
The Meritocracy Trap - pilsnerbaridi
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/markovits-meritocracy.html
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seibelj
Maybe my experience is totally unique, but when I hire someone who isn’t fresh
out of college, I only care about experience / interview skills / references.
I give someone _bonus points_ if they come from a no-name school and still
wind up at the top of their game. I’ve also noticed that the best
entrepreneurs I’ve worked for have come from no-name schools.

It’s almost like industries that are more focused on skills don’t give a shit
about what school you went to! It’s always the capped jobs (law, medicine,
accounting) that arbitrarily limit who can work in the industry that care most
about prestige labels.

~~~
solidsnack9000
The elite is small. The companies engaging in practices like only hiring from
Stanford CS, only hiring from Berkeley, and only hiring one ethnic group (!)
from Stanford are engaging in self-limiting behaviour, as far as head count
goes; but their command of capital is high.

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peferron
Which companies are you talking about?

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mdorazio
Can't speak for the parent comment, but for example back when I was in college
doing recruiting, the big management consulting firms only recruited at and
hired from specific schools (not mine).

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brilee
This article conflates many different definitions of elite: top quintile (20%)
is mentioned at one point; super-elite colleges (<1%) is mentioned at another
point; and superstar performers are probably <0.1%. I'm not sure it's saying
anything useful beyond just generally ranting about our obsession with
prestige.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I’m likely a member of the top quintile but the gulf between people like me
and the super elite at HYPSM seems absolutely massive - I wonder if it’s an
exponential difference at some point.

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lacker
This is a weird conflating of tech companies and universities. At the
beginning:

 _Exclusive meritocracy exists at the super-elite universities and at the
industries that draw the bulk of their employees from them — Wall Street, Big
Law, medicine and tech._

Okay, I can believe that both tech companies and universities have an
"exclusive meritocracy" attitude. But later:

 _In the exclusive meritocracy, prestige is defined by how many people you can
reject._

No, that doesn't sound right at all. Nobody cares what percent of applicants
Amazon or Google rejects. They get a lot more prestige from their market cap,
and from the huge amount of people using their products.

~~~
aortega
> In the exclusive meritocracy, prestige is defined by how many people you can
> reject.

This is borderline doublespeak. Is not about how many you reject, Its about
finding the best. Obviously you will have to reject the not-best, for that
particular task.

The way this is phrased reveals it as an obvious and clumsy attempt at social
engineering.

Edit: The best is defined as the optimum person to complete the required task.
The "best" is found by measuring his aptitude (tests, etc.).

~~~
arrrg
How is “the best” defined? Who defines who is “the best”?

How do we know that hiring “the best” is a valid concept to begin with if it’s
quite arbitrarily defined?

I think there is more behind those two words than you are willing to admit.
Appealing to hiring only “the best” appeals to our common sense, appeals to
simplicity, a simplicity that simply does not exist at all. There is more to
it than it just being “the best”.

And I’m not talking about out there conspiracies and evil intent. I do not
think that plays any meaningful role, and it does not have to for “the best”
being more complex than you think.

~~~
aortega
> There is more to it than it just being “the best”.

No, there is no more to it. It's a trivial concept. If you think otherwise,
then explain.

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arrrg
How do you know/measure who is the best and what justifications do you have
for doing it that way?

You(and probably everyone else) have an intuitive understanding of what being
the best means and that’s alright, but it’s important to question our
underlying assumptions.

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solidsnack9000
_Similarly, last week I was in Wichita to observe the Kansas Leadership
Center. The center teaches people how to create social change and hopes to
saturate the state with better leaders. But the center doesn’t focus on
traditional “leaders.” Its mantra is: “Leadership is an activity, not a
position. Anyone can lead, anytime, anywhere.” The atmosphere is one of
radical inclusion. The enrollees I met included business leaders, teachers,
line workers and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities._

Radical inclusion may not be the right away to describe this. It makes it
sound like a new idea.

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lordnacho
> Parents in the exclusive meritocracy raise their kids to be fit fighters
> within it. Markovits calculates how much affluent parents invest on their
> kids’ human capital, over and above what middle-class parents can afford to
> invest. He concludes that affluent parents invest $10 million more per
> child.

$10M investment per child? How is that possible? Even top boarding schools and
private US universities would not add up to that amount. You could hire
several teachers full time for your kid and it wouldn't get that high.

~~~
dredmorbius
Private school tuition, starting with preschool at $15k/yr x 2 yrs, elementary
at $25k x 7 years, middle & high school at $60k x 6 years, 13 years of
"enrichment" at $9k/yr, and undergrad and graduate school at $90k/yr for 4-11
years.

