
Words Matter – Moving Beyond “Meritocracy” - judah
https://blog.mozilla.org/inclusion/2018/10/02/words-matter-moving-beyond-meritocracy/
======
CWuestefeld
_I personally long for a word that conveys a person’s ability to demonstrate
competence and expertise and commitment separate from_

We have a word for that: "meritocracy". The fact that we may have failed to
achieve this fully doesn't mean we should throw out the word.

By the Mozilla logic, we should also throw out "democracy" because our
government(s) have failed to include all stakeholders; throw out "feminism"
because a few of them have demonstrated that they're anti-male rather than
pro-female; "education" because we've so badly failed to properly educate our
youth (and adults!).

Really, pretty much everything we've set as a goal for ourselves, we've failed
to achieve in its entirety: such is the nature of goals. But those lapses are
just further goals for us to cover. Throwing up our hands and changing the
goal posts, or at least how we reference the goal posts, isn't going to get us
any closer to them, and seems more likely to confuse the issue, taking us at
least somewhat farther away.

~~~
notacoward
The OP specifically addresses that issue.

"Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and
need to be set aside"

...and...

"Sadly, “meritocracy” is not that word. Maybe it once was, or could have been.
But not today."

Like it or not, words have more than etymological meaning. They also have
historical and cultural meaning, that might be sharply at odds with their
etymology, and that precludes their use even in situations where they're
technically accurate. "Meritocracy" has become such a word. Like "traditional
American values" and "celebration of European culture" as synonyms for racism,
"meritocracy" has become a rallying cry for opposition to diversity,
inclusion, and egalitarianism. All as the person who originally coined the
word meant it, BTW. We can coin new words that are just as etymologically
valid without the cultural baggage.

~~~
cheeseomlit
We're not allowed to talk about celebrating European culture anymore?

~~~
danharaj
What the hell is European culture? German culture, Italian culture, Romanian
culture, sure. But...?

~~~
cheeseomlit
You just said what it is? I mean, what is Hispanic culture if not
Mexican/Spanish/Venezuelan/etc., what the hell is Asian culture if not
Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc.

~~~
danharaj
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "celebrate Asian culture". Precisely
because it's a barely meaningful agglomeration. Now if we examine the context
in which "European culture" is celebrated... hm, yes I see.

~~~
true_religion
I have heard it. There are just generic Asian American society functions,
which celebrate the melting pot of everyone who isn't strictly first
generation and has multiple ethnic backgrounds.

~~~
AstralStorm
That would be Asian American culture then, except Americans tend to not notice
that their culture is not everywhere and needs qualification.

------
malvosenior
Is there a place where developers who disagree with this type of political
movement can gather? I _do_ believe in meritocracy, I believe on the internet
no one knows you're a dog and I believe in judging people based on their code
contribution alone. I also have very little interest in letting non-tech
interlopers into projects.

Where do I go?

~~~
ConceptJunkie
It seems to me that by rejecting the idea that merit is important, these
projects will decay and devolve into irrelevance. The problem is that even the
Linux kernel itself has been infected with this memetic cancer.

I would suggest it's time to re-read "1984", because real life is rushing
towards imitating it, and it's not just the government. Newspeak and
doublethink are rapidly infecting many corporations.

~~~
basic1
Linux has a meritocracy of patches not people, Reddit was the great
meritocracy, unfortunately Reddit played the game and Linus didn't.

------
raxxorrax
I think meritocracy isn't really desirable if you think more closely about it.
Still, this is ridiculous.

Mozilla has done some fantastic work in shaping the internet like it is today,
but this doesn't really bode well for the future.

On the contrary, I would think words like "diversity" and "inclusivity", since
their politicization, shoulder a lot more subtext directly excluding certain
political views.

An constructive environment doesn't need to check it's language. Maybe appeal
to the conscience of the community. Worked pretty great in my opinion.

disclaimer: Only contributed tiny bits to OSS, but I believe this to be false:

> open source projects tend to have less diversity than other software
> organizations.

I also think that there isn't any real discrimination based on the idea or the
word meritocracy. Ironically, although there is not much merit to meritocracy,
there seems to be even less with inclusiveness and diversity.

~~~
pgeorgi
> but I believe this to be false:

>> open source projects tend to have less diversity than other software
organizations.

