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I can't help feel like including any discussion of the ultra-rich such as Gates as an example when discussing meritocracy confuses the question. That level of w

by mreome 8y ago

I can't help feel like including any discussion of the ultra-rich such as Gates as an example when discussing meritocracy confuses the question. That level of wealth and success relative to others can only possibly be achieved by luck, as there is no possible way one person's skill or merit can exceed that of his peers by 6 to 7 orders of magnitude. Basically, that kind of wealth is more like winning a lottery where their skills bought them a ticket. I suppose the question then becomes, could you still say there is a meritocracy if there are outliers who win the lotto? Do you discard those outliers and look at the general population, is the existence of such of outliers counter-evidence to meritocracy, or does the fact that the kind of "lottery" Gates won still required a high level of skill to even play mean it may to some degree support the idea of a meritocracy?

_nosaj 8y ago
I once saw a talk given by Gates where he attributed much of his wild success to timing (luck). In the early years of Microsoft there were no real software companies for them to complete with.
- YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
  IBM could have had (something like) Windows. They famously misunderstood that they commoditized themselves out of the whole-PC market, and the truly big players to remain would be those to achieve mastery in creation of the components of the market. Like Intel and CPUs, or Microsoft and software.
- repolfx 8y ago
  What kind of historical revisionism is this? Microsoft has always faced competent and well resourced competitors at every step of the way. Apple, IBM for consumer operating systems. Later on NeXTStep and BeOS. UNIX vendors for Windows Server. Lotus, WordPerfect for office suites. Borland, Sun for developer tools. PalmOS, then Nokia, Apple and Google for Windows Phone. Gates is being modest. Microsoft beat these companies again and again, and only partly through over-aggressive tactics. Mostly his competitors just didn't invest in the right things at the right times, or got distracted, or couldn't hire the right talent, or made other strategic mistakes. Gates wasn't perfect either but he was smart enough to make plenty of good decisions, and turn on a dime when he realised he'd made mistakes (e.g. the internet pivot). The idea that Gates isn't a good example of meritocracy is a strange one indeed. I can't help but think this sort of attack on "meritocracy" comes from SJWs who hate the idea that maybe the people at the top look the way they do because that's who deserves to be there!
  - PopeDotNinja 8y ago
    > What kind of historical revisionism is this? I'd guess it applies the initial deal Microsoft had with IBM to write DOS, along with keeping the rights to the IP. A whole lot of luck was involved: being in the right time at the right place, IBM focusing more on hardware, etc. I ran a business for a while, and I distinctly remember several key moments where I got super lucky. Eventually the business got big enough that less luck was required to make it on a daily basis.
  - andrekandre 8y ago
    what does the role of anti-trust and anti-competitive behavior from microsoft play in that narrative? maybe it’s more nuanced...
  - peterashford 8y ago
    "SJWs" is a pejorative not worthy of serious discussions. I'm sure you could make your point on its own merits without inventing strawmen to attack.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      SJW is not a pejorative, it's a descriptive term for people whose overriding concern is social justice, which they define as equitable outcomes, and whose concern is sufficiently great that they spent lots of time engaging in aggressive rhetoric and tactics ("warrioring"). Remember what happened to GitHub's rug that said "meritocracy" on it? Pictures of the rug reached a bunch of feminist forums and they then started demanding it be got rid of because if GitHub is a meritocracy then why isn't it full of women? They then kicked up such a stink that one of the first acts of the new CEO was to get rid of it - sending a rather powerful message to everyone else about who really runs the place. It's therefore an extremely relevant term for extremely serious discussions, which is why it crops up so much. There are many people who describe themselves is nearly identical words, such as "social justice activist". If everyone who used the term SJW started using SJA instead, rapidly you'd come to the view that SJA is also a pejorative, simply because so much discussion of these types of people is disapproving in nature.
    - 8y ago
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
Meritocracy is a thing that distinguishes between people who had the same opportunities. There are many people who had all the same opportunities as Gates but only one of them is Gates, because the other people who had the same opportunities made different choices. There are others who might have made the same choices but didn't have the same opportunities. Pretending that one or the other is sufficient on its own is folly. You need both. If you don't have the same opportunities then you can't be Gates no matter how hard you work, and if you don't work hard then you can't be Gates even if you had the same opportunities. Moreover, having fewer opportunities doesn't actually change much in the "what should I do" decision tree. If you have the same opportunities as Gates and you make the right decisions then you're a billionaire instead of a millionaire. If you have fewer opportunities then instead it's the difference between having a $140K/year job or a $40K/year job, but that is still a highly relevant difference in your life.
- mreome 8y ago