~~~
lordnacho
Doesn't add up to 10M. Or is that your point?

~~~
dredmorbius
Just quoting the reference from the book.

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lrg
The university I attend is considered moderately competitive (~35% acceptance
rate). Each year since the year I was admitted it has only gotten more
difficult to receive automatic admission (top percentile students). The highly
coveted classes at this university are reserved for students that require the
course in order to graduate on time, because the demand is generally much
higher than the supply of professors to fulfill that demand. This means you
cannot take relevant courses across departments. I get the impression that
these "elite" universities are busting at the seams and can barely cater to
the influx of students they are receiving each year.

~~~
throway-
Does it happen to be a certain school in Canada? Or California?

~~~
lrg
Texas

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jillesvangurp
There's a small elite that is born into wealth, good education and access to
more wealth that feels entitled to this wealth. And there's a large growing
underclass of people that mostly can only dream about any of that no matter
how hard they work.

That's not a meritocracy but feudalism.

~~~
aortega
>That's not a meritocracy but feudalism.

Exactly, there isn't any merit about being born with wealth. They are bending
the meaning of the word Meritocracy.

Often, the wealthy can get better trained and have more time and resources and
they end up being the best candidate for some projects, product of the
advantage they had.

This doesn't negate the fact that they are still the best and if you want to
get shit done right, you have to hire them. Anything else is charity.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Honestly that idea sounds absolutely un-American to me. Those with “merit”
design the systems that define “merit” to benefit themselves.

This should not occur in a society uniquely positioned as one that emphasizes
social and class mobility.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Given parents’ instincts and vested interest to support their children in any
way they can, it’s inevitable. The only solution I can see is keep improving
access to education and stable home lives for the others to ensure they don’t
fall further and further behind

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patientplatypus
When only the top n% are allowed to "win" a seat at the table that comes with
the implicit assumption that there isn't enough to go around. That might be ok
when you "win" a fancier car or nicer clothes, not when you "win" the right to
child care and medicine. And yet here we are.

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TrackerFF
One thing I've noticed in a lot of schools abroad, including US, is that one
can apply for as many schools as you please. Where I live, you can only apply
for 5 schools / programs, and that's it.

I feel that with unlimited applications, you heavily inflate the rejection
rate - anyone can apply to Harvard just for the sake of it, even though it's
completely unrealistic.

For schools, it's a great PR tool - as rejection rate is directly tied to the
elite and prestige of a school; But only in context, of course.

Many cashier jobs get something like 10 times more applicants pr position than
the most prestigious college spots or professional jobs, but you rarely hear
anything about that.

In fact, when I studied at a top university, they were conducting a internal
study on whether good math grades from HS worked as a good predictor of
success in college - and there turned out to be a relationship. Later on, one
proposal was to put more weight on specific grades like that, and then be more
lax on overall GPA - but this was quickly shot down because the "perceived
prestige" of said school could get hurt, if employers learned that future
students with lower overall GPA would get admitted, even though they had
stellar grades in the classes that mattered most.

But with that said, I can understand why prestigious companies want to hire
people from top schools and with top grades: It signals that the students are
willing to do anything for success, and are willing to work around the clock
to achieve something. After all, many have been doing this since they were
teenagers.

If you look at consulting, banking, law, etc. junior programs are basically
set up so that the workers will forego their private lives, and work 100 hour
weeks if needed. And they will do that, if you also entice them with a nice
bonus and attractive exit prospects.

Almost every investment banking analyst I've ever known, went into the analyst
program because of exit options (good business school, hedge funds and private
equity firms, etc.) .

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hotcrossbunny
Summarised conversation I had with my interviewer during a FAANG interview:

Me: So why do you work for FAANG company X? Interviewer: Mainly so that other
companies will take me seriously when I'm looking for my next gig

I appreciated the honesty, but disappointed that this was the honest response

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aortega
The optimum way to complete an activity or project is to hire the most skilled
people to do it. It's a simple fact, very easy to prove.

Media is spending a suspiciously big amount of money to try to disprove this
very simple fact.

~~~
akdas
The problem is how to measure that skill. For example, I've known very skilled
individuals who switched over to my industry later in life. They neither had
past experience, nor strong technical abilities when I first met them. But
what they did bring to the table was the ability to learn quickly, and after
investing in them, they were capable of delivering fantastic results.
Furthermore, even early on, they brought their experiences from other
industries with them, breaking up the group think that would have formed
without them.

Some companies believe the most skilled people are the ones who have
demonstrated certain technical abilities. Under this form of meritocracy, the
companies delude themselves into thinking they've hired the most skilled
people, but they haven't.

The inclusive meritocracy in the article solves that problem by expanding the
definition of skilled, and by investing in a more diverse group of
individuals. This results in more (in number) skilled people at the end of the
investment.

