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Where meritocracy fails
- iuguy 16y agoI spend time on the Technical Panel of a security standards body called TigerScheme[1] which is very much a project to which people contribute free time in a similar way to many open source projects (although TigerScheme isn't an open source project, as it doesn't release code). I recently used the phrase 'do-ocracy' to describe it. If you have the time, want to do it, run it past the other people and if there are no objections within a reasonable time frame, do it. Previously Tigerscheme suffered as volunteers wouldn't be available in decision making. I believe this 'do-ocracy' approach has actually enabled Tigerscheme to make decisions quicker and take better ownership of actions. [1] - http://www.tigerscheme.org/ http://www.tigerscheme.org/
- noonespecial 16y agoI'm not very good at many things, but I'm comforted often by the fact that the things I could do, and did, work better (by definition) than the things that the better people could've done, and didn't.
- selenamarie 16y agoI wrote the entry that started this thread, and an earlier post that mentions do-ocracy in the context of the Portland tech scene[1]. I totally agree with you, and go even further when it comes to the community that's evolved in Portland. I tell people to JFDI. That usually means someone tells someone else about what they're doing. But there's no permission seeking. We have too many people that find fault in the works of others, even before any work has been done. 1 - http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2010/03/17/this-town-needs/ http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2010/03/17/this-town-needs/
- arethuza 16y agoHere is an interesting article by the man who created the term "meritocracy" as part of satirical work: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment An interesting quote, which I'm sure I've heard a few times in relation to the recent banking crisis: "If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get" [Edit: As far as I can this concern really applies to organizations like those in the UK public sector where huge salaries are often justified based on rather dubious "merit" - not because of any measure of the value delivered or risks taken]
- barrkel 16y agoYou'd think anyone with merit would see the flaw in the logic: p implies q, q, therefore p. Maybe the don't have as much as they think.
- thret 16y agoSuccess; that is the theory. Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery, and you are an able man. The victor is venerated. Have but luck, and you will have the rest; be fortunate, and you will be thought great. Beyond the five or six great exceptions, which are the wonder of their age, contemporary admiration is nothing but shortsightedness. - Victor Hugo
- sliverstorm 16y agoIs 'merit' necessarily unrelated to 'privilege'? Much of our talent and ability is not something we are born with; a meritocracy based on innate ability would be a mess- it would practically boil down to ranking everyone based on their IQ. Instead, a meritocracy is typically going to be based on current ability, and isn't 'privilege' deeply entwined with your ability? It's not pretty or P-C, but it's not exactly confusing to me that someone with more opportunities for schooling performs better in an environment labeled 'meritocratic'. It's not "Nature", it's "Nature AND Nurture".
- arethuza 16y agoOne example that I have seen happening in the UK: take two people with directly comparable excellent university education (same university, same course, same results) - the one who went to the "better" school will be perceived as having more "merit" than someone who achieved the same result from a far less privileged background. To me the latter, having achieved far more, has the more "merit" whereas to others it often the opposite.
- larrik 16y agoI don't get it. If it's the "same university, same course, same results", which one is the "better" school?
- notahacker 16y agoIs that really the case? The majority of people have very little idea of "better" schools beyond a handful of elite institutions, their local area and those that stick "grammar" into their title. It's also reasonably well established that the better state-funded schools are as good as or better than many private school in terms of academic performance. I'm seeing "Eton-educated" increasingly used as a pejorative description by inverse snobs too.
- gyardley 16y agoSurely the ability to write great code is closely linked to the ability to earn an income in the top 1% of the world - which according to 'Global Rich List' (lord knows if it's accurate) is around $50,000. In a field where merit is translatable to wealth, a large proportion of wealthy people in a subgroup points to more meritocracy, not less.
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- zacharytelschow 16y ago"I don’t believe [meritocracy is] our strongest value, or quality as a community. And, it’s not something that I think embodies what is awesome about Postgres. Our strongest quality is our ability to create great code." Let's see... -great code -> merit -transparency -> code improvements (best idea wins) And frankly, the "privileged" people he's talking about contributing to Postgres make the money and lead the lives they do precisely due to their merits as programmers. Sounds an awful lot like an organization that promotes the best ideas and gives power based on the merit of the people in it to me.
