregon.
I know women entrepreneurs are out there – building businesses, solving problems and creating jobs and economic value. I think their achievements are being obscured by the propaganda coming out of Silicon Valley. And I’m very frightened by the fact that a segment of the business world is encouraging bright young technical people of either gender to drop out of school in what is most likely a futile attempt to create the next Microsoft or the next Facebook, rather than join an existing business, university or government agency, where, quite frankly, the bulk of innovation takes place.
An Elephant In The Room
When I started this series, I promised some bigger elephants in the room than “Developers vs. Twitter”. I haven’t spent any time trying to sort these pachyderms by size or by how much we talk about them or don’t talk about them.
Two lists:
- @pistachio, @ChloeS, @KaraSwisher, @lizasperling, @AmberCadabra, @MargaretFrancis,
- @CarriBugbee, @KellyRFeller, @mediaChick, @PDXSays, @carmenhill, @embarkcreative
They’re all successful professional women and all influential in the Twitter community. The first six are from places other than Portland, and the second six are from Portland. There are many more such women, both here and elsewhere. I’ve met all of them except @KaraSwisher. They’re intelligent, educated and successful. But they aren’t software developers!
Now, a brief excursion into one of my favorite topics, capacity planning and queuing theory. We know that most venues have roughly equal rest room facilities for men and women. And we know that at most events, the lines for the womens’ rooms far exceed those for the men’s rooms during the breaks. It’s all because of Little’s Law – the “average residence time” is longer for a woman than a man. There’s even been legislation to “even things up.”
At Chirp, there were so many more men than women that the queue lengths for the men’s rooms far exceeded those for the womens’ rooms. I didn’t even bother to try and do the calculations. Maybe when I run out of more lucrative math problems to solve, I’ll dig into the numbers, or put up a simulation using the Prism Model Checker.
So there you have it – the elephant in the room is the dearth of women in software developer roles. @clairecm covered this well in “Out of the Loop In Silicon Valley“. And @hmason, a woman who’s a computer science professor, responded with “Stop Talking, Start Coding“. But I want to talk about this from the perspective of a veteran white male software developer – a developer who was at Chirp.
I’ve been a software developer for many years, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that it wasn’t always like this, and that some places in the USA are better than others. For example, Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, at least when I was living on the East Coast, seem to be significantly more diverse than Silicon Valley. I’m discouraged that the profession I’ve worked in for so many years has gone down the path described in the article by @clairecm.
I know some very bright young women who have aspirations of going into the sciences. They’re bright people that will succeed in anything they try. They get stellar grades, stellar SAT scores, have great human communications skills, and so forth. They’re all likely to show up on From The Top and get Overachiever Awards. But if they came to me and said, “I want to be a software developer like you,” I’d tell them to rethink.
Mathematics? Sure! Computer Science? Sure! Software Engineering? Right on! Electrical Engineering? Go for it! Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Medicine, Mechanical / Civil Engineering? You bet! Law, Business, Management, Accounting, Finance, Economics, Marketing, Sales? Awesome! Architecture, Art, Music, Video, Drama, Poetry, Fiction, Film, Creative? Absolutely! Young woman, the world is your oyster!
But don’t become a software developer, unless you’re prepared to enter a world where
- Beer, pizza, sugar and caffeine are the prevalent diet and fiber and protein aren’t,
- Sixteen hour workdays and sixty hour workweeks are common and expected at frequent points in the project cycle,
- The tools provided are primitive – in some cases, you have to build them yourself,
- If you can’t build it in a weekend, totally rebuild it from scratch every two weeks, and become profitable in a summer, you’re screwed, and
- “Iterate violently” is the normal modus operandi.
In short, you will be entering a world where the hacker culture, lifestyle, behavior and attitudes are the norm.
You will be entering a world where gladiatorial combat in code has replaced the discipline of software engineering. I believe that the reason there are so few women in software development today is that it has become a terrible place to be. The canaries have escaped from their cages and flown out of the coal mine.
