And all the rights and privileges …

John Patrick Ryan
1 min readNov 11, 2019

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If you’ve graduated from a U.S. university, you get a degree and a piece of paper that includes the words: “with all the Rights, Privileges, and Honors thereunto appertaining” or some such, perhaps in Latin. And you know that your Master of Fine Arts, or fine Doctor of Philosophy degree doesn’t give you any real rights or honors.

But being a white dude, in science and tech, does deliver privileges. I know, I’m one. And, what’s more, my wife, more brilliant than I, with more degrees to her name (I think), gets fewer rights and honors and privileges.

Read her post, then, to see what it’s like when a self-proclaimed member of Europe’s aristocracy (didn’t they die or become irrelevant in 1917 or something?), describing himself as a startup CEO, admits he hasn’t hired any women or minorities because, ahem, well, no coherent reason was given. Of course, a self-proclaimed member of aristocracy has no idea what the struggles of the peasantry are like. But this is 2019 and a company needs to get the best talent it can — and to use the best talent as well it can. Not just hiring people who look like me, white dudes.

Read this.

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John Patrick Ryan
John Patrick Ryan

Written by John Patrick Ryan

Tech executive and strategy consultant. Writing and thinking about long term global economic trends. Strategy in cases where the science remains uncertain.