
Ask HN: Why the sudden hate towards meritocracy in tech? - johnvic
I&#x27;m detecting a lot of hostility towards it which for me makes no sense since meritocracy means that its not the <i>person</i> who is part of a certain group, has friends in the right places or is super good at networking who gets ahead but the <i>person</i> who is the best at their actual work, writes the best code and shows up with actual results.<p>How is meritocracy unfair? how is not the best system for this industry? so far all the arguments I heard against it were convoluted and unconvincing.<p>PS: I&#x27;m using a new account because I lurk most of the time and couldn&#x27;t find the pass to my old one.<p><i>Edited to avoid redundant answers</i>
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stray
You're really opening a can of worms...

Of course meritocracy is not unfair. And of course it is the best system.

But there is a very strong, powerful group of people who judge fairness not in
terms of opportunity -- but in terms of outcome.

Such people cannot accept that the gender/race/etc identities of those who
produce the most meritorious work may not match their idea of a fair outcome
-- therefore, the game must be rigged.

That if the winners aren't acceptably diverse -- it can only be because of the
invisible hand of multiple systems of oppression.

You correctly believe that a person's work should be judged purely on merit
with no consideration of the attributes of the person who created it.

The zeitgeist believes that the _only_ things that matter are the attributes
of the person -- and that there must always be equal outcomes for every
category they can divide people into -- regardless of the content of their
character or the value of their works.

I personally believe we should do everything we possibly can to ensure some
baseline level of opportunity to everybody -- and accept that what people do
with that opportunity is up to them.

~~~
cauterized
Conversely, there is a large group of people who judge merit only in terms of
outcome, without taking into account that two people of equal merit may have
unequal outcomes due to unequal opportunity (or the person with greater merit
at even have a lesser outcome).

~~~
johnvic
I agree but you will never be able to have a perfectly level field, I had
friends whose parents were already in IT and thus learned to program years
before I did which gave them a substantial advantage, but how do you solve
that?.

~~~
cauterized
I mean more that you can't judge someone's merit based solely or even
primarily on where they end up in life.

------
PaulHoule
The trouble is that the meritocracy is a lie. If you have connected and rich
parents you can practice many forms of "achievement laundering" that make it
look like you did itself, in fact you might believe you did do it yourself
thus have a sense of entitlement, no sense of empathy for others, etc.

There is not just one way of keeping score. My in-laws had neighbors who were
filthy rich but the wife rolled her escalade while driving drunk and used
connections to avoid prosecution. When it all fell apart they did massive
damage to their luxury house (poured concrete down the drains, etc.) To spite
the bank.

At one time some people might think they were winners but somebody else would
say they are a sorry excuse for human beings.

When it comes to code or other creative works, same thing. I don't know who is
a better programmer. I know a guy who writes optimization code in C++ put have
him make a front end app and he will actively resist doing anything right
because he buys into faddish ideas in a cargo cult way and won't listen to
anybody else.

Similarly some people are better at claiming credit for what their team does
than others. When I look at a good team I don't think one person is
necessarily better than the others but rather they have different skills,
attitudes and strengths so the whole can accomplish more than they can on
their own.

And there is luck.

The success of sv for instance has a lot to do with the world having places
where people can afford to have and educate children, something only mark
zuckerberg can do in Palo alto. If the whole world was like sv there would be
no young people to provide a labor force, etc.

Look how some people think don trump is a great businessman and others think
he sucks. Or how a book or other creative work can be viewed in an entirely
different way decades after it comes out.

The best sysadmin I ever worked with had mediocre technical skills but she
knew how to get help from the team and vendors, was tenacious and protective
and had a skill set which was complimentary to myself or the rest of the team.
You could not honestly say that she was better than me or I was better than
her but I learned a huge amount working with here and I am better today for
working with here.

~~~
angersock

      I don't know who is a better programmer. 
    

With respect, if you aren't willing to take a stand on what does and does not
qualify somebody, you are _by definition_ unable to comment meaningfully on
the concept of a meritocracy.

You list a lot of examples here that are basically red herrings or are
completely unrelated to the discussion of what is and is not a meritocracy--
your bringing up of books, for example, which are not capable of having merit
as they are not people.

~~~
PaulHoule
Isn't the merit of an author the sum of the merit of that author's books? (or
something like that)

------
0xcde4c3db
> how is not the best system for this industry

Mostly because we're terrible at actually implementing it, but _phenomenal_ at
fooling ourselves into believing that we've implemented it.

------
DanBC
Because it's usually not meritocracy, but "you look like me".

As soon as you add bias-cancelling features you notice changes, which suggests
that while merit played some part it wasn't the only, or most important,
thing.

For years orchestras claimed to be meritocracies. As soon as they started
binded auditions they saw more women being hired. We see similar results with
people sending identical -apart from the name- resumes for job applications.
The male names see more replies.

~~~
stray
So then a meritocracy _is_ the solution -- and putting measures in place to
ensure that irrelevant information is withheld from decision makers is proven
(at least in orchestras) to result in more equitable outcomes.

~~~
DanBC
A true meritocracy is hard to achieve, and it's only a partial solution to a
narrow part of the problem.

An orchestra putting up screens only fixes the problem for people who manage
to get to audition; you still need to fix the conservatories, and the schools,
so that you get enough people to get to audition.

And then once a person's got in you need to recognise that some people are
going to work less hours - women may have children; someone with caring
responsibilities may need to attend hospital with their loved one; someone
with a disability may need to attend treatment for themselves. Some people see
this as merit (time off means less merit), others see it as irrelevant
information.

Sure, if you can achieve meritocracy it's probably a good thing. But you need
to be aware that very often when people say "this is a meritocracy" they mean
"we are subject to cognitive bias, but don't recognise that, and haven't taken
any steps to address it".