- selenamarie 16y agoI'm a she, and you're leaving out all the things that led to becoming a programmer. Which largely had nothing to do with merit. The point of the article isn't to discount the work involved in becoming excellent, but to point out that the opportunity to do that work at all is a privilege. I don't particularly care if any one person changes their thinking about this. My post was meant for my community, which is taking the issue of involvement and its relation to privilege seriously.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago...you're leaving out all the things that led to becoming a programmer. Which largely had nothing to do with merit. Is your objection to the idea of "merit" merely reductionism? I.e., merit (as defined by ability and willingness to code) is comprised of a combination of innate factors (genetic/environmental contributions to intelligence and demeanor) and social privileges (access to education, etc)? This is true. So what? Ultimately, merit is merely a particular arrangement of atoms. It's hard to see how this reduction is useful.
- msbarnett 16y agoMost people generally aren't comfortable conflating certain flukes of genetics and social privileges with merit. Being born affluent, white, and male are the three factors which for the last couple of decades have made you statistically most likely to have owned your own computer prior to college. Because most people don't consider males to have more merit than females, or white people to be more meritorious than minority groups, declaring programming a meritocracy ignores and conceals these important factors in the makeup of the "programmers" social group.
- pmorici 16y agoThe definition of "meritocracy" that the article provides isn't the dictionary definition of the word; it's the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the topic where the opening paragraphs are talking about the historical origination of the concept. The dictionary definition reads, "government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability". The Wikipedia article lists intelligence, credentials, and education as examples of potential measures of merit but the particular measures of merit used in a given meritocracy aren't inherent to the words definition. Whether or not advancement in a meritocracy is correlated to privilege is a function of what measures of merit are used not some innate property of meritocracies in general. In the context of an open source project one would hope it is a meritocracy of ideas where the merits being judged are something like the quality of the algorithms and code. Selena's wish to be more open to contributors that have less time to contribute isn't a question of meritocracy it is one of organizational culture; unless the merit on which they are judging people is the amount of raw time they spend on the project vs. the quality of their contributed work.
- selenamarie 16y agoYeah, that's a really good point. I am talking about organizational culture. More specifically - structure around participation. But, at the same time, it seems people often conflate governance and power with organizational culture. Is there a good reference for differentiating the two?
- edw 16y agoThe crux of what people mean when they refer to meritocratic systems or organizations has nothing to do with the people in the organization or is related only tangentially to people. What they really mean is that the best ideas win, that the people in the system operate in accordance with a set of values that place the excellence of the end product above the egos of the people, especially the popular or powerful people. Do we have a suitable word to use in place of “meritocracy” and friends?
- drblast 16y agoIt's a logical error to look at the outcome of a process and draw conclusions about it with no other supporting data. This error would be innocuous if it wasn't the underlying cause of every inhuman prejudice we've spent the last few centuries trying to rid ourselves of. If I were to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to open-source projects, it's obvious that women aren't capable of producing much valuable code," the hacker news server would melt from the angry response. But apparently it's ok to say, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy." Logically, however, these statements are equally erroneous. You can use this sort of pseudo-statistical handwaving to justify ANYTHING that sounds remotely plausible. That's ignorant, and that sort of ignorance should be opposed no matter the form.
- capstone 16y agoThere are exactly zero occurrences of the words "women" or "female" in the article. The only reference to gender at all is a brief and completely inconsequential mention of the fact that your typical Postgres hacker is, among other things, male. Yet somehow you end up debating the veracity of, "Since there are so few women contributing to Postgres, it's obvious that it's not a meritocracy", a statement neither made verbatim nor in any way implied by the actual article. Isn't it just a little crazy? Can a writer mention a simple fact without it becoming all about battle of the sexes?
- aplusbi 16y agoI don't believe that drblast was trying to make this about a battle of the sexes but was just using gender as an easily identifiable example. The article states that Postgres isn't a meritocracy because the hackers aren't from diverse backgrounds. drblast was attempting to show how this is a logical fallacy - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse.
- capstone 16y agoI think it's rather impractical to attempt to guess a stranger's intent. Drblast responded to the article by quoting a hypothetical statement of his own ("if I were to say X") and then quoting a supposed statement from the article ("but apparently it's ok to say Y"). You can interpret that 10 different ways but why? Isn't it simpler to point out that the article never made statement Y in the first place? Incidentally, I find the point you make - meritocracies aren't ipso facto diverse - worthy of debate. However I don't believe it's the same point as the parent.
- jdp23 16y agofor those thinking about shaping communities, this is a key takeaway: "What we have to do is create structures that invite people to give what they can, when they can give it." good advice for all of us!