Winners of the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence in Astana could receive prizes from Telegram worth more than $106,500.
Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov, who is on Russia’s international wanted list, announced on social media that he is looking for a way to safely deliver the prizes to the winners.
«The Russian team took first place in the team competition, and Artem Gorokhov from my home city won the individual event. Well done! I’m equally happy for the host country, Kazakhstan, whose Dauzhan Beketov took the second-highest individual score. We’re in touch with the organizers to deliver the winners’ prizes from Telegram ($106,500+) securely next week,» Durov wrote on his official Telegram channel.
Durov’s interest in the achievements of top IT specialists and programmers recalls a question raised by Nikolay Kononov, author of a new book about the Telegram co-founder: The company recruits top programmers, but few, if any, are women. Why?
Read also: Code, power, and exile: The untold story of Pavel Durov and Telegram.
In Durov’s case, institutional misogyny works like clockwork, Kononov notes. Telegram still has no female developers, and the team resembles the same friary it was at VK.
When Kononov asked Durov about this, he argued that he recruits programmers exclusively through contests in which all results are evaluated blindly, much like auditions for an orchestra. Then he smiled sideways and added, «Men like to solve complex problems, and women are better at communicating.»
The remark made it clear to Kononov that the absence of women writing important code at Telegram was not accidental.
In the closing chapters of the book, Kononov asks Durov why he does not employ women to work directly on the product. Among other things, Durov replied:
“Our organization will become less efficient if we hire based on gender, race or sexual preference, as these factors have no bearing on productivity. Reducing the team’s efficiency will, in turn, sadly affect the experience of a billion users. For example, if Telegram takes one second longer to start up as a result of inefficient code, the total time lost to humanity will be centuries every day.”
Kononov argues that both capitalism and patriarchy have found it profitable to exploit women as workers in the workplace and as wives within the family. In the workplace, women are often assigned less interesting tasks because they must plan their schedules around the needs of their loved ones. Women are also typically responsible for running the household because men generally earn more and have less free time.
For 15 consecutive years, in his role as an editor at various publications, Kononov says he observed the startup movement, the ideology of cultivating «unicorns» and the manifestos of venture capitalists. Without rose-colored glasses, he argues, it is clear that tech entrepreneurs have made excuses or taken cosmetic measures, pretending to change the patriarchal status quo while actually changing nothing.
«It’s the same gentlemen’s club as a century or two ago,» Kononov says.
The difference is that instead of top hats and cigar stubs at the corners of their mouths, the men now favor an understated style: polo shirts, loafers, hoodies — and a jacket, but God forbid you wear a tie.
Men make deals. Men talk about their own affairs over a beer. Women take care of their loved ones and themselves. Not all of them, of course, but this trend on global Wall Street is plainly visible.