  I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. It seems to me that if "fewer opportunities doesn't actually change much in the 'what should I do' decision tree" then we are not living in a Meritocracy, as your saying the outcomes depend primary on the set of opportunities you either started with or achieved by chance, and no mater what skill is applied you have a limited "optimal" path and can not achieve more then that. I actually think I agree with that, while there are Meritocratic elements to the world we live in in that we get to apply skills to our choices, the significant limits to our individual "choice trees" caused by various social and economic factors rule out the possibility that we are living in what could be called a mostly Meritocratic system.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. That is just defining meritocracy in a way that causes it to be impossible. Some people are 5'0" and others are 6'6" and that is not a personal choice but it is also a relevant characteristic in the game of basketball. There are two ways out of that. One is to define merit as including things like genetics and upbringing, so Gates is meritorious because he went to good schools and his parents had the money to expose him to computer hardware at a time when it was very expensive etc. causing him to know about business and code. But that's reaching the point of tautology -- if you're successful you're meritorious because merit is defined as things that produce success. The other is to recognize opportunity as something separate from merit but still relevant to position. Some people never had the opportunity to go to medical school and so they can't be your doctor. Some people did have that opportunity, but didn't choose it, and they too can't be your doctor. This allows us to recognize that not everyone has the same opportunities -- and that it is not even possible for everyone have the same opportunities, even if there are ways to improve the opportunities for some people, because there is still no way to make 5'0" people 6'6" -- while at the same time recognizing that the person who did become a doctor/engineer/CEO/etc. did so at significant personal effort when other, similarly situated people did not.
AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity" (Seneca)
- mreome 8y ago
  But what determines when one meets opportunity? I feel like that statement is just saying that things are always partly meritocratic. Yes, you have to be skilled and prepared to take the best advantage of opportunities, but how does one get opportunities? Does one meet more/better opportunities because of skill and merit, or because of station and class of birth, or random chance? If the latter two outweigh the first, then I don't think we can say we really live in a Meritocracy.
povertyworld 8y ago
I stopped reading that article when he implied that Gates' wealth should be considered or measured in relation to programming skill. Debates about meritocracy are important, but starting from flawed frame like that made me not want to invest more time reading that particular author. If he wanted to compare Gates to other technology entrepreneurs, that might have been worthwhile, but implying that we don't live in a meritocracy because there are better programmers than Gates shows the author is not interested in a rigorous look at the issue. I wasn't surprised to see Bill Gates clickbait at the top of the Apple News app, but I was a little bummed to also see it on the top of HN. Then again, I still clicked it and commented on it, so mission accomplished for Fast Company I suppose.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I disagree. Comparing returns to labor productivity along a particular dimension (programming labor) is a useful framework for explaining that it’s clearly not a meritocracy. Obviously, as nearly any reader would grant, there are other dimensions like business acumen, network connections, market timing, etc., that matter hugely in the specific story of Bill Gates, and clearly the article does not have as a goal a desire to discuss all those different dimensions as much as discussing labor productivity. And that’s fine. Some essays may focus on one of these aspects or another. This one happens to be among the subset that focus on labor productivity, which is a valid and worthwhile subset of factors to spend an essay focusing on.
  - AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    An essay focusing on one side of things and conveniently omitting the other one is not an essay, it's propaganda. I'm afraid if we run a proper statistical analysis of programming labor vs. the result, we'll see a pretty strong correlation between the two. There will be outliers, but according to my personal (non-scientific) observation, "negative" outliers are extremely rare: I know very average software developers who raised to the top overtaking their smarter colleagues. I still have to see a great developer who due to the lack of opportunities cannot make ends meet.
jacquesm 8y ago
The bigger factor in Gates' wealth was his fathers wealth.
everdev 8y ago
> That level of wealth and success relative to others can only possibly be achieved by luck I bet if you were sitting next to Gates in the 80s and 90s and got to see how many decisions he had to make to achieve what we did, I'd doubt you'd it attribute it solely to luck. All successful businesses likely experience some form of luck, but you need to be in a position to take advantage of it and that comes from skill and hard work. I think people underestimate how difficult it is to create an industry like PCs or business software. After they're ubiquitous it's easy to look back and say "well of course, anyone could have done that", but the fact is other's were trying and failed or gave up or never started.
- mreome 8y ago
  I'm in no way attributing his achievements solely to luck. You say there were those who "were trying and failed" and those "gave up or never started." He had to have the skills and perseverance to not be in the last group, and the skills to make the choices that didn't lead to early failures. But there is a point at which the compounding effects of luck separates the successful from the ridiculously successful. If you re-rolled all the dice that defined the random chances and situational conditions in his life, I'd expect someone like Gates to come out reasonably successful in many cases. But he had to get one very specific set of roles to be where he is now, you'd have to re-roll forever for that set to come up again. And It's not unreasonable to think that there are a fair number of people out there who could achieve the same ridiculous level of success if you re-rolled their dice enough times.

by mreome 8y ago

_nosaj 8y ago

I once saw a talk given by Gates where he attributed much of his wild success to timing (luck). In the early years of Microsoft there were no real software companies for them to complete with.

YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
IBM could have had (something like) Windows. They famously misunderstood that they commoditized themselves out of the whole-PC market, and the truly big players to remain would be those to achieve mastery in creation of the components of the market. Like Intel and CPUs, or Microsoft and software.
repolfx 8y ago
What kind of historical revisionism is this? Microsoft has always faced competent and well resourced competitors at every step of the way. Apple, IBM for consumer operating systems. Later on NeXTStep and BeOS. UNIX vendors for Windows Server. Lotus, WordPerfect for office suites. Borland, Sun for developer tools. PalmOS, then Nokia, Apple and Google for Windows Phone. Gates is being modest. Microsoft beat these companies again and again, and only partly through over-aggressive tactics. Mostly his competitors just didn't invest in the right things at the right times, or got distracted, or couldn't hire the right talent, or made other strategic mistakes. Gates wasn't perfect either but he was smart enough to make plenty of good decisions, and turn on a dime when he realised he'd made mistakes (e.g. the internet pivot). The idea that Gates isn't a good example of meritocracy is a strange one indeed. I can't help but think this sort of attack on "meritocracy" comes from SJWs who hate the idea that maybe the people at the top look the way they do because that's who deserves to be there!
- PopeDotNinja 8y ago
  > What kind of historical revisionism is this? I'd guess it applies the initial deal Microsoft had with IBM to write DOS, along with keeping the rights to the IP. A whole lot of luck was involved: being in the right time at the right place, IBM focusing more on hardware, etc. I ran a business for a while, and I distinctly remember several key moments where I got super lucky. Eventually the business got big enough that less luck was required to make it on a daily basis.
- andrekandre 8y ago
  what does the role of anti-trust and anti-competitive behavior from microsoft play in that narrative? maybe it’s more nuanced...
- peterashford 8y ago
  "SJWs" is a pejorative not worthy of serious discussions. I'm sure you could make your point on its own merits without inventing strawmen to attack.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    SJW is not a pejorative, it's a descriptive term for people whose overriding concern is social justice, which they define as equitable outcomes, and whose concern is sufficiently great that they spent lots of time engaging in aggressive rhetoric and tactics ("warrioring"). Remember what happened to GitHub's rug that said "meritocracy" on it? Pictures of the rug reached a bunch of feminist forums and they then started demanding it be got rid of because if GitHub is a meritocracy then why isn't it full of women? They then kicked up such a stink that one of the first acts of the new CEO was to get rid of it - sending a rather powerful message to everyone else about who really runs the place. It's therefore an extremely relevant term for extremely serious discussions, which is why it crops up so much. There are many people who describe themselves is nearly identical words, such as "social justice activist". If everyone who used the term SJW started using SJA instead, rapidly you'd come to the view that SJA is also a pejorative, simply because so much discussion of these types of people is disapproving in nature.
  - 8y ago

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

Meritocracy is a thing that distinguishes between people who had the same opportunities. There are many people who had all the same opportunities as Gates but only one of them is Gates, because the other people who had the same opportunities made different choices. There are others who might have made the same choices but didn't have the same opportunities. Pretending that one or the other is sufficient on its own is folly. You need both. If you don't have the same opportunities then you can't be Gates no matter how hard you work, and if you don't work hard then you can't be Gates even if you had the same opportunities. Moreover, having fewer opportunities doesn't actually change much in the "what should I do" decision tree. If you have the same opportunities as Gates and you make the right decisions then you're a billionaire instead of a millionaire. If you have fewer opportunities then instead it's the difference between having a $140K/year job or a $40K/year job, but that is still a highly relevant difference in your life.

