
Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy - droz
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/silicon-valley-isnt-a-meritocracy-and-the-cult-of-the-entrepreneur-holds-people-back/
======
steven2012
This article is largely garbage. Sure, Silicon Valley isn't a "perfect"
meritocracy, but it is the most meritocratic of any other place in the world,
at least that I've been in.

In Japan, and presumably other places in Asia, women are _still_ supposed to
include a photograph with their resume, and employers are reluctant to hire
married women past a certain age because they feel they will get pregnant and
stop working as hard. I had a friend who moved to Japan, and despite the fact
that his wife was native Japanese, because she was 31 and married, she was
practically unemployable. And the best he could do was get a job at coffee
shop speaking English to customers. After 10 months, they moved back to the
US. He hates Japan because there is no meritocracy whatsoever. Everything is
based on age.

There may not be a lot of women who are CEOs of startups, but it's getting
better every day, and the corporate ladder is very rewarding to smart women
and minorities, at least in Silicon Valley and probably other places like NYC,
LA, etc. My wife, who is in finance, went from Senior Manager to Senior
Director is 3 years because she's very, very smart and the CFO recognized this
and rewarded her aptly. Her _bonus_ was >$100,000 for the 3rd year in a row,
and I'm willing to bet she's made more money from her bonuses than 90% of the
aspirational startup founders on HN. Her peers in finance are >60% women, and
they are all extremely smart and well compensated as well. If she were living
in any other country in the world, who knows if she would have been given as
lucrative of an opportunity.

So sure, it's not perfect, but it's a pretty good meritocracy here, and as I
said, getting better every year.

~~~
Anechoic
_but it is the most meritocratic of any other place in the world_

Really? I think most pro sports leagues would give SV a run for it's money in
terms of meritocracy.

~~~
newnewnew
Look at how hard Jeremy Lin had to fight for a spot on a team. Still lots of
bias in pro sports.

~~~
JonFish85
I can't tell if you're serious, but Jeremy Lin isn't that good of a player....
He had an amazing run, but over time fell back to earth.

------
mathattack
I think it's fair to start with, "No industries or geographies are pure
meritocracies." Then it's worth asking, "Where does Silicon Valley fit in the
spectrum?"

Is it more or less meritocratic than teaching? Being an actuary? A politician?
A banker? A lawyer? Advertising? Writing?

I don't know all of the answers, but my impression is the market forces on
startups (Can you get funding? Can you get customers?) at least pushes them
towards being meritocratic. Software also is more binary than fields like
writing. The program does have to compile and work.

But is it a pure meritocracy? I doubt it.

~~~
jnovek
The thing the author is challenging here is not whether Silicon Valley is a
meritocracy, but whether it is as much of a meritocracy as its participants
believe. It doesn't matter much how it compares to other industries.

In my (limited) experience, among successful founders and investors -- the
"trend setters" of startup culture -- there is a widely held notion that
anyone with a computer, a good brain, a decent idea, a little bit of luck and
the gumption to do some hard work can build a billion dollar company. The
author is suggesting that this is not true.

~~~
MAGZine
I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal that is truly
worth 1B, you have know-how to get it off the ground, and have exceptional
presentation skills (its all about the sell, at this point) a VC wouldn't say
no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. VCs are their to make
money, and they see white male harvard dropouts with no social life to be a
safe bet. Convince them that you have a plan to net a return, that is,
convince them based on your MERIT, and you'll be successful.

Meritocracy is based on merit, not "giving everyone a fair chance," even if
that's what the author would prefer. Though, that's not to say that a bias
doesn't exist.

~~~
untog
_I 'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal [...] a VC
wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3._

But what data causes you to 'tend to believe'? That assumption is kind of at
the heart of the article - not that SV is a pure meritocracy (I doubt many
places in the world really are) but that people's _perception_ is that it is a
lot more meritocratic than it is - and no-one ever checks to see if their
perception is backed up by fact.

~~~
crusso
_But what data causes you to 'tend to believe'?_

Probably the same level of data behind the article we're discussing.

If she had started the article with "I'm just basing this whole article on my
own biases and no real data, but..." then we wouldn't really have much to
argue about.

~~~
wonderzombie
I think in this case the article is trying to shift the burden of proof. Why
should it be on someone who's asking whether it's a meritocracy rather than on
the folks who're repeating this claim? And if the answer is in the
affirmative, let's have that discussion.

This isn't directed at you as such. Just that a lot of folks assume the burden
of proof ought to be on the questioner(s) of this proposition rather than the
proponent(s).