Chirp
I was one of the first developers to sign up for Chirp. I want to say right up front that the things I learned were well worth the trip. The engineers at Twitter are world class. Twitter is in many ways a ground-breaking service and a force for good. And Twitter itself looks like a great place to work, even in software development. And they’re hiring! @jointheflock. Twitter looks like an exception to the dark picture I’ve painted.
But there was a dark undercurrent at Chirp. Many participants attended the conference starting at 8 AM on Wednesday, April 14th and went all the way to the party at 9 PM on the 15th. They were greeted at the door with the customary T-shirts – and mimosas! Mimosas at 8 AM? Breakfast consisted of sugar-filled and fat-filled pastries. There wasn’t any fresh fruit that I saw, and no eggs or meat. Subsequent meals were for the most part also carbohydrates, and of course, coffee, cookies, and soda.
There was a full day of conference presentations. These were both valuable and necessary information for people, like me, who want to be a value-creating member of the Twitter ecosystem. Then, participants were bussed to Fort Mason for the 24-Hour Hack Day. There’s a strong clue right there – the name “24-Hour Hack Day.”
Dinner was mostly pasta and rice, and of course, the beverages were beer and sodas. There was an Ignite Chirp session, where there were some carefully chosen presentations, mostly good, entertaining and inspiring. The music was loud.
But the dark undercurrent was “The Contest” – what Twitter called The Hack Day Showcase. A web site was set up where the developers could submit projects that they had built, provided they had started within the past year and received less than a million dollars in funding. The prize was a chance to do a demo for a panel of three “venture capitalists”.
Then the all-night hack session began. Coffee was served starting at 9 PM. Developers were encouraged to use the latest Twitter API developer previews to make applications and submit them to the showcase. Many stayed overnight to hack on their projects. Some caught some sleep on a couch, a beanbag or maybe even a bench. Some probably were up all night, hoping for a “win” in the showcase. I left about 10 PM.
When I returned the next day, Thursday the 15th, there were quite a few sacked-out developers. There was breakfast – more sugary pastries and cakes, and coffee, though thankfully no alcohol. Most of Twitter’s 150 employees were there, including all the executives, and the engineers who have made Twitter the stunning technological and cultural phenomenon it is.
Sure, there were good parts – the presentations on the technologies by the world-class Twitter engineers who have adapted cutting-edge open source technologies, improved upon them, and built something awesome out of them. And the lunch from the food carts almost made up for the disastrous breakfasts and so-so dinners.
But the focus of the day was the contest for the attention of the “venture capitalists” looking to invest in projects. In fact, we were “encouraged” to “network” with the VCs. It was a contest – gladiatorial combat in code.
I came down to Chirp hoping to hack on my project. The nature of my project fundamentally changed, though, when I learned about Twitter’s priorities during the conference day. And the API changed as well – vastly for the better, in fact. So I chose not to hack on my project. I got a good night’s sleep, and spent the second day attending the presentations by the engineers about the technologies I use in my development.
At 3 PM on Thursday – 30 hours into the conference for those who started at 9 AM the day before – the entry window for the contest to be in the showcase closed. I don’t know how many of those put in the full 30 hours straight, but I’m guessing from the number of sacked-out developers I saw that it was a fair number.
In all, over 100 projects were submitted before the showcase entries closed. At 5 PM, the showcase began. Only seven of the hundred-plus applications were chosen, and given 140 seconds to demonstrate their applications. The feedback from the panel was mostly positive, but the fact was that 93% of the effort went publicly unrecognized. There was supposed to be a web site where the rest of the applications will be posted. It’s been five days and I’m still waiting!
They kicked us out of the venue at 6 PM – the end of 24-Hour Hack Day. There was an after party at 9 PM, but I didn’t see the point of more alcohol and more loud music. So I went back to my hotel room and hung out on Twitter.
I Throw A Rock At Someone Famous
There’s an old saying, “If you want to become famous, throw a rock at somebody famous.” Well, I don’t know that this is a very big rock – more like a handful of pebbles – but I do want to single out somebody famous. I’m talking about somebody who was on stage at the culmination of Chirp, the Hack Day Showcase. And I’m talking about someone I can’t give you a hovercard for, because he’s the only person on the entire Chirp program that doesn’t have a Twitter account. Paul Graham, I’m looking at you. And I’m looking at one of the venture firms at Chirp, Y Combinator.