mreome 8y ago
I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. It seems to me that if "fewer opportunities doesn't actually change much in the 'what should I do' decision tree" then we are not living in a Meritocracy, as your saying the outcomes depend primary on the set of opportunities you either started with or achieved by chance, and no mater what skill is applied you have a limited "optimal" path and can not achieve more then that. I actually think I agree with that, while there are Meritocratic elements to the world we live in in that we get to apply skills to our choices, the significant limits to our individual "choice trees" caused by various social and economic factors rule out the possibility that we are living in what could be called a mostly Meritocratic system.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > I would disagree that Meritocracy only distinguishes between those with the same opportunities, and argue that a true Meritocracy can only exists when people are afforded generally the same opportunities. If everyone is playing with a different set of options or rules, success is inherently not based on skill, but at best on a combination of skill and the options/rules they were playing by. That is just defining meritocracy in a way that causes it to be impossible. Some people are 5'0" and others are 6'6" and that is not a personal choice but it is also a relevant characteristic in the game of basketball. There are two ways out of that. One is to define merit as including things like genetics and upbringing, so Gates is meritorious because he went to good schools and his parents had the money to expose him to computer hardware at a time when it was very expensive etc. causing him to know about business and code. But that's reaching the point of tautology -- if you're successful you're meritorious because merit is defined as things that produce success. The other is to recognize opportunity as something separate from merit but still relevant to position. Some people never had the opportunity to go to medical school and so they can't be your doctor. Some people did have that opportunity, but didn't choose it, and they too can't be your doctor. This allows us to recognize that not everyone has the same opportunities -- and that it is not even possible for everyone have the same opportunities, even if there are ways to improve the opportunities for some people, because there is still no way to make 5'0" people 6'6" -- while at the same time recognizing that the person who did become a doctor/engineer/CEO/etc. did so at significant personal effort when other, similarly situated people did not.

AlexTWithBeard 8y ago

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity" (Seneca)

mreome 8y ago
But what determines when one meets opportunity? I feel like that statement is just saying that things are always partly meritocratic. Yes, you have to be skilled and prepared to take the best advantage of opportunities, but how does one get opportunities? Does one meet more/better opportunities because of skill and merit, or because of station and class of birth, or random chance? If the latter two outweigh the first, then I don't think we can say we really live in a Meritocracy.

povertyworld 8y ago

I stopped reading that article when he implied that Gates' wealth should be considered or measured in relation to programming skill. Debates about meritocracy are important, but starting from flawed frame like that made me not want to invest more time reading that particular author. If he wanted to compare Gates to other technology entrepreneurs, that might have been worthwhile, but implying that we don't live in a meritocracy because there are better programmers than Gates shows the author is not interested in a rigorous look at the issue. I wasn't surprised to see Bill Gates clickbait at the top of the Apple News app, but I was a little bummed to also see it on the top of HN. Then again, I still clicked it and commented on it, so mission accomplished for Fast Company I suppose.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I disagree. Comparing returns to labor productivity along a particular dimension (programming labor) is a useful framework for explaining that it’s clearly not a meritocracy. Obviously, as nearly any reader would grant, there are other dimensions like business acumen, network connections, market timing, etc., that matter hugely in the specific story of Bill Gates, and clearly the article does not have as a goal a desire to discuss all those different dimensions as much as discussing labor productivity. And that’s fine. Some essays may focus on one of these aspects or another. This one happens to be among the subset that focus on labor productivity, which is a valid and worthwhile subset of factors to spend an essay focusing on.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  An essay focusing on one side of things and conveniently omitting the other one is not an essay, it's propaganda. I'm afraid if we run a proper statistical analysis of programming labor vs. the result, we'll see a pretty strong correlation between the two. There will be outliers, but according to my personal (non-scientific) observation, "negative" outliers are extremely rare: I know very average software developers who raised to the top overtaking their smarter colleagues. I still have to see a great developer who due to the lack of opportunities cannot make ends meet.

jacquesm 8y ago

The bigger factor in Gates' wealth was his fathers wealth.

everdev 8y ago

> That level of wealth and success relative to others can only possibly be achieved by luck I bet if you were sitting next to Gates in the 80s and 90s and got to see how many decisions he had to make to achieve what we did, I'd doubt you'd it attribute it solely to luck. All successful businesses likely experience some form of luck, but you need to be in a position to take advantage of it and that comes from skill and hard work. I think people underestimate how difficult it is to create an industry like PCs or business software. After they're ubiquitous it's easy to look back and say "well of course, anyone could have done that", but the fact is other's were trying and failed or gave up or never started.

mreome 8y ago
I'm in no way attributing his achievements solely to luck. You say there were those who "were trying and failed" and those "gave up or never started." He had to have the skills and perseverance to not be in the last group, and the skills to make the choices that didn't lead to early failures. But there is a point at which the compounding effects of luck separates the successful from the ridiculously successful. If you re-rolled all the dice that defined the random chances and situational conditions in his life, I'd expect someone like Gates to come out reasonably successful in many cases. But he had to get one very specific set of roles to be where he is now, you'd have to re-roll forever for that set to come up again. And It's not unreasonable to think that there are a fair number of people out there who could achieve the same ridiculous level of success if you re-rolled their dice enough times.