------
pg
The same arguments would prove that math isn't a meritocracy. Which it
presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely. And if SV is
only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good. Indeed, that's what
the word means in ordinary usage.

~~~
freefrancisco
That's an interesting question, is there an institution or subculture in the
world that is more meritocratic than Silicon Valley? If there is, then the
author's argument has some merit. If there isn't, then the author is wasting
time attacking the one institution that comes the closest to embodying the
meritocracy ideal. To what end?

~~~
pg
That is an interesting question. I still can't think of one better than math
and the hard sciences, which in my experience are roughly tied with SV.

The to what end question is easy to answer though. It gets you a lot more
attention to claim SV isn't a meritocracy than to claim that math isn't.

~~~
williamcotton
> math and the hard sciences, which in my experience are roughly tied with SV

Can you point me to the great mathematical and hard science accomplishments
going on right now?

All I see is ad sales and hucksterism.

------
beachstartup
> But if the tech scene is really a meritocracy, why are so many of its key
> players, from Mark Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs, white men?

a jewish guy and a half arab guy aren't exactly the best examples of the point
this guy's trying to make.

there's also no shortage of asian and indian "key players" so ... i think this
guy is trying to make one point, but accidentally making another point
altogether, and then failing at it.

~~~
Kurtz79
In what ways a jewish white man is not a white man ?

It's a serious question, are people of jewish faith not considered "white" in
the US ?

~~~
beachstartup
it depends on who you ask.

and what decade you ask it in.

~~~
ceejayoz
You know full well what decade we're in, and virtually everyone today outside
an Aryan Nations get-together is going to call Zuckerberg a white guy.

~~~
beachstartup
you are delusional if you think jewish is uniformly accepted as 'white', even
today.

it's not. full stop.

~~~
bruceb
You call him delusional yet offer not one bit of real evidence.

------
katrinae
I am so happy that this view is being shared - so happy, in fact, that I
created a HN username just so I could comment on it. I am female and graduated
from MIT several years ago. While I was there, tech entrepreneurship far and
away the sexiest thing to be doing. It was at the point where you felt like a
loser if you didn't have your own startup.

Unfortunately, this fetishization of startups resulted in many ideas that
were, to put it bluntly, stupid. I couldn't believe how many people -
including investors, not just students - were obsessed with creating iPhone
apps and social media networks.

I had a telling encounter a year ago with a woman who ran an incubator; it was
somewhat tech-focused, but also had a creative bent and was partially funded
by state money for assisting small businesses. I wanted to invest my money
locally (a la Slow Money - www.slowmoney.org ) and was looking for mentors and
partners. We had a long conversation during which this woman said things like,
"what a great idea, I've never heard of anything like that before". At the end
of it, though, she asked: "so let me get this straight. Are you an innovator,
or do you just want to fund innovators?". This kind of myopia about what
constitutes innovation devalues the contributions of non-tech entrepreneurs
(and many others, too); furthermore, it discourages young people from
attacking important problems outside of technology.

Interestingly, the Economist had an article recently about how public
veneration of the tech elite may be ending:
[http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-
join-...](http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-bankers-
and-oilmen-public-demonology-predicts-adrian-wooldridge-coming). Even though
I'm part of this group, I'm glad this issue is being discussed.

~~~
ForHackernews
Sadly, this article has already been kicked off the HN frontpage by the
"flamewar" filter, and the comments here (including from HN's illustrious
founder, Paul Graham) illustrate just how resistant tech types are to the mere
suggestion that factors beyond individual gumption play into their successes.

------
freefrancisco
' Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to
describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”,
“assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”,
“competitive”, and “ambitious”.'

I don't see anything male about any of these words, I know many women who can
be accurately described by these words, as well as many men who cannot. Why is
the author conflating being male with these descriptions? I find the assertion
that those words are indeed "male-gendered" very disturbing.

~~~
icegreentea
I don't think that that was Ahl's intentions when she labelled those terms as
'male-gendered'. I do not believe that she meant they were male-gendered like
say.. 'he' or 'him'.

Likely, male-genderedness is suppose to mean something along the lines of
"without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to
a male rather than a female". The point isn't that you can't use these words
to describe females, or that all males can be described by this, but that
people just associate these words with males. For example, "chopsticks" ->
asian, "NBA basketball player" -> African American.

This could actually be studied (though I can't find any studies... my social
sciences research-fu is apparently really weak), and could actually be proven
(as much as such things could be proven).

That said, without the proof that they actually are male-gendered, it's kinda
flimpsy.

~~~
Crito
> _" without additional information, most people would assume these words
> refer to a male rather than a female"_

Surely _that_ is the problem. The problem isn't that those traits are seen as
desirable or common for entrepreneurs. The problem is the people think those
traits can only be found in men.

Particularly the idea that "self-reliance" is a male trait is a _classic_
example of something that feminists have been successfully refuting for
decades. It should be very clear that the notion that women cannot be self-
reliant is _very_ old fashioned; if that attitude is still present in the bay
area, then it needs to be stomped out.

