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Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. business, and I doubt you'll stay competitive for very long.

Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. business, and I doubt you'll stay competitive for very long. I don't know if kickstarter counts as a pure "tech company". They use technology, but they don't create it. Their customers are activists, so it's not surprising that their employees are, too.

door99 6y ago
> Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. Tech is absolutely not a meritocracy.
- darkwizard42 6y ago
  Tech is often more of a meritocracy than other fields/industries. It is quite possible for a talented engineer to rise quickly out of university but nearly impossible for a talented surgeon or industrial engineer without a decade+ of effort.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    The tech industry has a bias for youth, which is mutually exclusive with experience. I don't know much about the medical industry, but I wager surgeons face less ageism once the gray hairs start coming in. With that age comes experience younger surgeons simply couldn't have. Maybe that makes them better surgeons, or maybe not. But it seems to me that ageism in tech complicates comparisons to fields which value experience instead of youth.
    - darkwizard42 6y ago
      My point was that the OPPOSITE is true in most other fields. If you don't have grey hairs, you simply are not considered for the top jobs at all in certain industries. YOE (years of experience) is nearly everything for some professions, tech is surprisingly quite robust in that regard.
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        Tech is more like "reverse ageist" instead of being egalitarian.
- veilrap 6y ago
  While your personal anecdote may vary, my personal anecdote does seem to indicate that tech is a pretty meritocracy directed industry. Maybe this is a Silicon Valley / CA trait given thing like non-compete clauses being non-enforceable.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Personally, I would be more amenable to a statement like "tech is not an absolute meritocracy". Many industries are however, roughly meritocratic. While talent may not be perfectly recognized or rewarded, it often eventually is - simply because it makes good business sense. When you have easy to recognize signals of merit and value, like in the tech industry where work can be more objectively evaluated, it makes it easier to implement a meritocratic culture.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
CPLX 6y ago
If you think professional sports leagues and the movie business base opportunities and compensation on seniority I don't know what to tell you. Those fields are almost completely unionized. There's no obvious reason to think that the market for high skilled technical workers would be substantially different.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  If you don't think the UAW or ILWU bases opportunities and compensation on seniority I don't know what to tell you
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Why would an SWE union be forced to follow the trends set by other unions? I thought tech was supposed to march to the beat of its own drum. Think different.
  - CPLX 6y ago
    Of course they do. The difference is between commodity labor and creative, talent-driven, or IP based production, and it seems clear which is a better metaphor for software engineers.
qppo 6y ago
Some unions negotiate practices regarding seniority for good and bad reasons. Others don't. A software workers union wouldn't necessarily do that, unless its membership voted for it. Which might make sense, because of rampant age discrimination - but there's nothing inherently tying that to promotion.
TT3351 6y ago
Whenever I see "meritocracy" used like this, my hair stands on end. From Wikipedia: "Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" is relatively new. It was used pejoratively by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy, which pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else, being the combination of the root of Latin origin "merit" (from "mereō" meaning "earn") and the Ancient Greek suffix "-cracy" (meaning "power", "rule")... In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group."
- username90 6y ago
  Meritocracy starting out as leftist satire doesn't mean the concept doesn't have merit.
  - anthuswilliams 6y ago
    Yes, it does. Unless its defenders have shown good reasons as to why the points raised by the satirists are inapplicable. Which they haven't. The assignation of "quality" in people is a corrupt and folkloric reflection of the preferences of those in power, and that phenomenon is becoming ever more pronounced as industries consolidate.
    - username90 6y ago
      The fact that a person can just study programming on their free time for a few years and then get a job paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is proof that at least in some cases meritocracy works. All you need is proof that you are great at programming, doesn't have to know anyone or have any kind of prestigious background to do it. That is what I did. I studied programming for a bit, started getting among the top in online programming competitions, applied to Google and got a really high salary. Anyone who is intelligent enough can do it if they have a computer with internet access. People sometimes counter with something along the lines of: > Just because you could do it doesn't mean others can do it, you are just an exception! Yeah, exactly, other people are dumb so they can't become among the best of the world in these competitions within a year. If they could they would easily get similar jobs as I did though, there was no luck or privilege in what I did just talent. So the problem isn't that meritocracy doesn't work but that merit for these tech jobs is so unevenly distributed.

