[peterthehacker]

> I'm (perhaps naively) shocked at how opposed to this people are on Reddit, but especially on HN

> I've worked with and mentored a lot of minority candidates (who often have trouble with the cultural test that is getting and passing interviews)

Maybe have an open, empathetic mind for those people that are so upset? Or ask a minority friend of yours what they think?

From my personal XP: Many black and brown friends of mine think that entrepreneurship is a rich kid’s game because the common first step of raising a “friends and family round” is an absurd notion to them. Most of their friends and family barely have enough money to pay the bills, so the idea of raising $100k+ from them is silly. When I read the angry responses in this thread (and see a price tag like $10k) I think about those friends. I’m sure they’d laugh at the idea of asking friends/colleagues to help them raise $10k to “skip the interview” for similar reasons.

Empathy is hard, especially over the internet and across socioeconomic bubbles, but it’s essential when seeing outrage that you don’t understand.

[peripitea]

Damn. I know you don't know me, but this is unnecessarily condescending and off the mark. I'm very well aware of everything you mentioned. Maybe I was unclear. My confusion is about the extent of misunderstanding and willful misrepresentation of the idea, not about the resulting outrage.

Your explanation is a great example -- if you want to look at the idea exclusively in those terms, that sure sounds problematic. But do you really think that's the only way it could have played out? Keep in mind, we are living in a system that causes massive aggregate harm to underrepresented people on a daily basis. And I'm just referring to the tech industry and particularly its hiring practices, let alone society as a whole.

Killing a new idea just because you can conceive of scenarios where it might be harmful (though I would argue not even that much more harmful than the status quo in this case) is probably unwise in general, but is almost certainly so in a space where the status quo is already so fraught. I work in this space, we need more/better ideas (among many other things), and I think this idea actually had a plausible chance of putting a dent in some of the problems at the core of these systemic issues. Sure, it's a small chance, but to just throw it away? That bums me out.

Edit just to be clear: I have no idea who the people behind this site are and had never heard of it before day. I just work on some of the same problems and would love to see the system improve more quickly.

[peterthehacker]

> Damn. I know you don't know me, but this is unnecessarily condescending and off the mark.

I’m truly sorry you feel that way. My intent was sincerely to provide another point of view.