~~~
johnvic
You seem to be making the same mistake than people who say democracy isn't the
best system and yet you fail to understand that is the best system we have so
far. A meritocracy in tech would be the same case, its not perfect but it
would be far better than the current system were talented but socially
unskilled coders from any group are at a disadvantage.

~~~
DanBC
Maybe. But I think you're not realising that when people say "meritocracy"
they almost always use that to say their hiring practices do not exclude
people who aren't young white men with not disability, when in fact trivial
examination of their practices reveal plenty of exclusion.

People claim their system is a meritocracy when it clearly isn't, and so now
the term is poisoned.

------
carapace
There is a spectrum of power. During WWII the locus of power finally
transitioned from raw destructive power (which reached its ultimate form in
the Atomic Bomb) to Metis, that quality that in its lesser form we call
cunning, and which develops into cleverness, then intelligence, and finally
Wisdom. (There is a discontinuity between intelligence and wisdom.) The
physical form of Metis is the Turing Machine, the Universal Machine. (That
other great monster child of the war.) Those that are most capable and driven
master this media and are at this very moment driving forward the "cutting
edge" of evolution on the world. They are not obvious, you have not heard
their names. These unknown masters rule the world merely as a side-effect of
their total obsession to seek Truth. This, we call "Meritocracy."

------
sharemywin
you proved your counter answer. when you have humans make decisions you get
bias. "his", "guy" etc. You've already assumed it's a guy. or at least
discouraged most women from bothering to apply. meritocratic would great if it
were achievable.

~~~
johnvic
That's ridiculous, I'm a minority and I don't feel discouraged because they
show a white guy in an ad for a job, I'm not going to choose some other
company just because they put an afro-latino person like myself in the ad.

~~~
sharemywin
I'm just trying to point out that sexism, racism, ageism are so ingrained in
our culture we don't even notice we're doing it half the time. As well as a
million other biases. so when you checked 3 instead of 4 on that performance
review or selected candidate A over B was it 100% objective. Probably not so
stop acting like it was. Maybe my wife pissed me off today and everyone gets
an unconscious -1 on their review. Should we strive to get there absolutely
but it's a perfection that's impossible to achieve.

------
DonJuanAny
It'll only work if the review process is fair and executed by competent
individuals. To share one of my last reviews, after exceeding expectations, my
reviewer assessed: "...but I expected you to exceed expectations!".

------
angersock
So, the first problem is, what is a meritocracy?

In Young's original 1958 formulation, we get:

    
    
      "merit is equated with intelligence-plus-effort, its 
      possessors are identified at an early age and selected
      for appropriate intensive education, and there is an 
      obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and 
      qualifications."
    

That's clearly not how it is actually used today, but people will still use
the term's origins as some proof of original sin. Napolean's definition is a
bit better (and older!):

    
    
      the tools to him that can handle them.
    

A modern definition, and one I think all of us here can probably agree is
congruent with the spirit most of us use it in, is:

    
    
      A process of governance by which the authority of people 
      is weighted in direct proportion to their demonstrated 
      competence and ability.
    

_In theory_ , such a system is clearly the most reasonable--after all, why
wouldn't we defer to people that know the most or that have the best track
record?

And here's where things get murky.

The big issue is that the "track record" is very much subject to the whimns of
charisma and reality distortion. Steve Jobs was objectively a liar, a
narcissist, abusive, a very bad manager (at least until much later), and a bad
father. And yet, he would still be promoted under any modern notion of
meritocracy, because he did have the critical skill of conning a bunch of
folks into thinking he was actually worth following.

A more honest definition of meritocracy might be:

    
    
      A process of governance by which the authority of people 
      is weighted in direct proportion to their perceived 
      competence and ability.
    

Noting the change of one word, suddenly the system is seen as a sham: all it
takes is a person to appropriate the accomplishments of one other person, and
suddenly they have access to more political capital, which they can use to
take credit for others' accomplishments (like Banzi seems to have done with
Arduino), and thus unlocking still further capital, and so on, and so forth.

This isn't as likely to happen in small groups with equal distributions of
skills: at such a stage, perception and demonstration of abilities are nearly
the same. As a group grows and specializes, however, the gap between
perception and demonstration can widen as people suddenly are uncomfortable or
unable to recognize when somebody is getting undue merit.

Orthogonal to all this is the question of diversity and of privilege, which is
discussed by a sibling commenter stray. There's a deal more to unpack there.

~~~
johnvic
I think the title makes it very clear I'm strictly talking about the tech
industry here, I can't say meritocracy is the best for _all_ industries, let
alone as a form of governance.

>In Young's original 1958 formulation

I'm using the modern/current idea of meritocracy, I know it meant other things
in the past but bringing that out is like racists talking about some event in
the past to say "certain people" should be kept aside in case they do it
again.

>And yet, he would still be promoted under any modern notion of meritocracy,
because he did have the critical skill of conning a bunch of folks into
thinking he was actually worth following.

Not a fan of jobs but I think that what worked for him because he arrived at a
company that had no future and so not a lot of people wanted to challenge him
to be the captain of a sinking ship. And his success was the result of
consumers who as always care little about who makes their products, not
meritocracy.

Anyway, I hope you didn't write this from an apple product...

>all it takes is a person to appropriate the accomplishments of one other
person, and suddenly they have access to more political capital

That is what we currently have, and its not a meritocracy

