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Meritocracy is an ideal that is almost by definition unachievable. Like freedom, equality, etc. It’s a very worthy ideal.

by tomp 5y ago

iso1631 5y ago
Meritocracy means those who have lucky breaks early in life (schooling, opportunities, etc) earn compound interest on those choices. If you could give everyone a "merit metric", and you had two options, one scoring 45 and one scoring 50, you'd chose the one scoring 50, without realising the the adversity the one scoring 45 has endured to get that far means they'll be operating at 55 or 60 in a year with the right environment, but the one that coasted at 50 for the last 10 years will continue to coast at 50. Someone whose parents coached them in IT skilled for 14 hours a week for 10 years could have a higher "merit" score than someone that picked up 90% of the skills working on their own in 2 weeks, but would likely not be as good a hire
- tomp 5y ago
  Sounds almost like you’re saying that it’s more meritocratic to hire for potential rather than actual/current skill. As I said, meritocracy is an ideal to strive towards.
  - waynesonfire 5y ago
    There is a great documentary on Amazon called Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power People on the show attribute the success of the team he built because he hired for potential. His quote was something to the effect of that all good people already have jobs.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Did you know the term was coined in a satirical book about a dystopian society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  It should also be noted that the author directly says "It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit." in a quote that appears on the same Wikipedia page. There's more to that quote of course but the dismissive "meritocracy was coined satirically" soundbite erases the sensible arguments and warnings that the book tries to make.

Meritocracy is an ideal that is almost by definition unachievable. Like freedom, equality, etc. It’s a very worthy ideal.

by tomp 5y ago

Meritocracy is an ideal that is almost by definition unachievable. Like freedom, equality, etc. It’s a very worthy ideal.

iso1631 5y ago

Meritocracy means those who have lucky breaks early in life (schooling, opportunities, etc) earn compound interest on those choices. If you could give everyone a "merit metric", and you had two options, one scoring 45 and one scoring 50, you'd chose the one scoring 50, without realising the the adversity the one scoring 45 has endured to get that far means they'll be operating at 55 or 60 in a year with the right environment, but the one that coasted at 50 for the last 10 years will continue to coast at 50. Someone whose parents coached them in IT skilled for 14 hours a week for 10 years could have a higher "merit" score than someone that picked up 90% of the skills working on their own in 2 weeks, but would likely not be as good a hire

tomp 5y ago
Sounds almost like you’re saying that it’s more meritocratic to hire for potential rather than actual/current skill. As I said, meritocracy is an ideal to strive towards.
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  There is a great documentary on Amazon called Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power People on the show attribute the success of the team he built because he hired for potential. His quote was something to the effect of that all good people already have jobs.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Did you know the term was coined in a satirical book about a dystopian society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

ThrowawayR2 5y ago
It should also be noted that the author directly says "It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit." in a quote that appears on the same Wikipedia page. There's more to that quote of course but the dismissive "meritocracy was coined satirically" soundbite erases the sensible arguments and warnings that the book tries to make.