
Opinion: Meritocracy in Silicon Valley a worthy goal but not a reality - iProject
http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/20/opinion-meritocracy-in-silicon-valley-a-worthy-goal-but-not-a-reality/
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GuiA
<meta>

>Wouldn’t it be great if the hottest deals were done in the nursing mothers’
lounge as often as they were done on the golf course?

Who plays golf in Silicon Valley? The only course I'm aware of belongs to
Stanford, and only some students/professors/old people ever go there.

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shrughes
Hello? There's Palo Alto, Shoreline, Sunnyvale, Sunken Gardens, Santa Clara,
just to name a few east of El Camino. This place has the second-best year-
round golfing weather in the country.

Edit: Also the U.S. Open was held this year at a course in San Francisco.

~~~
GuiA
Ha, the more you know. Thanks for the info!

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azylman
_while 60% of men in start-ups believe diverse teams are better at innovation
and problem-solving, only 41% would be in favor of a companywide hiring
practice to increase diversity.

Really?

If 60% believed, for example, that knowing how to code made for better hires,
would only 41% be in favor of hiring people who know how to code?_

Those are... not the same thing at all. That is an extremely flawed analogy.

The survey is taking about what makes for a good TEAM - further, it's only
part of what makes a good team - one factor of many. You don't hire a team,
however, you hire an individual.

The comparison that she draws is significantly more black and white: "Person A
is strictly a better hire than person B, but we're hiring person B."

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j_baker
_(CNN) – I look forward to the day when a pregnant engineer becoming CEO of a
major tech company isn’t news._

I'm always skeptical of meta-Journalism. To me, this translates into "Major
media outlet criticizes major media outlets (itself included)".

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scott_w
Does racial/gender diversity really make your business better? Actively
preventing diversity can clearly be negative e.g. refusing to hire women, but
blindly promoting diversity for the sake of it can be just as bad.

I would be interested in seeing the questionnaire. The article frames the
question in a way that could easily mean "Should companies have a diverse
range of skills in their workforce?" which most people would answer positively
to. Asking whether they should try to hire people with diverse skill sets
could elicit more divided responses.

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jaems33
What's interesting to me is that there are clearly a lot of Asians who study
engineering/comp-sci at excellent North American schools (let alone schools
around the world), yet very few represent CTOs/CEOs/execs of tech
startups/companies on this continent. Tony Hsieh and Jerry Yang are literally
the only guys I can think of in the U.S., while Google does have a number of
Indians on their leadership committee.

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redthrowaway
Meritocracy is the reality in _every_ field. The problem is that people
incorrectly define merit.

If I'm a developer who gets promoted to architect because I'm dating the boss'
niece, I've exploited my social skills and have reaped the benefits. People
tend to naively assume that the only skills that matter are those directly
related to the job at hand. This is false.

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confluence
Meritocracy is bullshit. End of story.

It is a useful theoretical concept that has absolutely no grounding in the
reality of human incentive structures, randomness and extreme path dependence.
Meritocracy can only exist if all humans are equal - as in perfect clones of
each other - prepared in the exact same way, at the exact same time.

 _Given the proposition that 'a persons life prospects should not be decided
by factors outside of their control or for which a person cannot claim
personal credit' (i.e social status, inherited wealth, race and other
accidents of birth) a meritocracy proposes a system where people are rewarded
based on their efforts, and if everyone can start on equal footing with the
same opportunity to advance, then the results are just. However, some studies
have shown that even our motivation, work ethic and conscientious drive is in
fact outside of our control and can be affected by such arbitrary factors such
as birth order. Children who are first in birth order are more likely to be
hard working. Therefore, a system which rewards effort in this way is not
just, because effort and hard work is not something we can claim credit for._

\-- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy>

Check and mate.

People continually say they are for equality of opportunity and not for
outcome (bullshit!). That is impossible.

Hence we modify the outcomes (welfare/taxes/public goods/roads/sewers/national
defence etc.) to mitigate the messier parts of humanity and stabilize
societies from uprisings and violence. If the people don't eat bread - the
people get angry - and heads roll. Just ask the French!

Meritocracy began its life in an essay parodying the self-same concept that
brought its name into existence.

 _Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term meritocracy was
first coined by British politician and sociologist, Michael Young in his 1958
satirical essay, "The Rise of the Meritocracy"_

\-- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy>

It is such a ridiculous concept I have no idea why humans believe it. Actually
I do - it's called the Just-world hypothesis
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis>) - a systematic and
problematic cognitive bias seen throughout human culture - Karma/Santa
Claus/Heaven-Hell/Justice systems and many others I am sure. It is a
derivative of the fundamental attribution error
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>).

Meritocracy is bullshit. Always has been - always will be.

Along with a ton of other systems/ideas/thoughts that I won't go into to avoid
unnecessary down votes and the brutal thought pain I might cause others :D.

In the words of sociologist Laurie Taylor:

 _“The hideous thing about meritocracy is it tells you that if you’ve given
life your all and haven’t got to the top you’re thick or stupid. Previously,
at least, you could always just blame the class system.”_

\-- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy>

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cdi
Good straw man here. It looks like you think that meritocracy is some kind of
moral theory of what is just. It's not. It's an approach to selecting people
for the task. And it works. Universities are mostly meritocratic. Or at least
should be.

Personally, I hear about meritocracy not from people who want more just
society for all, but from people who hate the weak and want more just society
for themselves. "The Weak" are entitled to their opinion about their
entitlement, and could pressure system to get what they want. But meritocracy
works. Modern civilization is built on it.

