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In my opinion, all talk of meritocracy, when applied, is irrelevant. I mean, it sounds good in principle, but in most applications, there is no simple way of de

In my opinion, all talk of meritocracy, when applied, is irrelevant. I mean, it sounds good in principle, but in most applications, there is no simple way of determining the "best" candidate in any given situation. Yeah, sure, we have some highly specialized environments, such as sports, where we have parameters to select from, but as much as no team has won by selecting players who are good enough, few teams if any have won by just selecting players who are the best in a narrow metric. You need leaders, you need players with specific skill, you need role players, you need people who can inspire etc. Same when hiring for a job position - Determining who is the "best" candidate is near impossible. The best, according to which metric? Most years spent at uni? In the business? How do you control for biases that have given one candidate undeserved praise and another that has gone unrecognized? How tdo you value social factors, etc?

jariel 6y ago
"there is no simple way of determining the "best" candidate" There is, it just so happens many people applying are already good by virtue of their credentials. What you are not seeing are the zillions of truly unqualified people show up. If you want to gain some confidence in meritocracy, then simply open up your next dev position to literally 'anyone' and start interviewing 'random people' for that high paying job. Then, you'll quickly realize how very few people are actually qualified. Interviewing is generally about 1) narrowing the pool of actually qualified and then 2) ... well, it's hard from there on in as you point out. But it's mostly highly meritocratic at least, each hiring mechanism is in isolation.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > But it's mostly highly meritocratic at least, each hiring mechanism is in isolation. Why view it in isolation? To me, the interesting question is how the hiring manager got into their position. Referring to the sports analogy of the previous comment: how do you become a sports team owner? Not by being great at sports, but simply by having a ton of spare money. And some pro sports team owners are really bad at running a sports team. Most of us in the system are more or less fighting over table scraps. You can't really measure a so-called meritocracy without looking carefully at those in positions of power. We seem to only focus on the lower levels of non-manager worker drone hiring.
  - jariel 6y ago
    " To me, the interesting question is how the hiring manager got into their position." The same way as anyone else. And as for sports ... who cares who the owner is? 'Owning a sports team' has nothing to do with playing on one, frankly, by most historical measures it's a money-losing enterprise, something rich guys outbid each other on because they can. Like a yacht. Ironically, nobody questions the meritocracy of sports because it's mostly evident that the best rise to the top. Not always, and there are so many factors. If you open up your next job position to less than qualified candidates you will see all manner of people come through the gates, most of whom - surprise surprise - are totally unqualified. This whole 'the world is not meritocratic' meme is really problematic and assumes there's basically no ability for people to vet or understand each other when hiring, which is ridiculous. Ask the nurse giving you a vaccine how long they had to study, how many exams they had to pass before they were allowed anywhere near you. No study, no pass, no job.

jariel 6y ago

"there is no simple way of determining the "best" candidate" There is, it just so happens many people applying are already good by virtue of their credentials. What you are not seeing are the zillions of truly unqualified people show up. If you want to gain some confidence in meritocracy, then simply open up your next dev position to literally 'anyone' and start interviewing 'random people' for that high paying job. Then, you'll quickly realize how very few people are actually qualified. Interviewing is generally about 1) narrowing the pool of actually qualified and then 2) ... well, it's hard from there on in as you point out. But it's mostly highly meritocratic at least, each hiring mechanism is in isolation.

_qulr 6y ago
> But it's mostly highly meritocratic at least, each hiring mechanism is in isolation. Why view it in isolation? To me, the interesting question is how the hiring manager got into their position. Referring to the sports analogy of the previous comment: how do you become a sports team owner? Not by being great at sports, but simply by having a ton of spare money. And some pro sports team owners are really bad at running a sports team. Most of us in the system are more or less fighting over table scraps. You can't really measure a so-called meritocracy without looking carefully at those in positions of power. We seem to only focus on the lower levels of non-manager worker drone hiring.
- jariel 6y ago
  " To me, the interesting question is how the hiring manager got into their position." The same way as anyone else. And as for sports ... who cares who the owner is? 'Owning a sports team' has nothing to do with playing on one, frankly, by most historical measures it's a money-losing enterprise, something rich guys outbid each other on because they can. Like a yacht. Ironically, nobody questions the meritocracy of sports because it's mostly evident that the best rise to the top. Not always, and there are so many factors. If you open up your next job position to less than qualified candidates you will see all manner of people come through the gates, most of whom - surprise surprise - are totally unqualified. This whole 'the world is not meritocratic' meme is really problematic and assumes there's basically no ability for people to vet or understand each other when hiring, which is ridiculous. Ask the nurse giving you a vaccine how long they had to study, how many exams they had to pass before they were allowed anywhere near you. No study, no pass, no job.