~~~
aortega
>The problem is how to measure that skill.

Then it's a testing/measurement problem, not a meritocracy problem.

> The inclusive meritocracy in the article solves that problem by expanding
> the definition of skilled, and by investing in a more diverse group of
> individuals. This results in more (in number) skilled people at the end of
> the investment.

There is no problem to solve. If you don't choose the best, you choose sub-
optimal personal. Also the definition of "inclusiveness" is ridiculous, as it
assumes that diversity means hiring different sex or race, but not diversity
of thoughts or culture.

In fact, it opposes different ideas, it's exactly the inverse of diversity.
It's a thought monoculture.

~~~
projektir
It IS a meritocracy problem. If you are unable to measure who has the most
merit, if you're not concerned with this problem, how can you possibly be
having a meritocracy?

Connections and the ability to play politics seem to be much more important
for getting to the top. Current systems, managers, etc., are just not setup to
evaluate skill from what I've seen, you have to sell yourself, which means
"ability to sell yourself" is how the system is stratified, and that's not
merit.

So when you say "the best", often what you get is "best at selling self",
which is not actually the best.

~~~
aortega
>So when you say "the best", often what you get is "best at selling self"

Then the test is wrong. Not meritocracy.

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dredmorbius
Though the concept doesn't seem to appear in Markovits's book, in his LSE
lecture this past May, he introduces (at about 50 minutes) the distinction
between "law takers" and "law makers". This creates an interesting parallel
between _monopolists_ and _political influence_.

In economics, in a competitive market, both buyers and sellers are _price
takers_. That is, the market sets the price, and buyers and sellers simply
determine their spending (or selling) decisions based on this. In a _monopoly_
market (or monopsony), the monopolist _is a price maker_. Total quantity is
still determined by the market, but the monopoly seller or monopsony buyer can
choose the price _which maximises their profits_. (Basic market theory, BTW,
but probably not widely known outside econ majors.) There is a specific
dynamic to this, and the power isn't unlimited, but it's a fundamental
difference between competitive, and monopolistic / ologopolistic markets.

On to law:

The poor, the proletariat, the masses, all but the non-elites and major
corporations, are _law takers_. The law, the rule of law, is a given. It may
be contested in court, but that's about the limit of it. The wealthy, the
elite, are _law makers_. Elite interests can, and do, specifically influence
law, legislators, executives, even courts and law enforcement, to an extent.
Rather than accepting law as a given, it becomes fungible. Also to an extent
within courts, where the wealthy can bring to bear vastly more legal talent
(much of it aimed at process complication, that is, increasing costs of
prosecution or civil suits), but very much in the case of policy and
legislation.

As mentioned, the idea turnes up 50 minutes into Daniel Markovits's LSE
lecture. This is based on _The Meritocracy Gap_ , though that doesn't seem to
include the concept itself.

As Markovits says, the wealthy can change the rules which make it easier for
them to both gain and hold wealth, in ways the non-wealthy cannot.

The Meritocracy Trap [Audio]. LSE: Public lectures and events

Duration: 1:31:17

Published: Wed, 8 May 2019 18:30:00 GMT

Episode:
[http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/pub...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=4685)

Media:
[https://media.rawvoice.com/lse_publiclecturesandevents/richm...](https://media.rawvoice.com/lse_publiclecturesandevents/richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publiclecturesandevents/20190508_1830_theMeritocracyTrap.mp3)
(MP3)

There's a book with a similar title, though I've yet to look at it in depth.
Based on related web searches, the term seems to come into currency about
2010-2011, so timing seems about right.

 _Non-State Actor Dynamics in International Law: From Law-Takers to Law-
Makers_ , by Cedric Ryngaert (2010)

[https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315598475](https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315598475)

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ryanj20021
tl;dr David Brooks is all about Arizona State University.

“Everything is on a mass scale. A.S.U.’s honors college alone is bigger than
Stanford’s entire undergraduate enrollment. It graduates more Jews than
Brandeis and more Muslims than Jews.”

~~~
shearskill
David Brooks is not a good writer, yet he has a column in the NYT.
Meritocracy. The end.