door99 6y ago

> Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. Tech is absolutely not a meritocracy.

darkwizard42 6y ago
Tech is often more of a meritocracy than other fields/industries. It is quite possible for a talented engineer to rise quickly out of university but nearly impossible for a talented surgeon or industrial engineer without a decade+ of effort.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  The tech industry has a bias for youth, which is mutually exclusive with experience. I don't know much about the medical industry, but I wager surgeons face less ageism once the gray hairs start coming in. With that age comes experience younger surgeons simply couldn't have. Maybe that makes them better surgeons, or maybe not. But it seems to me that ageism in tech complicates comparisons to fields which value experience instead of youth.
  - darkwizard42 6y ago
    My point was that the OPPOSITE is true in most other fields. If you don't have grey hairs, you simply are not considered for the top jobs at all in certain industries. YOE (years of experience) is nearly everything for some professions, tech is surprisingly quite robust in that regard.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Tech is more like "reverse ageist" instead of being egalitarian.
veilrap 6y ago
While your personal anecdote may vary, my personal anecdote does seem to indicate that tech is a pretty meritocracy directed industry. Maybe this is a Silicon Valley / CA trait given thing like non-compete clauses being non-enforceable.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Personally, I would be more amenable to a statement like "tech is not an absolute meritocracy". Many industries are however, roughly meritocratic. While talent may not be perfectly recognized or rewarded, it often eventually is - simply because it makes good business sense. When you have easy to recognize signals of merit and value, like in the tech industry where work can be more objectively evaluated, it makes it easier to implement a meritocratic culture.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

CPLX 6y ago

If you think professional sports leagues and the movie business base opportunities and compensation on seniority I don't know what to tell you. Those fields are almost completely unionized. There's no obvious reason to think that the market for high skilled technical workers would be substantially different.

missedthecue 6y ago
If you don't think the UAW or ILWU bases opportunities and compensation on seniority I don't know what to tell you
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Why would an SWE union be forced to follow the trends set by other unions? I thought tech was supposed to march to the beat of its own drum. Think different.
- CPLX 6y ago
  Of course they do. The difference is between commodity labor and creative, talent-driven, or IP based production, and it seems clear which is a better metaphor for software engineers.

qppo 6y ago

Some unions negotiate practices regarding seniority for good and bad reasons. Others don't. A software workers union wouldn't necessarily do that, unless its membership voted for it. Which might make sense, because of rampant age discrimination - but there's nothing inherently tying that to promotion.

TT3351 6y ago

Whenever I see "meritocracy" used like this, my hair stands on end. From Wikipedia: "Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" is relatively new. It was used pejoratively by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy, which pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else, being the combination of the root of Latin origin "merit" (from "mereō" meaning "earn") and the Ancient Greek suffix "-cracy" (meaning "power", "rule")... In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group."

username90 6y ago
Meritocracy starting out as leftist satire doesn't mean the concept doesn't have merit.
- anthuswilliams 6y ago
  Yes, it does. Unless its defenders have shown good reasons as to why the points raised by the satirists are inapplicable. Which they haven't. The assignation of "quality" in people is a corrupt and folkloric reflection of the preferences of those in power, and that phenomenon is becoming ever more pronounced as industries consolidate.
  - username90 6y ago
    The fact that a person can just study programming on their free time for a few years and then get a job paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is proof that at least in some cases meritocracy works. All you need is proof that you are great at programming, doesn't have to know anyone or have any kind of prestigious background to do it. That is what I did. I studied programming for a bit, started getting among the top in online programming competitions, applied to Google and got a really high salary. Anyone who is intelligent enough can do it if they have a computer with internet access. People sometimes counter with something along the lines of: > Just because you could do it doesn't mean others can do it, you are just an exception! Yeah, exactly, other people are dumb so they can't become among the best of the world in these competitions within a year. If they could they would easily get similar jobs as I did though, there was no luck or privilege in what I did just talent. So the problem isn't that meritocracy doesn't work but that merit for these tech jobs is so unevenly distributed.