
Where meritocracy fails - draegtun
http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fails/
======
sliverstorm
Is 'merit' necessarily unrelated to 'privilege'?

Much of our talent and ability is not something we are born with; a
meritocracy based on _innate_ ability would be a mess- it would practically
boil down to ranking everyone based on their IQ. Instead, a meritocracy is
typically going to be based on _current_ ability, and isn't 'privilege' deeply
entwined with your ability?

It's not pretty or P-C, but it's not exactly confusing to me that someone with
more opportunities for schooling performs better in an environment labeled
'meritocratic'. It's not "Nature", it's "Nature AND Nurture".

~~~
selenamarie
Privilege isn’t just about money – it’s about a collection of gifts
individuals receive from society, regardless of merit.

Those gifts include but aren’t restricted to freedom, time and indulgence. And
to say that a person can _only_ contribute to an open source project if they
have equivalent freedom, time and indulgence from society as our very most
privileged members, is to exclude a great number of people – I’d say 99% of
people – who are capable and would be wonderful additions to our community.

So to address your question about privilege being entwined with ability: it is
dangerous to assume a relationship between the two. I choose to question my
assumptions about ability (because I know that I have biases!), because the
truth is that I have no idea about other people until they actually do
something. And even then, my understanding of someone else's abilities is
often limited to only what I directly observe.

Keeping that in mind opens up opportunities between people. And I prefer that
mindset to one that assumes a link between privilege with ability.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Could you be specific about what that "collection of gifts" is and how
Postgres/OSS needlessly excludes people based on these gifts?

~~~
selenamarie
I listed a few: freedom, time and indulgence. More specifically, the freedom
to pursue passion in life is often enabled by one's parents having enough
money and stability. Time is mostly about leisure time. Having a job that
supports work on open source is still not that common, so one is left with
figuring out how to do this on your own time - and that depends on you
actually having free time because you don't have kids, you only have one job,
and you have the background knowledge (socially, tools-wise and background
reading) necessary to participate.

So, that's how the whole world works, right? I am not saying that Postgres is
_unique_ here. I think we actually do a really great job. We have about _300_
contributors every year, and only about 20 committers. That's impressive and
shows how the contributors feel about our project. It is prestigious,
interesting and fun enough for them to send us their code even though we don't
give out commit access, and we subject everyone to a pretty difficult code
review.

That just goes to show that if you ask a lot from people, they like it and
come back for more. Or at least the people I want to be in a community with
like it. :)

I am bringing up _to my community_ that we could do a little better inside of
Postgres. We could take a closer look at how we operate, and find ways of
inviting people in that don't already fit our mold.

There isn't an easy solution to addressing privilege inside a community, at
all. But I was at a conference last week, and a couple people asked me to
write my thoughts down about meritocracy. It was not an easy thing for me to
do.. I already see a few de-railing comments about gender.

But I continue to get support for thinking and writing about this issue, and
ultimately finding more ways of getting more contributors. This is why I
continue to contribute, and why I took a moment to make a gentle criticism of
a community that I enjoy very much.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm confused. From your original post: _And to say that a person can only
contribute to an open source project if they have equivalent freedom, time and
indulgence from society as our very most privileged members, is to exclude a
great number of people – I’d say 99% of people – who are capable and would be
wonderful additions to our community._

This seems to postulate that OSS excludes 99% of people who are capable of
contributing good code. However:

 _...freedom, time and indulgence...the freedom to pursue passion in life is
often enabled by one's parents having enough money and stability. Time is
mostly about leisure time. Having a job that supports work on open source is
still not that common, so one is left with figuring out how to do this on your
own time - and that depends on you actually having free time because you don't
have kids, you only have one job, and you have the background knowledge
(socially, tools-wise and background reading) necessary to participate._