Let’s start with this quotation: “We care more about how smart you are than how old you are.” And then: “So who should start a startup? Someone who is a good hacker, between about 23 and 38.”
“The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One reason I put it there is that I don’t think many people have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week. I don’t know if I could do that now.”
And: “Startups are stressful, and this, unfortunately, is also taken to an extreme with Web-based applications. Many software companies, especially at the beginning, have periods where the developers slept under their desks and so on. The alarming thing about Web-based software is that there is nothing to prevent this becoming the default. The stories about sleeping under desks usually end: then at last we shipped it and we all went home and slept for a week. Web-based software never ships. You can work 16-hour days for as long as you want to. And because you can, and your competitors can, you tend to be forced to. You can, so you must. It’s Parkinson’s Law running in reverse.”
“If I were going to start a startup today, there are only three places I’d consider doing it: on the Red Line near Central, Harvard, or Davis Squares (Kendall is too sterile); in Palo Alto on University or California Aves; and in Berkeley immediately north or south of campus. These are the only places I know that have the right kind of vibe.”
And then: “Paul Graham and Y Combinator to Leave Cambridge, Stay in Silicon Valley Year Round“: “We had to choose, and Palo Alto seemed a better place to raise kids than Cambridge, so we chose that.”
Ah, but entrepreneurs and startups are “job-creation engines” fueling economic growth, aren’t they?
“The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people. I may be an extremist, but I think hiring people is the worst thing a company can do. To start with, people are a recurring expense, which is the worst kind. They also tend to cause you to grow out of your space, and perhaps even move to the sort of uncool office building that will make your software worse. But worst of all, they slow you down: instead of sticking your head in someone’s office and checking out an idea with them, eight people have to have a meeting about it. So the fewer people you can hire, the better.”
There’s a lot more. Graham writes in excruciating detail about his model of hacker and startup culture. I think it’s a terrible way to build software businesses, and a way that is likely to produce useless and irrelevant ones. It appears to be a way that sorts very strongly for males, white or Asian, and young – between the ages of 23 and 38. It filters out women, African-Americans and, I’m guessing, it filters out Hispanic-Americans.
And it filters out places – even Boston, apparently, but certainly it filters out Portland, Seattle, New York, and Washington, DC. Paul Graham’s message is loud and clear – move to Silicon Valley or you don’t get funded:
“Can we do it without moving to where you are?
“Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them move.
“You can leave one founder at home, but the rest, including the CEO, have to live in the Bay Area during the 3 month funding cycle.
“Do we have to start a company in the US for you to invest in us?
“Yes, but that’s usually not a problem. It’s easy for foreign nationals to start US companies (much easier than remaining here physically), and investors and acquirers prefer them.”
Conclusion
I’ve been a software developer a long time. I’ve had titles ranging from “Mathematician” to “Computer Scientist” to “Systems Engineer” to “Software Engineer.” I’ve worked in industry, government and education. I’ve worked with and for women, African- and Hispanic-Americans, Canadians, Indians, Pakistanis, Haitians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indonesians, Nigerians, Iranians, and Israelis. I’ve worked with developers as young as 19 and as old as 70. All of them were productive software developers. Diversity works. Or at least, it used to work … in some places.
I don’t buy Paul Graham’s excuses that the nature of web application development and entrepreneurial startups mandates the gladiatorial hacker development style over the disciplines of software engineering and project management. These are proven strategies for success – strategies our profession has painfully extracted from the ruins of some spectacular failures, as first documented in Fred Brooks’ Mythical Man Month 2nd Edition.
I don’t buy Graham’s claim that Silicon Valley is a better place to raise children than Massachusetts. I don’t buy his claim that “hiring people is the worst thing a company can do.” And I’m saddened and disgusted that the hacker culture appears to have driven out both software engineering discipline and women from an industry that desperately needs both.
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