~~~
icegreentea
Maybe. So there are two branch points for this, and one little thing first.

Firstly, I don't think anyone ever thinks that those traits can only be found
in men. It's just that they believe that its more likely men to have those
traits. Like the chopstick example I gave, no one is ever going to say only
asians use chopsticks, and if you told them that the person in question was
actually white, they likely wouldn't bat an eye. But their first guess would
be asian. So it's not really a problem, because that situation doesn't really
exist.

But say we adjust and say the problem is that people think its more common for
men to have those traits. Then:

A) Someone comes up with a very good way of measuring those traits. Say it
actually turns out to be pretty objective and repeatable and consistent. And
then they go out into the field and test a representative sample of North
Americans. And then they find that amongst North American men and women, men
do score higher in those traits by meaningful measurements of "higher" (say
both a higher mean, and an asymmetric distribution shifted towards the higher
end).

Now, I'm not saying that that's true, nor do I want that to be true. But if it
-is- true, then it turns out people are right! Their intuition matches
reality. Now what? Maybe the problem is that its actually true, and we have to
dwelve into nature vs nurture and all that "good" stuff. And this is honestly
something we have to consider. Given the self-reinforcing nature of
society/cultural pressures, and the non-trivial possibility that there are
actual biological differences that will bias the traits of the genders, it's
actually possible that some sort of difference could be found.

B) Same thing as above regarding reliable tests, but the tests come out
negative. No meaningful differences between genders. Well then yes, we have a
problem.

~~~
Crito
I don't think that skill with chopsticks is a good comparison. Chopsticks are
an invention with an invention date and location that give them a very
tangible cultural association to this day.

The traits listed in the article are not skills with a certain tool, they are
more accurately described as personality traits. Men didn't invent and
popularize them. There is no inventor of self-reliance, that is something that
_anybody_ can exhibit. _(And even if we look at so called "traditional" gender
roles in society, how many single men raising children are there? How many
single women? Anyone saying that women cannot be self-reliant is delusional)._

If we want to stick with a _' skill with invention'_ analogy, why not plow? If
I told you that somebody was skilled with a plow, would you first guess that
they were Egyptian?

------
elchief
So I was editing OpenStreetMap the other day, because I wanted to fill in the
shops in my neighbourhood.

They have a feature where you can see all the editors that are near you. There
were dozens of them, and they were all men.

Why? What could possibly be preventing women from editing OpenStreetMap? Why
are men at the vanguard of this project? This project is good for society, and
I saw no women.

I was actually surprised, after the Wikipedia-is-dominated-by-men articles
from a few months ago. I expected that women would purposely be seeking out
opportunities to contribute in other areas.

In a few years when OpenStreetMap is larger, feminists will complain that
there aren't enough women editors, and that men are preventing them. But men
aren't preventing them.

When there's nothing preventing your group from doing something, and your
group is under-represented, it is your group's fault.

~~~
beat
Alternately, when you assume there's nothing preventing someone from doing
something, that doesn't mean there's nothing preventing it. First rule of
debugging should be to not walk in with a bunch of assumptions and jump to
conclusions based on them.

Start following out the logic of your concluding sentence, and it leads to
"groups of people are unsuccessful because they are lazy and/or stupid". Is
that really a conclusion you expect to reach, or that sounds right to you? If
not, then maybe your assumptions are flawed.

~~~
elchief
Two economists see a Ferrari. "I want one of those", says the first.
"Obviously not", says the other.

------
yummyfajitas
The article, like most following this formula, assume that because rewards are
not distributed among a sufficiently racially/sexually diverse group,
meritocracy must therefore be absent. They fail to account for the possibility
that merit might not be distributed in the manner that they think.

~~~
freefrancisco
In fact, a true meritocracy in a very competitive field is more likely to
exacerbate the differences that already exist in society and result in an
extremely uneven distribution. In a non-merit based industry uncle Bob can get
a top job for his 3 children, and his friend's children regardless of gender,
race, and any other characteristics. He can also appease reporters that
criticize the distribution of his company and hire more people in the less
represented populations to correct the problem. In a purely meritocratic field
uncle Bob has no influence, no control, and each of the kids has to fight his
or her way in. All uncle Bob can do is pay for the best education and the best
opportunities for his children to compete in the meritocracy. To the extent
that there are small inequalities among the population, those with the most
resources will prepare their kids best to compete, and those kids will be over
represented in the most competitive fields. The fact that the tech industry is
dominated by white males only indicates that it is very competitive, and that
white males historically have had a leg up in American society. A leg up that
the meritocracy is quickly erasing.