Now you are discussing people who don't have the free time or knowledge to
contribute good code. How would such people be a wonderful addition to a
community devoted to writing good code?

~~~
selenamarie
You've created a circular argument - if someone doesn't currently have free
time or knowledge, how could they ever write good code?

re: free time - I didn't suggest any particular solutions, because the point
of this exercise isn't for me to give everyone easy solutions to problems. But
I'll offer you one:

More companies could offer time to their employees to work on open source
projects. That's something the project itself can help lobby for, and can keep
in mind when soliciting help.

That's not a new idea. Many others have said it, and many companies implement
it.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I made no argument at all. I merely asked a question.

------
drblast
It's a logical error to look at the outcome of a process and draw conclusions
about it with no other supporting data. This error would be innocuous if it
wasn't the underlying cause of every inhuman prejudice we've spent the last
few centuries trying to rid ourselves of.

If I were to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to open-source
projects, it's obvious that women aren't capable of producing much valuable
code," the hacker news server would melt from the angry response.

But apparently it's ok to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to
Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy." Logically, however, these
statements are equally erroneous.

You can use this sort of pseudo-statistical handwaving to justify ANYTHING
that sounds remotely plausible. That's ignorant, and that sort of ignorance
should be opposed no matter the form.

~~~
capstone
There are exactly zero occurrences of the words "women" or "female" in the
article. The only reference to gender at all is a brief and completely
inconsequential mention of the fact that your typical Postgres hacker is,
among other things, male.

Yet somehow you end up debating the veracity of, "Since there are so few women
contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy", a
statement neither made verbatim nor in any way implied by the actual article.

Isn't it just a little crazy? Can a writer mention a simple fact without it
becoming _all_ about battle of the sexes?

~~~
aplusbi
I don't believe that drblast was trying to make this about a battle of the
sexes but was just using gender as an easily identifiable example.

The article states that Postgres isn't a meritocracy because the hackers
aren't from diverse backgrounds. drblast was attempting to show how this is a
logical fallacy - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse.

~~~
capstone
I think it's rather impractical to attempt to guess a stranger's intent.
Drblast responded to the article by quoting a hypothetical statement of his
own ("if I were to say X") and then quoting a supposed statement from the
article ("but apparently it's ok to say Y"). You can interpret that 10
different ways but why? Isn't it simpler to point out that the article never
made statement Y in the first place?

Incidentally, I find the point _you_ make - meritocracies aren't ipso facto
diverse - worthy of debate. However I don't believe it's the same point as the
parent.

------
arethuza
Here is an interesting article by the man who created the term "meritocracy"
as part of satirical work:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment>

An interesting quote, which I'm sure I've heard a few times in relation to the
recent banking crisis:

"If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that
their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve
whatever they can get"

[Edit: As far as I can this concern really applies to organizations like those
in the UK public sector where huge salaries are often justified based on
rather dubious "merit" - not because of any measure of the value delivered or
risks taken]

~~~
barrkel
You'd think anyone with merit would see the flaw in the logic: p implies q, q,
therefore p. Maybe the don't have as much as they think.

~~~
smanek
I think they see the logic as:

p iff q. q. therefore p.

which is a valid inference.

~~~
barrkel
No. They are trained to expect a reward for effort; they get rewards; and then
they think it's because of effort.

(Frankly, I think your misreading is a symptom of the same problem.)

------
iuguy
I spend time on the Technical Panel of a security standards body called
TigerScheme[1] which is very much a project to which people contribute free
time in a similar way to many open source projects (although TigerScheme isn't
an open source project, as it doesn't release code). I recently used the
phrase 'do-ocracy' to describe it. If you have the time, want to do it, run it
past the other people and if there are no objections within a reasonable time
frame, do it. Previously Tigerscheme suffered as volunteers wouldn't be
available in decision making. I believe this 'do-ocracy' approach has actually
enabled Tigerscheme to make decisions quicker and take better ownership of
actions.

[1] - <http://www.tigerscheme.org/>

~~~
noonespecial
I'm not very good at many things, but I'm comforted often by the fact that the
things I could do, and did, work better (by definition) than the things that
the better people could've done, and didn't.