You won't find some high school student or a stay at home mom have real impact
in corporate software projects, but that's not the type of diversity that's
measured these days.

------
imglorp
I was interested what wrong could be perpetrated here. The key reason given
is,

> The notion of “meritocracy” can often obscure bias and can help perpetuate a
> dominant culture.

The link at Atlantic is dead at the moment but it's on wayback[0]. Atlantic
asserts that you can't use performance as an objective metric because, in
practice, when all other things equal, they are still observing
discrimination.

I don't know what to think any more. I would like an objective measurement but
I don't know if the data support it.

0:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181004050116/https://www.theat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181004050116/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/meritocracy/418074/)

~~~
crankylinuxuser
The metrics are bad. And since the metrics are believed to be good, they
further entrench winners.

It's like a ML algo. You take all people who have been put in prison, how
long, and their faces. You also take a big subset of non-prison people - same
thing. (You know where this is going). You build a classifier that, for a
given face, estimates yes/no for prison and how long if yes.

Lo and behold, you show it darker face images, and prison estimation ratchets
up and the estimated time served up up up.

Is the ML racist? Technically, yes. But it's observing racist underlying
societal things.

Yeah, it's ugly. No, I don't have good answers, other than directly addressing
when we catch stuff. But We (royal) don't see it as a problem. The status quo
changes slowly.

~~~
nicoburns
I think the key observation is that metrics (of employee performance) are
_always_ bad. And thus it makes sense to compensate for that by taking into
account other factors.

~~~
AstralStorm
Using metrics as goals is a key feature of bureaucracy.

In meritocracy, direct results should matter.

------
aestetix
Seems like a good time to recommend people read The Gulag Archipelago by
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago)

~~~
brennebeck
As I haven’t read it, can you explain the connection and why you recommend it?

~~~
notacoward
I would hazard a guess that the connection is how the Gulag was supposedly a
punishment for the least meritorious (criminals) but in fact the inmates often
possessed great merit and it was the guards/administrators who lacked any,
because the definition and application of "merit" in Soviet society had become
so twisted. But that's just a guess. More elucidation from the GP would be
appreciated.

~~~
brennebeck
Ah, I can see that as a possibility. Thanks.

~~~
aestetix
That's actually not the reason at all.

Given the current climate of tension in the English speaking world, I'm not
going to comment publicly anymore on this issue. If you are genuinely
intellectually curious as to my opinion, I'm happy to discuss it privately via
email.

~~~
brennebeck
I don’t see your email in your profile?

~~~
aestetix
That's odd. Try hn [at] $my_username [dot] com.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If you only have it listed under "email," only you and the mods can see it.
You have to list it in the "about" section to be publicly visible.

This is a common misunderstanding on the site.

------
gedy
It's a shame, as disagreeing that this type of publicity stunt will actually
help diversity and equality means to some type of people that you are against
equality..

In any case, it did inspire me to delete the Firefox app from my phone as
another symbolic stunt.

------
marcinmozejko
Shouldn’t be better if we made meritocracy still valid and fight with biased
opinions and decisions? Statements claiming that meritocracy induces biased
behaviour will result in a huge backlash :(

------
izzydata
Why though? Is this some kind of political stunt? I can basically guarantee
this will increase the usage of the word meritocracy across the internet. So..
good job Mozilla.

------
ardy42
I hope Google rejects meritocracy harder and faster than Mozilla, so we can
continue to have a competitive open-source browser not built by an advertising
and tracking company.

------
oconnor663
> I personally long for a word that conveys a person’s ability to demonstrate
> competence and expertise and commitment separate from job title

Totally.

> or college degree

Absolutely.

> or management hierarchy

This one's less clear. On the one hand, obviously a toxic work environment can
ruin anyone's performance, and accounting for that is important. On the other
hand, most work has to happen in some kind of work environment, and to some
extent we all have to learn how to work well with people around us. That's an
important skill for any job.

------
caseyf
Actual title of article: "Words Matter – Moving Beyond 'Meritocracy'"

More descriptive title, taken from the article text: "Mozilla has taken steps
to discontinue using the word meritocracy as a way to describe governance and
leadership structures."

------
notacoward
I've started using "ferretocracy" to describe what actually exists in most
places where "meritocracy" gets thrown around a lot. The idea of letting
people succeed or fail according to merit instead of position is laudable, but
(as crankylinuxuser already pointed out) the measurement of merit is
problematic. A true meritocracy can only exist when the metrics for merit are
both the right metrics and accurately measured, with all involved able and
willing to keep it so. That's a bit like communism's reliance on altruism or
laissez-faire capitalism's reliance on honesty. Things never work out that
way. In reality, weasels always find ways to game the system. They exploit
every flaw in how merit is defined or measured, who gets to define it, who is
aided and who is isolated in their respective quests for merit, etc.
Ultimately, the pursuit of "merit" veers off target. Focus on pure technical
merit has to be balanced with consideration of other kinds, and with goals
(e.g. diversity) that are not necessarily merit-maximizing.

