It's uncomfortable to me that Paul Graham felt he had to write this. In particular, his enumeration of Jessica Livingston's 'Social Radar' as if it is some kind of superpower reads to me like a long list of the virtues emotionally unintelligent hacker dudes lack, like he felt forced to justify her role in the founding of YC. I could be overreacting but I also find it telling that he doesn't praise her for business acumen (until that blip at the end about data), but rather for her intuitive judgments.
Not a very interesting character portrait, and has an slightly weird sniff about it.
That seems like a fair concern to me. Like you, the piece strikes me as subtly and uncomfortably gendered. As a hacker myself, my emotional intelligence was never that great. But I think this was vastly compounded by being a guy; society didn't expect me to develop much in the way of emotional skills.
A big thing that changed that for me was doing in-person tech support in college. About 10% of the job was knowing facts. The rest was helping humans in very human ways. When, years later, the term "emotional labor" [1] came around, it made a lot of sense to me. I may not have been natively good at it, but you don't have to have talent to get skill. It just takes more work.
So when he talks about emotional radar and her being the mom and whatnot, it all strikes me as a false dichotomy, one I've worked hard to avoid. It's especially odd to me in a piece about society treating a woman as lesser.
"So when he talks about emotional radar and her being the mom and whatnot, it all strikes me as a false dichotomy, one I've worked hard to avoid. It's especially odd to me in a piece about society treating a woman as lesser."
That's so much better articulated than what I said! Exactly this.
Objectively, there is more to it. It might be uncomfortable, but sometimes a little coaching is useful feedback. Take a look at what happened to Ronda Rousey over the weekend. Complete lack of preparation. A cornerfull of yes men..."your doing great"...after round #1 etc. Unknown challenger meanwhile was methodically breaking her down. Point is there is a balance to he had from motivation and positive re-inforcement with some actual feedback...so you don't get blindsided. I think the only real questions is about whether that convo is best in in public vs private. There is some awkward in this essay. Some of it seems un-neccesary, and maybe could have been re-worked to make the points hit home without it.
Not a very interesting character portrait, and has an slightly weird sniff about it.