------
gyardley
Surely the ability to write great code is closely linked to the ability to
earn an income in the top 1% of the world - which according to 'Global Rich
List' (lord knows if it's accurate) is around $50,000.

In a field where merit is translatable to wealth, a large proportion of
wealthy people in a subgroup points to more meritocracy, not less.

------
pmorici
The definition of "meritocracy" that the article provides isn't the dictionary
definition of the word; it's the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on
the topic where the opening paragraphs are talking about the historical
origination of the concept. The dictionary definition reads, "government or
the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability". The
Wikipedia article lists intelligence, credentials, and education as examples
of potential measures of merit but the particular measures of merit used in a
given meritocracy aren't inherent to the words definition.

Whether or not advancement in a meritocracy is correlated to privilege is a
function of what measures of merit are used not some innate property of
meritocracies in general. In the context of an open source project one would
hope it is a meritocracy of ideas where the merits being judged are something
like the quality of the algorithms and code.

Selena's wish to be more open to contributors that have less time to
contribute isn't a question of meritocracy it is one of organizational
culture; unless the merit on which they are judging people is the amount of
raw time they spend on the project vs. the quality of their contributed work.

~~~
selenamarie
Yeah, that's a really good point. I am talking about organizational culture.
More specifically - structure around participation.

But, at the same time, it seems people often conflate governance and power
with organizational culture. Is there a good reference for differentiating the
two?

------
zacharytelschow
"I don’t believe [meritocracy is] our strongest value, or quality as a
community. And, it’s not something that I think embodies what is awesome about
Postgres.

Our strongest quality is our ability to create great code."

Let's see... -great code -> merit -transparency -> code improvements (best
idea wins)

And frankly, the "privileged" people he's talking about contributing to
Postgres make the money and lead the lives they do precisely due to their
merits as programmers.

Sounds an awful lot like an organization that promotes the best ideas and
gives power based on the merit of the people in it to me.

~~~
selenamarie
I'm a she, and you're leaving out all the things that led to becoming a
programmer. Which largely had nothing to do with merit.

The point of the article isn't to discount the work involved in becoming
excellent, but to point out that the opportunity to do that work at all is a
privilege.

I don't particularly care if any one person changes their thinking about this.
My post was meant for my community, which is taking the issue of involvement
and its relation to privilege seriously.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...you're leaving out all the things that led to becoming a programmer. Which
largely had nothing to do with merit._

Is your objection to the idea of "merit" merely reductionism?

I.e., merit (as defined by ability and willingness to code) is comprised of a
combination of innate factors (genetic/environmental contributions to
intelligence and demeanor) and social privileges (access to education, etc)?
This is true. So what?

Ultimately, merit is merely a particular arrangement of atoms. It's hard to
see how this reduction is useful.

~~~
msbarnett
Most people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics
and social privileges with merit.

Being born affluent, white, and male are the three factors which for the last
couple of decades have made you statistically most likely to have owned your
own computer prior to college. Because most people don't consider males to
have more merit than females, or white people to be more meritorious than
minority groups, declaring programming a meritocracy ignores and conceals
these important factors in the makeup of the "programmers" social group.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Most people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of
genetics and social privileges with merit._

No one is doing this. I am defining "merit" to be the ability/willingness to
write good code.

If the universe has decided to allocate merit (defined as above) to
white/asian males, so be it. That doesn't mean that my definition of merit is
flawed. It merely means that the universe has not behaved in the manner you
wish it did.

------
edw
The crux of what people mean when they refer to meritocratic systems or
organizations has nothing to do with the people in the organization or is
related only tangentially to people. What they really mean is that the best
_ideas_ win, that the people in the system operate in accordance with a set of
values that place the excellence of the end product above the egos of the
people, especially the popular or powerful people. Do we have a suitable word
to use in place of “meritocracy” and friends?

------
jdp23
for those thinking about shaping communities, this is a key takeaway: "What we
have to do is create structures that invite people to give what they can, when
they can give it." good advice for all of us!

