Was James Damore Right? All 25 Finalists in Google Code Jam Are Men | Hacker News Reader

Was James Damore Right? All 25 Finalists in Google Code Jam Are Men

officechai.com

25 pointstrolliloquy17 comments

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.

Yes, this is a conundrum. The honest assumption has been that non-equal outcomes must be due to discrimination, because that has in fact been true in other fields and in the past.

And so the further assumption was that if we do what other fields have done, make evaluations "blind" (the way it was done in Orchestras) those biases would not be able to express themselves and we would get equal outcomes. Or at least more equal outcomes.

Easy peasy!

The problem is it doesn't seem to be working out that way in tech. In fact, when we "blind" the processes, the needle appears to move the other way. Suggesting that, yes, there was bias, but not the bias we thought.

But that's not in the set of politically permissible answers/outcomes.

So companies are scrambling and trying their best to somehow bend reality to fit the accepted parameters. Which, well, leads to a lot of bending. Of rules, laws, reality.

One of commenters here on HN summed it up frankly in this way: "We are rejecting it not because it's not true, but because it's morally wrong." Yes, these facts are unpleasant. They may be depressing for some. How do you find a way out of this? Whatever Google does or says will be bad in one way or another.

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) 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.

Also possible that fewer women than the 20% would suggest are going to enter a public contest which may well lead to harassment (if the experience of literally any prominent woman in tech on the internet is any guide.)

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...).

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.

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

That's the key question in this discussion.

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

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.

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?

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.

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...

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".

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.

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.

In this case you have not only peer pressure, and that is enormous, but also from the management - you not only suspect, but at this point you are sure you will be fired for expressing an opinion that may be true, but not in line with the official view. What incentives do you have to pursue the truth? More importantly, how can you be genuinely interested in improving the situation inside the company?

Betteridge's Law

Reply on news.ycombinator.com