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> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech do

> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at politics are losing.

scarface74 7y ago
So do all tech companies have legal monopoly where they share revenues and where you have to enter a draft to get a job? Sports leagues have nothing to do with how most companies operate.
- eropple 7y ago
  Of course there's no monopoly. But tech companies are pretty happy to collude, both at an executive level (we've had court cases about this) and at the memetic "this is what we think about management" one, in order to work against workers' interests. We, too, are allowed to work together to combat this. Wage suppression, limiting our ability to grow and expand into different areas, and controlling the ability to exert control over what the work we do is used for--these are reasons to unionize.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    There are only 20-35 “companies” that a professional athlete can work at. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of places employing “tech workers”. If companies are colluding, that’s the issue where the government needs to intervene.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      The tech collusion case involved most of the industry leaders, and thus presumably the highest payers.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        And instead of correcting the actual issue - fining the companies for collusion and enforcing consent decrees - unions are the answer?
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        There can be multiple tools used to solve a single problem. Both a root cause can be addressed, and additional fixes added for the sake of future-proofing.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Because unions have never been corrupt in the history of America.....
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Non sequitur. The corruptibility of unions does not prevent them from being viable tools, it simply means they are a tool that must be handled carefully.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago
Sports is about the farthest thing from a meritocracy you can get. Only 25 NBA players in the history of the league have been below 5 foot 9 (175cm) [1] Professional athletes are genetic freaks first and foremost - look at the dropoff from college football players to professional players. It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. The absolute worst NFL team in history would decimate the best college team in history just because of the difference in size, speed, and strength of the people on the professional team. The NFL uses the standing vertical jump as a test of athletic ability because it's one of the only tests that can't be trained. No matter how much stronger or more explosive you get, your standing vertical jump pretty much stays the same. And guess what, people who make it in the NFL are the ones with the highest standing vertical jump. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_Na...
- droopyEyelids 7y ago
  The way I'm reading it, your argument assumes the mental aptitude we train into the ability to write code is not genetic. Is that your position or did I read too far into it?
- eropple 7y ago
  > It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. Sorry, I meant "meritocracy" in the way that the tech crowd does, not a, y'know, actual one. Because they rarely if ever exist in practice. It's funny, because I would hold that a good bit of what we consider "technical aptitude" is innate, if not strictly "genetic". I don't mean stuff like that old Dartmouth CS study, though. Speaking for myself, I have a level of general memory recall that, while not what you might call "eidetic memory", is very, very good. "Remember the behavior of an API I used cursorily five years ago" good. And from a pure value perspective, that I can dredge weird stuff like that up, that I can make connections between disparate stuff based almost entirely on having too much junk in the drawers of my brain, are why I deliver value in tech roles. If anything, my ability to quickly and with self-discomfiting detail remember the failures of code I've written are more valuable than the code I write today. ;) And I have had that kind of weird memory recall since I was a kid. I don't know if it's "genetic", but I didn't do anything to make it happen. Which leads me to think that if "being tall" rules one out of a meritocracy, stuff like that, or the weird permutation of brainscape that makes one better able to latch onto stuff like algebra or able to better visualize systems--all of that stuff functionally should, too. Which, to me, is yet another ding in this idea of "meritocracy". It's all a dart board.
yibg 7y ago
I agree that meritocracy is more a talking point than reality on the ground. I just mean, right now there is a disparity in income. Think of it as the income inequality that's common in many countries. In principle the tech world seems to agree this that setup; that some engineers should be paid significantly more than others. In my previous experience with unions in North America, incomes tends to be compressed towards the middle. You get rid of the very low and very high income earners. Maybe this is just an implementation problem and isn't inherent to unions, but in practice here, it does seem to be common.
- charlesu 7y ago
  Pay is more of a function of where you work than skill. There are mediocre engineers being paid $300K at FAANG and great engineers being paid $100K at Random Small Company. FAANG pays more because it's better able to monetize what its engineers are building.
  - yibg 7y ago
    That’s true but the engineering pay at the same company varies a lot too. Probably not 3x for the same level and role but I’ve seen difference of 2x in total compensation for the same title.

