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The biggest issue with the idea of a meritocracy is defining merit. One recurring issue I've seen throughout my career (and I have to admit to having fallen fo

by pdpi 6y ago

The biggest issue with the idea of a meritocracy is defining merit. One recurring issue I've seen throughout my career (and I have to admit to having fallen for this trap when I was younger) is, as an engineer, overvaluing technical merit and undervaluing both interpersonal and product/business skills.

Grimm1 6y ago
Yeah I personally believe a senior engineer or lead is defined by the latter married to the former and that the latter becomes much more important at that level. So I agree that defining the useful characteristics to evaluate for merit is very difficult. I personally don't know what the right system would be I just more often then not see people who have no business being at the senior level or management level etc etc have no business being there as I would evaluate it.
- pdpi 6y ago
  > have no business being there as I would evaluate it. That's the key insight here. "As I would evaluate it". We simply don't know enough about most topics to be able to evaluate merit. Likewise, we don't know enough to choose the people who can, beyond simple heuristics like "they've been working on this for decades, they should be good". For example, we can probably agree that Trump is a bad president, but who was better — Obama or Bush? While I have an opinion on that, I also know that opinion is dominated by my political leanings, and I don't know nearly enough to cogently answer that question.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    Oh I'm certainly aware in fact that is probably the seminal issue of the idea of merit -- it's not an objective quality. Applied to a small system of homogeneous groups it's probably fine, as applied to society it falls apart.
travmatt 6y ago
Once you’ve defined merit, there are plenty of problems in measuring merit. The ideal way to measure a teachers efficacy would be measuring their students adult outcomes relative to other teachers, but that timeframe doesn’t work in the short term.
tomp 6y ago
The biggest issue with the idea of justice is defining what's "just". That doesn't make it a bad ideal though.

by pdpi 6y ago

Grimm1 6y ago

Yeah I personally believe a senior engineer or lead is defined by the latter married to the former and that the latter becomes much more important at that level. So I agree that defining the useful characteristics to evaluate for merit is very difficult. I personally don't know what the right system would be I just more often then not see people who have no business being at the senior level or management level etc etc have no business being there as I would evaluate it.

pdpi 6y ago
> have no business being there as I would evaluate it. That's the key insight here. "As I would evaluate it". We simply don't know enough about most topics to be able to evaluate merit. Likewise, we don't know enough to choose the people who can, beyond simple heuristics like "they've been working on this for decades, they should be good". For example, we can probably agree that Trump is a bad president, but who was better — Obama or Bush? While I have an opinion on that, I also know that opinion is dominated by my political leanings, and I don't know nearly enough to cogently answer that question.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  Oh I'm certainly aware in fact that is probably the seminal issue of the idea of merit -- it's not an objective quality. Applied to a small system of homogeneous groups it's probably fine, as applied to society it falls apart.

travmatt 6y ago

Once you’ve defined merit, there are plenty of problems in measuring merit. The ideal way to measure a teachers efficacy would be measuring their students adult outcomes relative to other teachers, but that timeframe doesn’t work in the short term.

tomp 6y ago

The biggest issue with the idea of justice is defining what's "just". That doesn't make it a bad ideal though.