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> Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. Isn't this what everyone tries to do? > A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety

> Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. Isn't this what everyone tries to do? > A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. It might, but probably not because you have found people who have 'merit' whatever that nebulously defined thing might be.

bberrry 2y ago
> > Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. > Isn't this what everyone tries to do? You seem to have missed that meritocracy has recently become a bad word and undesirable in some political circles.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  > You seem to have missed that meritocracy has recently become a bad word and undesirable in some political circles I also did (miss that). Could you explain, or were you just drawing conclusion from the Wang's «There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity»? Edit: I think I found an acronym in this page that I cannot recall ever meeting (at least, never so strongly highlighted), and I suspect that is the reference (to political circles). Edit 2: but really, has there been anywhere an explicit attack declaring "meritocracy" a "bad" concept? Or is it just an implicit perception/conclusion?
  - hurrdurr57 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - flappyeagle 2y ago
    I’ve worked at 2 saas companies that both declared this. Out loud. In writing. In all hands meetings. HR departments went buck wild
sneak 2y ago
> Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. > It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence. This isn’t about “hiring on merit”. This is a dogwhistle, saying to people “we are an anti-“woke” workplace”, specifically rejecting the concept of DEI principles. It’s an attempt to differentiate, probably to attempt to attract stereotypical programmers who are “tired of politics in the workplace” (as if working for a salary, paying taxes, and building technological tools were somehow apolitical). A less charitable interpretation is that they are attempting specifically to recruit people who would prefer to work exclusively amongst people very similar to themselves. There are a lot of good and reasonable arguments against this, even if you aren’t all-in on the modern concept of DEI (which is a whole ideology, separate and distinct from the basic non-jargon usages of the words “diversity”, “equity”, and “inclusion”).
- hurrdurr57 2y ago
  >A less charitable interpretation is that they are attempting specifically to recruit people who would prefer to work exclusively amongst people very similar to themselves. This is the case with pretty much everyone. When it comes to companies that have an aggressive DEI policy, you may end up with employees more diverse in terms of race and sex, but they are usually all required to adhere to the exact same ideology. They only hire people very much like themselves, only on a different metric.
  - dissent 2y ago
    This is really it. They feel safe doing it and will even openly brag about their discriminatory policies, safe in the knowledge that their brand of of discrimination is righteous. Where have we seen this before...
Manuel_D 2y ago
No, plenty of companies I worked at had explicit targets to achieve certain percentages of women and URM hires. Sure, leadership vociferously denied that these were quotas: they were just "inclusion targets" and "diversity goals". But if you failed to meet them you'd either have bad reviews or see your pay reduced (remember, a "bonus" contingent on achieving a quota is identical to a penalty contingent on failure to meet the quota).

bberrry 2y ago

> > Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. > Isn't this what everyone tries to do? You seem to have missed that meritocracy has recently become a bad word and undesirable in some political circles.

mdp2021 2y ago
> You seem to have missed that meritocracy has recently become a bad word and undesirable in some political circles I also did (miss that). Could you explain, or were you just drawing conclusion from the Wang's «There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity»? Edit: I think I found an acronym in this page that I cannot recall ever meeting (at least, never so strongly highlighted), and I suspect that is the reference (to political circles). Edit 2: but really, has there been anywhere an explicit attack declaring "meritocracy" a "bad" concept? Or is it just an implicit perception/conclusion?
- hurrdurr57 2y ago
  [flagged]
- flappyeagle 2y ago
  I’ve worked at 2 saas companies that both declared this. Out loud. In writing. In all hands meetings. HR departments went buck wild

sneak 2y ago

> Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. > It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence. This isn’t about “hiring on merit”. This is a dogwhistle, saying to people “we are an anti-“woke” workplace”, specifically rejecting the concept of DEI principles. It’s an attempt to differentiate, probably to attempt to attract stereotypical programmers who are “tired of politics in the workplace” (as if working for a salary, paying taxes, and building technological tools were somehow apolitical). A less charitable interpretation is that they are attempting specifically to recruit people who would prefer to work exclusively amongst people very similar to themselves. There are a lot of good and reasonable arguments against this, even if you aren’t all-in on the modern concept of DEI (which is a whole ideology, separate and distinct from the basic non-jargon usages of the words “diversity”, “equity”, and “inclusion”).

hurrdurr57 2y ago
>A less charitable interpretation is that they are attempting specifically to recruit people who would prefer to work exclusively amongst people very similar to themselves. This is the case with pretty much everyone. When it comes to companies that have an aggressive DEI policy, you may end up with employees more diverse in terms of race and sex, but they are usually all required to adhere to the exact same ideology. They only hire people very much like themselves, only on a different metric.
- dissent 2y ago
  This is really it. They feel safe doing it and will even openly brag about their discriminatory policies, safe in the knowledge that their brand of of discrimination is righteous. Where have we seen this before...

Manuel_D 2y ago

No, plenty of companies I worked at had explicit targets to achieve certain percentages of women and URM hires. Sure, leadership vociferously denied that these were quotas: they were just "inclusion targets" and "diversity goals". But if you failed to meet them you'd either have bad reviews or see your pay reduced (remember, a "bonus" contingent on achieving a quota is identical to a penalty contingent on failure to meet the quota).