scarface74 7y ago

So do all tech companies have legal monopoly where they share revenues and where you have to enter a draft to get a job? Sports leagues have nothing to do with how most companies operate.

eropple 7y ago
Of course there's no monopoly. But tech companies are pretty happy to collude, both at an executive level (we've had court cases about this) and at the memetic "this is what we think about management" one, in order to work against workers' interests. We, too, are allowed to work together to combat this. Wage suppression, limiting our ability to grow and expand into different areas, and controlling the ability to exert control over what the work we do is used for--these are reasons to unionize.
- scarface74 7y ago
  There are only 20-35 “companies” that a professional athlete can work at. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of places employing “tech workers”. If companies are colluding, that’s the issue where the government needs to intervene.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    The tech collusion case involved most of the industry leaders, and thus presumably the highest payers.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      And instead of correcting the actual issue - fining the companies for collusion and enforcing consent decrees - unions are the answer?
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        There can be multiple tools used to solve a single problem. Both a root cause can be addressed, and additional fixes added for the sake of future-proofing.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Because unions have never been corrupt in the history of America.....
        Apocryphon 7y ago
        Non sequitur. The corruptibility of unions does not prevent them from being viable tools, it simply means they are a tool that must be handled carefully.

hoorayimhelping 7y ago

Sports is about the farthest thing from a meritocracy you can get. Only 25 NBA players in the history of the league have been below 5 foot 9 (175cm) [1] Professional athletes are genetic freaks first and foremost - look at the dropoff from college football players to professional players. It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. The absolute worst NFL team in history would decimate the best college team in history just because of the difference in size, speed, and strength of the people on the professional team. The NFL uses the standing vertical jump as a test of athletic ability because it's one of the only tests that can't be trained. No matter how much stronger or more explosive you get, your standing vertical jump pretty much stays the same. And guess what, people who make it in the NFL are the ones with the highest standing vertical jump. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_Na...

droopyEyelids 7y ago
The way I'm reading it, your argument assumes the mental aptitude we train into the ability to write code is not genetic. Is that your position or did I read too far into it?
eropple 7y ago
> It's not talent that determines who makes it, it's genetic ability. Sorry, I meant "meritocracy" in the way that the tech crowd does, not a, y'know, actual one. Because they rarely if ever exist in practice. It's funny, because I would hold that a good bit of what we consider "technical aptitude" is innate, if not strictly "genetic". I don't mean stuff like that old Dartmouth CS study, though. Speaking for myself, I have a level of general memory recall that, while not what you might call "eidetic memory", is very, very good. "Remember the behavior of an API I used cursorily five years ago" good. And from a pure value perspective, that I can dredge weird stuff like that up, that I can make connections between disparate stuff based almost entirely on having too much junk in the drawers of my brain, are why I deliver value in tech roles. If anything, my ability to quickly and with self-discomfiting detail remember the failures of code I've written are more valuable than the code I write today. ;) And I have had that kind of weird memory recall since I was a kid. I don't know if it's "genetic", but I didn't do anything to make it happen. Which leads me to think that if "being tall" rules one out of a meritocracy, stuff like that, or the weird permutation of brainscape that makes one better able to latch onto stuff like algebra or able to better visualize systems--all of that stuff functionally should, too. Which, to me, is yet another ding in this idea of "meritocracy". It's all a dart board.

yibg 7y ago

I agree that meritocracy is more a talking point than reality on the ground. I just mean, right now there is a disparity in income. Think of it as the income inequality that's common in many countries. In principle the tech world seems to agree this that setup; that some engineers should be paid significantly more than others. In my previous experience with unions in North America, incomes tends to be compressed towards the middle. You get rid of the very low and very high income earners. Maybe this is just an implementation problem and isn't inherent to unions, but in practice here, it does seem to be common.

charlesu 7y ago
Pay is more of a function of where you work than skill. There are mediocre engineers being paid $300K at FAANG and great engineers being paid $100K at Random Small Company. FAANG pays more because it's better able to monetize what its engineers are building.
- yibg 7y ago
  That’s true but the engineering pay at the same company varies a lot too. Probably not 3x for the same level and role but I’ve seen difference of 2x in total compensation for the same title.