~~~
AstralStorm
You can guard against the metrics being inaccurate by calibration and
anchoring. And also verification. (and watch the watchers too)

It is obviously an active process, much like guarding democracy against
demagoguery.

Attempts to subvert the system can usually be spotted early.

A person designing right secondary metrics that result in good primary
endpoints is also meritorious.

The usual problems are either complacency, where meritorious people stop being
so and are not being degraded, stagnation - lack of further development of
merit or unnecessarily high barriers of entry.

Merit when developed should accrue over time, yet it should be possible for a
"nobody" to get in at high levels.

------
magissima
Good! Meritocracy is a fake idea used to justify giving power to those who are
already powerful, and the word was invented in order to satirize the idea[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology)

~~~
bvinc
The only time I ever hear it is from SJWs talking about how we shouldn't value
open source contributors on their merit, but we should instead somehow
ascertain their race and treat them differently according to it.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Yeah, how dare we promote people based on whether or not they are good at what
they do.

------
chongli
Leaving aside the culture war third rail topics, the idea of meritocracy is on
ethically shaky ground anyway.

People who are highly intelligent and motivated already reap the largest share
of the rewards in society. Why do we have to go further than that and say that
these people "deserve" more? A person who is born with low IQ or low
conscientiousness (or both) "deserves less"? At least in a society where
rewards are distributed somewhat randomly there is a chance for everyone to
have a share. With a meritocracy, no such chance exists, since rewards are
then determined by immutable aspects of a person's brain.

Maybe if we could build a society where decision-making was separate from
reward, we could have a just meritocracy. But right now, as it is, those who
make the decisions use their power to grant themselves all the rewards.

~~~
baud147258
So you're saying that reward should be separated from the decision? If I make
a shit decision regarding architecture on my current project which drag down
the entire thing, I should receive the same amount of praise as if I had taken
the best possible decision?

Or you could remove all possible reward, just so that there's no more
incentive to do anything.

~~~
chongli
_Or you could remove all possible reward, just so that there 's no more
incentive to do anything._

In a society where merit is rewarded perfectly, there's no incentive to do
anything for all those who lack merit (i.e. the bottom 99%).

~~~
furgooswft13
I mean, I think we're talking about developing good software, not whether the
unwashed masses can live a decent life.

Regardless, merit != absolute perfection. Most people are bad at lots of
things and good enough at one or two.

~~~
chongli
It doesn't have to be absolute perfection, it just has to be a system whereby
someone who is a little bit better than you gets to replace you. That is,
selection is based on monotonically increasing merit.

People at the bottom of such an arrangement have no incentive at all to
participate in society.

You can argue that such an arrangement isn't realistic, that in real life you
get to keep your job because you've made relationships with your coworkers.
But then, that's not a meritocracy anymore, since nepotism/cronyism has taken
the place of merit.

~~~
furgooswft13
I'd argue in the tech industry at least you get to keep your job because you
have very specific domain knowledge and are not easily replaceable without a
lot risk and lost time, even if there are people who are theoretically better
in some general way.

I think your definition of meritocracy is needlessly binary. People don't get
assigned a merit number where they get to instantly supersede anyone with a
lower one like sorting a list. What most people consider the word to mean is
if you do good work you will be rewarded as such (more important role, more
money etc.), not some king-of-the hill winner take all competition.

There's no question that this very often does not work out in practice,
because life is messy. There is no such thing as pure anything when it comes
to human relationships, but it's still a good idea to strive for.

