
Was James Damore Right? All 25 Finalists in Google Code Jam Are Men - trolliloquy
https://officechai.com/news/google-fired-james-damore-25-finalists-code-jam-coding-competition-men
======
trolliloquy
Damore said higher proportion of men in engineering positions wasn't because
of explicit discrimination. And we know Google fired him afterwards stating he
was wrong. But All 25 Finalists In Its Code Jam Coding Competition are Men.

In fact, With the exception of 2011, in 14 years of Code Jam, no Female has
ever made it to the finals. Google's own non-discriminatory machine tool that
evaluates codes, which doesn't take into account one's age, gender,
nationality or skin color into account, has shed some light on some
embarrassing outcomes.

~~~
yorwba
It could very well be the case that the higher proportion of men in
engineering positions _is_ mostly because of discrimination, while the
increase in the proportion of men among finalists in the Code Jam competition
_isn 't_. (Not claiming that is the case, just highlighting the possibility.)

How? Assume for the sake of argument that discrimination is the only factor
influencing the gender distribution among CS professionals. From kindergarten
onwards the numbers are slowly winnowed down to 80% men and 20% women.

But now this 80/20 population enters a highly selective but objective contest
and comes out with 349/1 (assuming there have always been 25 finalists in the
14 years of the competition and there was only this one woman I can't see in
the photo proof). Surely this means that men are just better at programming?

But in fact men are just better at _being outliers_. The effect is not very
strong at small deviations (i.e. the difference between an average person and
an average programmer), but can absolutely become significant when you only
look at the extreme ends of the distribution. (I have written a comment about
that here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997524))
When you only look at the 25 top performers, that is bound to influence the
result.

Again, I don't think things are nearly so black-and-white, but pointing at one
extreme case of men performing better wouldn't be enough to completely
validate Damore's memo, if anyone were so stupid to make that argument.

~~~
trolliloquy
It happened that I read about mpweiher's comments and I found out a linked
medium article by [Ex-googler & entrepreneur Vidya
Narayanan]([https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-
le...](https://medium.com/the-mission/im-an-ex-google-woman-tech-leader-and-i-
m-sick-of-our-approach-to-diversity-17008c5fe999)).

I agree on your point that the discrimination begins very early on.

The aforementioned article, although, bolsters the point that females may
aspire to adopt different career options. Therefore, the organizations can't
be held responsible for creating the gap/divide. And I seem to agree with
Damores's memo because he mentions solutions to the problem of gender-ratio-
gap by suggesting programs to attract women to tech.

In conclusion, complaining about the gender ratio alone won't fetch us
equality but collectively attacking the root of the problem may.

------
Cenk
Anyone know what the gender ratio is like for the participants? Is it 50/50?

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
That's the key question in this discussion.

------
chippy
There is a debate in contemporary feminism central to competition that
revolves around theories of dominance and opression by masculinity.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Men_and_masculinity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Men_and_masculinity)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
That's a good argument, I don't understand why you're being downvoted.
However, if we assume that the reason why only men made it because they're
competitive, and this is a part of the "social construct" of masculinity,
wouldn't women in tech, who are often fighting with discrimination in the
workplace, do their best to and try to participate too? Being among the
finalists of a prestigious coding competition means you no longer need to
prove anything to your male co-workers.

------
trolliloquy
I'm new to HN. Curious to know what does a _[flagged]_ post mean?

Does it mean that I violated any policy? And what'll be the consequences of it
- will it lead to account suspension or something?

~~~
forthefuture
Flagged just means an overwhelming number of people don't want to keep seeing
stories like this.

It's only attached to the individual thread, not to your account, so no
worries.

------
peoplewindow
This story so neatly sums up the debate. Here's Google's cunning solution to
their problem:

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/google-drops-i-o-ticket-
prices-f...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/google-drops-i-o-ticket-prices-for-
top-female-coders-to-1595044050)

Not only making a version of the competition where males are excluded
(lowering the bar) but also tying it to financial rewards that men are not
eligible for (free Google IO tickets with travel).

This is Google's problem in a nutshell. When one step removed from the the
legally constrained hiring process, they openly and publicly engage in sexism
against men. The game is rigged to ensure women win even though they can't
compete, and women are granted special privileges that men are denied simply
because of their chromosomes.

If Google wants to spend its money that way, it can. But its management can't
then turn around and be shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that male employees are
drawing the obvious conclusions: women are less interested in coding and there
seem to be fewer of them at the top levels of skill.

Also note the hilariously misleading way Valleywag reported this: _" Now the
tech giant has a meritocratic pricing plan to encourage more women to attend
their banner Google I/O conference ... the company is going to cover ticket
and travel costs to Google I/O for women who performed well in its "CodeJam"
coding competition."_

1\. Preventing men from competing is not meritocratic almost by definition.

2\. They disguise this fact by making the link be "CodeJam" although it
doesn't go to CodeJam, it goes to the separate "CodeJam to I/O for Women"
site.

 _Followup edit_

Clicking a link from the ValleyWag story brings me to madewithcode.com which
seems to be some website designed by Google to encourage girls to code. This
website is astounding. It essentially buys into Damore's view of the science
wholesale. The top featured project is "Design a ZAC Zac Posen dress that
turns heads", other projects are "Accessorizer: take your selfies to the next
level", "Help Riley from Pixar's Inside Out solve some of life's problems",
"Help a robot", "Code a heart to bring people together", "Dance visualiser"
... all on a bright pink background.

These projects are very clearly designed to appeal to teenage girls. They're
about clothes, helping people, relationships etc. It seems to me like an open
admission that girls do have different interests to boys, before they got
anywhere near a hiring pipeline with "unconscious biases".

~~~
Udik
I'm not much concerned about the sexism against men- others even argued that
Google doesn't try to fill a finite set of positions, they basically hire
whoever passes the bar.

However, I'm very concerned about ideological denial of reality, in any field
and every form. It's scary to realise that people can basically convince
themselves to see anything they want, to the point of deeming any other view
as unacceptable, if there is enough peer pressure to do so.

~~~
peoplewindow
I think the argument you cite is a good example of the ideologically driven
denial of reality.

Google does not have and has never had infinite headcount. Even at times when
Google's revenue was way ahead of its ability to spend it, there was always a
limit looming somewhere in the future.

What's more, the bar is not an objective thing. Companies that find themselves
the belle of the ball can raise their bar until the numbers who are passing
match the companies ability to absorb them. Google is notorious for this; lots
of people there who are overqualified for the work they're doing.

So it isn't possible to tip the hiring pipeline towards women without causing
men to lose out. It might not seem like that at the time when it's go go go,
but eventually, headcount limits appear.

------
moomin
Betteridge's Law