------
jraines
The war on the word "meritocracy" is just weird. You can just watch it bubble
up through twitter to large blogs, to wired.

The weird thing about it is the people who hate the word are arguing not
against the actual usage -- "people who demonstrate their merit get ahead" \--
but against the illiberal definition they've assigned to it: "people who have
inherent merit get ahead".

Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the valley, and if there really are a bunch
of young white males with the right "pedigree" who are getting money thrown at
them without having demonstrated any real merit, then I withdraw my objection.
However, if they're getting money for things that _you don 't think have
merit_, like the Nth photo sharing app, then I think it stands.

~~~
ForHackernews
> if there really are a bunch of young white males with the right "pedigree"
> who are getting money thrown at them without having demonstrated any real
> merit, then I withdraw my objection

That's exactly what happens. You are much, much more likely to get funded if
you're a young white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford
than if you're a black woman studying at Berkeley. Now, you can hand-wave
about connections, and entrepreneurial culture or what have you, but at some
level, that just reinforces the point.

~~~
crusso
So where is your data showing that?

~~~
ForHackernews
[http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-
capit...](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capital-
human-capital-report)

According to that report, 87% of funded founders are white; 92% of funded
founders are male.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You said: _You are much, much more likely to get funded if you 're a young
white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford than if you're a
black woman studying at Berkeley._

Your data does not show this. You'd need the denominators as well, you have
only the numerators.

------
memracom
My take on this, and I have spent some time in SV working at a startup in
Redwood City, is that SV does NOT attract the best and the brightest. Instead
it attracts a gaggle of me-too-ers who apply cargo cultism to ape the
successful companies. This actually has the effect of REDUCING innovation
because the startup culture is afraid to try new things, afraid to build on
something tried and tested in the MidWest or New York because they are
worshiping at the temple of Sandhill Road.

It is not just an issue with women (who the article quite rightly points out,
have a great track record of starting successful businesses) but it is also an
issue with age and with experience. SV often rejects people who are not young
enought purely for ageist reasons but it also rejects those who are too
experienced, too educated. The kind of people that built NASA are persona non
grata in SV.

There are still some smart people coming out of SV because of Stanford and UC
Berkeley being there, but if those two schools moved away, the whole house of
cards would collapse.

------
nawitus
>Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to
describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”,
“assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”,
“competitive”, and “ambitious”.

What a load of feminist rubbish on the front page.

------
FD3SA
I agree with most of what this article is saying, but the existence of YC is a
perfect counter-argument. Although I've disagreed with PG regarding his
opinions on "Zuckerberg-likeness" being important in founders, I know that YC
selects for merit above all else.

How do I know this? Because PG has stated many times that he is excited about
founders from the University of Waterloo in Canada, which used to be unknown
on the international level. Clearly, after having met some incredibly talented
founders, the YC team has calibrated its "prestige" ranking to match their
observations based upon UW founder success.

To me, this is as close as one can get to a merit based system. Hire based on
reputation, but adjust your reputation based upon the data you collect in real
time. And most importantly, give everyone a fair chance. Never disqualify
anyone preemptively without viewing their application.

Furthermore, as far as VCs are involved, there can be no better stamp on your
resume than having gone through a program like YC.

Now, the counterpoint to all this is that, ideally, you should be able to
crowd source/bootstrap this whole thing as a solo founder because you have
merit. I think we are definitely moving in that direction, but some ventures
will always be more capital intensive in terms of burn rate. As such,
incubators and VCs will still be the "safe" path for fast growing and/or very
ambitious companies.

~~~
alanctgardner2
Waterloo has been prestigious for at least 5 years (when I was applying it was
among the hardest Canadian universities to get into, and it was already
globally recognized). The only thing that has changed is more VC money, and
more startup incubators, drawing the interest of progressively larger
institutions.