It's certainly better than the alternative anyway....which is....actually what
is the alternative? I've not heard anything besides "meritocracy is bad
because not everyone benefits and some get screwed". What should we do, hand
out positions and salaries based on random number generators? I think no
matter what kind of hand wringing and word twisting people do you're always
gonna end up back at a system of quasi-meritocracy combined with nepotism,
cronyism and other human bullshit.

------
crankylinuxuser
Meritocracy comes down to "Who deems someone worthy of merit?". Who or what
makes the consideration? Is it done in a fair and impartial manner, or is the
word "Meritocracy" used as a tool to further disenfranchise people out of the
'in group'?

If you dig in further, past the simple buzzword, its a method of distributed
control of power, controlling social acceptance and shrouding it as "merit".

What does "Meritocracy" come down to? Turns out women don't get 'merit'. They
get 'social media' positions. They get the fuzzy fluffy jobs because that's
all they're good for, regarding merit. Similar with African Americans.
Pidgeonholed, natch. Older people, same - seriously they 'just can't keep
up!'.

I read the Hacker Manifesto back in '89\. I accepted it. I lived it. And as
much as I wanted to accept "that we're all alike", Real Names and similar
forced policies to disclose identity have poisoned this back to racism,
sexism, nationalism, and ageism. I don't like it, and I don't like whatever
pretty glitzy name is given to do this round of demeaning and ostracization.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Turns out women don 't get 'merit'._

Please provide citations.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Sure.

[https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-
leadership/2013/jun/24/...](https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-
leadership/2013/jun/24/false-theory-meritocracy-women-lose)

The main takeaways here are:

1\. Players have a range of qualities. It is nigh on impossible to rank them
in a simple linear order, since strengths and weaknesses come in bundles, not
as a single order of merit.

2\. What makes someone a winner or a loser varies as they move up the ladder?
Success criteria are context-dependent. Qualities suited to the top position
may have little value in the middle, and vice versa. Indeed we may kill off
the very leaders we need in middle echelon tournaments.

3\. Something like the Peter Principle operates, where people are promoted to
their level of incompetence. We advance people on yesterday's, not tomorrow's,
competence. It is also striking that no one goes down. Losers just get stuck
in their positions or exit the game.

4\. People move ahead as much by luck as through performance. They get a good
break, have a strong sponsor, make the right friends and get handed an
opportunity to shine.

[https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-
of-...](https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-of-american-
myth-of-meritocracy-94269)

"In the U.S., women own 39 percent of all privately owned businesses but
receive only around 4 percent of venture capital funding. Put another way,
male-led ventures receive 96 percent of all funding."
[https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-
statist...](https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statistics)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/27...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646267/how-
the-meritocracy-myth-affects-women-in-technology)

Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech
companies

There's plenty enough to dig further in this area. The numbers are damning,
and show that "Turns out women don't get 'merit'." rather effectively. Well,
unless you think that half of the population has 'fair' representation with
only 4% VC funding, or 6% CEOs.

~~~
CWuestefeld
You've shown that merit isn't a simple cardinal value; I buy that.

You've also shown that outcomes aren't equal. You haven't provided any reason
to believe that the outcomes _should_ be equal - in particular, that a
comparable number of women are actually competing with the men. There's a
fundamental assumption here that women have the same goals as men, and
prioritize them against other life choices in the same way. There's a lot of
reason to think that both of those things are false.

~~~
pseudalopex
The issue isn't that current outcomes aren't exactly equal. The inequality is
larger than typical sex differences can explain. If current outcomes reflect
an innate difference, the separation between the median woman and the median
man has to be exceptionally large, the trait has to be exceptionally more
variable in men, organizations have to be far more selective than other
evidence suggests, and/or the trait must not be normally distributed.

~~~
_dps
I don't know what standard you have for "exceptionally more variable" but in a
normal population you only need a 33% difference in standard deviation to get
a ratio of 2x at +2stdev or almost 4x at +3stdev (here stdev is of the less-
variable population).

I think relative to the population at large it's reasonable to think a
programming career is a +2stdev event in inclination and skill toward abstract
systems (programmers are ballpark 5% of the working population).

I don't mean to suggest that the male variability hypothesis is all or even
most of the story, but to me a 33% difference in variability, while
substantial, doesn't sound impossibly large — and it suggests male:female
ratios that are in line with what we see in the industry.