I think the whole "meritocratic" argument is stupid. But it's worth pointing
out that Waterloo is a self-fulfilling prophecy: a lot of startups are being
founded because a lot of support and infrastructure is being thrown at the
students. Whether the students are more suitable than others is anyone's
guess, but they're in the right place at the right time (and they can afford
the tuition).

~~~
Crito
Whether or not Waterloo is a self-fulfilling prophecy, after having
professional experience with Waterloo graduates, I cannot help but pay
attention when Waterloo vouches for somebodies merit.

Whether Waterloo is _making_ merit, or merely distilling it out of the general
population isn't really important in this case.

------
known
I think it's
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy)

------
crusso
_The myth is that anyone can come from anywhere and achieve great success in
Silicon Valley if they are skilled. It holds that those who “make it” do so
due to their excellent ideas and ability, because the tech scene is a
meritocracy where what you do, not who you are, matters._

Thus is the straw man constructed. The dismantling of that poor fellah is
absolutely breathtaking to behold. He had it coming.

Who actually makes absolute claims like those except for in a feel good, keep
your glass half full if you want to succeed kind of a way?

------
johngalt
Anyone writing an article like this should also write what would change their
opinions and a plan to fix it. Imagine you've won me over completely and SV is
an elitist boy's club. Now what do we do to change it? When is your standard
met? Of course defining those views would be harder to defend. It's much
easier to have arbitrary standards of fairness and point out how others don't
live up to it.

------
Kurtz79
I don't agree with many of the author's assumptions (do most people working at
startups in SV really think that their web/mobile app will "change the world"?
do everybody in SV think that tech entrepreneurship is a solution to
everything ?).

I would say that most people just want to work on something they like, having
an alternative lifestyle to a 9-5 job and possibly taking the chance of making
it big.

I agree that there is a excessively romatic view in some circles, but is it
the real representation of what people in SV think ? Or is it the most
appealing view for the media ?

Regardless, some points are valid. The fact that most (all?) entrepreneurs
come from middle/upper class rings true, and the "white male" argument as well
(although less so, imho).

But to the credit of tech entrepreneurship, there ARE proyects that are
helping to close the gap, offering education to everybody, I think about
Khan's Academy, Coursera, Udacity...

I think it's too convenient to classify tech entrepreneurs as a single group,
with the same vision and ideals.

------
avifreedman
Effort does not correlate exactly with results, but the chances of success are
high if one tries and is capable.

In both tech and hustle, it's easier with wealth, privilege, connections,
luck, and/or friends.

But large swaths of tech and hacking can be done on a $200 netbook or a lab of
$100 used notebooks.

The hustle part... That's easier if you have hustle. If you are a geek, make a
tool that's needed and sell it to another geek.

I've seen male, female, black, white, mongrel, rich, poor, and those with role
models and without success at tech and business. It's harder without but still
possible.

And I think SV may indeed be the best place in the country to succeed in - in
gambling terms, the result converges faster with the expected value given
effort and application.

Particularly (in my opinion) because past failures are discounted and
companies, especially startups, are willing to give startups a try without as
much suspicion.

------
altoz
tl;dr silicon valley isn't the liberal utopia and therefore not a meritocracy.

~~~
ars_technician
liberals don't believe in meritocracies. They value labor and the 'effort' put
into something. i.e. someone who dug ditches all day should receive more
compensation than someone who wrote code for 2 hours.

~~~
bruceb
Yeah those damn liberals. I totally heard Obama say ditch diggers should have
offices in SV with foozball tables and fancy chairs and coders should be paid
minimum wage.

~~~
ars_technician
What are you talking about? If you don't have anything intelligent to add to
the conversation, don't post a comment. Learn about what Jon Stewart and
others that follow Marxist theory mean when they refer to the value of labor
being the most important thing:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value)

------
kumarski
I look at companies like Everpix with users, revenue, and growth and then
companies like Albumatic.

Albumatic raised 4.1 million dollars and pivoted 3 months later.

Everpix was building a product that users loved and they had the trajectory to
be great.

One question we must ask is: "What do we define as merit in silicon valley?"

~~~
kumarski
Additionally, while it is far from optimal, I do believe we(other than Israel)
have the best systemic distribution of capital to companies.

------
dnautics
here is the problem with the concept of "meritocracy". What constitutes
"merit"? And if you have two orthogonal, meritorious qualities, which is more
deserving of advancement, one who is 100%A, 0%B? Or another who is 0%A, 100%B?
Who gets to decide?

------
kazagistar
Not sure when it became ok to call something a myth without emperical
evidence.

~~~
jes5199
The definition of a myth is that there's no evidence!

------
brosco45
It's who you know, not what you know.

------
nawitus
Things are nuanced rather than binary.

------
jpeg_hero
Pretty vapid.

Author doesn't seem to be that knowledgable on the valley.

~~~
ritchiea
I'm really interested in this kind of sentiment. Why do you feel so certain SV
is a meritocracy?

~~~
sanskritabelt
People in SV who have some success want it to be a meritocracy so they can
feel that they succeeded on their own internal merit.

------
benched
Nothing that people do could possibly be a meritocracy, because people are
fucks. In fact, every social problem is easily explained by the fact that
people are fucks. Q.E.D.

