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I think this is an example of Wanstrath kow-towing to a small, outspoken subset of GitHub's employees to avoid bad PR. This has happened before. At some point a

by Aqueous 12y ago

I think this is an example of Wanstrath kow-towing to a small, outspoken subset of GitHub's employees to avoid bad PR. This has happened before. At some point a group of GitHub employees were offended by a rug that said something to the effect of "United Meritocracy of GitHub." This rug strikes me as being not at all divisive - not even subtextually, not even under an extremely charitable reading of the argument. I'm very familiar with knee-jerk reactions of this kind - I went to an extremely politically liberal, East Coast university that reacted to every conceivable slight with a blizzard of sometimes phony outrage, the kind that makes even people who agree with them (such as myself) completely unsympathetic to their argument. Interestingly, the "divisiveness" of this rug was apparently turned into an issue by none other than Julie Ann Horvath. (http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocracy-rug-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocra...) Now I absolutely think that Preston-Werner's wife and Preston-Werner himself acted extremely inappropriataly towards Horvath. But, since it appears that Horvath's other claims do not seem to have a basis, she has yet again taken a situation where she had a legitimate point to make and completely blew it out of proportion. Wanstrath will learn eventually that he sometimes just has to say no more. There are more important goals for his organization to accomplish than to be accommodating to every single grievance.

gruntmaster9000 12y ago
Negative reaction to “meritocracy” is hardly knee-jerk. In fact, the word was coined as criticism of the concept: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
- deleted 12y ago
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- Aqueous 12y ago
  Then the rug is a declaration of values. The US has often failed to live up to its own founding values - should we shred the preamble and the declaration of independence? No - those two documents have shaped US history, mostly because we're more and more trying to live up to them. It just seems awfully silly. The legitimate point here - that there should be more female engineers - seems a) not specific to GitHub and b) to be lost under a shroud of phony outrage over a rug.
  - gruntmaster9000 12y ago
    Missing the point. Meritocracy is not something to aspire to. In practice it masks and reinforces power structures, increasing inequality: > The main finding is consistent across the three studies: when an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. From: http://asq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/543.short http://asq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/543.short Which was recognized by Chris Wanstrath when they removed it: > @defunkt: We thought ‘meritocracy’ was a neat way to think of open source but now see the problems with it. Words matter. We’re getting a new rug. https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/426104782894284800 https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/426104782894284800
    - Aqueous 12y ago
      The problem wasn't the meritocracy it was the failing to live up to it. Meritocracy is absolutely something we should aspire to. In these examples the men who were paying other men more were simply not being meritocratic - if they were, then they would have hired/given raises to just as many equally qualified women as they did men. That calling something a meritocracy when it isn't may have a paradoxical effect may be true. But I'm not sure it warrants getting rid of meritocracy as the guiding principle of an organization. We should just be doing a better job of being meritocratic.
      - gruntmaster9000 12y ago
        The point is we can’t be truly meritocratic. It’s a utopic ideal that doesn’t hold up in the real world. Those who are deciding what merit is are the ones who already have power. Also, there are many barriers to entry before supposed meritocratic judging can even take place. The goal isn’t to just completely abandon the idea of judging people based on their accomplishments, but to recognize that the supposed ideal of meritocracy is a harmful fantasy. Worth reading, Selenda Deckelmann of Postgres: http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fails/ http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fa... and everything else here: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy
golden_apples 12y ago
>> Interestingly, the "divisiveness" of this rug was apparently turned into an issue by none other than Julie Ann Horvath. I get that you're trying to take a cheap shot, but that wasn't the story as I remember reading it. There was bitterness about the "meritocracy" meme from a lot of people in tech who felt that it discounted their marginalized status. JAH ran into that response while trying to do outreach for the Passion Projects series, and relayed it back to the Github leadership, who responded respectfully. There's a more complete retelling of that issue here: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug >> Horvath and other women at GitHub began to feel as if they were “bearing the brunt” of the rug’s message as well as “being excluded from other communities as a result.” >> One employee, Horvath says, thought she was rejected for membership in Double Union, a feminist hackerspace, because of the rug. Double Union did parody the rug on its crowdfunding page, but denied that it would reject a possible member because of the rug.
- Aqueous 12y ago
  I'm not trying to take a cheap shot. The fact that meritocracies are 'messy' doesn't mean you get rid of the central message - which is that people are awarded commensurately with their talent and effort. That seems completely in line with the 'justice is fairness' version of liberal democracy - which is what I thought most progressives were fighting for. And this idea that someone rejected the employee in question because of a rug sounds very implausible.
b0nz 12y ago
If JAH didn't believe that Github is a meritocracy than she should have quit.

by Aqueous 12y ago

gruntmaster9000 12y ago

Negative reaction to “meritocracy” is hardly knee-jerk. In fact, the word was coined as criticism of the concept: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Aqueous 12y ago
Then the rug is a declaration of values. The US has often failed to live up to its own founding values - should we shred the preamble and the declaration of independence? No - those two documents have shaped US history, mostly because we're more and more trying to live up to them. It just seems awfully silly. The legitimate point here - that there should be more female engineers - seems a) not specific to GitHub and b) to be lost under a shroud of phony outrage over a rug.
- gruntmaster9000 12y ago
  Missing the point. Meritocracy is not something to aspire to. In practice it masks and reinforces power structures, increasing inequality: > The main finding is consistent across the three studies: when an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. From: http://asq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/543.short http://asq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/543.short Which was recognized by Chris Wanstrath when they removed it: > @defunkt: We thought ‘meritocracy’ was a neat way to think of open source but now see the problems with it. Words matter. We’re getting a new rug. https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/426104782894284800 https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/426104782894284800
  - Aqueous 12y ago
    The problem wasn't the meritocracy it was the failing to live up to it. Meritocracy is absolutely something we should aspire to. In these examples the men who were paying other men more were simply not being meritocratic - if they were, then they would have hired/given raises to just as many equally qualified women as they did men. That calling something a meritocracy when it isn't may have a paradoxical effect may be true. But I'm not sure it warrants getting rid of meritocracy as the guiding principle of an organization. We should just be doing a better job of being meritocratic.
    - gruntmaster9000 12y ago
      The point is we can’t be truly meritocratic. It’s a utopic ideal that doesn’t hold up in the real world. Those who are deciding what merit is are the ones who already have power. Also, there are many barriers to entry before supposed meritocratic judging can even take place. The goal isn’t to just completely abandon the idea of judging people based on their accomplishments, but to recognize that the supposed ideal of meritocracy is a harmful fantasy. Worth reading, Selenda Deckelmann of Postgres: http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fails/ http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fa... and everything else here: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy

golden_apples 12y ago

>> Interestingly, the "divisiveness" of this rug was apparently turned into an issue by none other than Julie Ann Horvath. I get that you're trying to take a cheap shot, but that wasn't the story as I remember reading it. There was bitterness about the "meritocracy" meme from a lot of people in tech who felt that it discounted their marginalized status. JAH ran into that response while trying to do outreach for the Passion Projects series, and relayed it back to the Github leadership, who responded respectfully. There's a more complete retelling of that issue here: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug >> Horvath and other women at GitHub began to feel as if they were “bearing the brunt” of the rug’s message as well as “being excluded from other communities as a result.” >> One employee, Horvath says, thought she was rejected for membership in Double Union, a feminist hackerspace, because of the rug. Double Union did parody the rug on its crowdfunding page, but denied that it would reject a possible member because of the rug.

Aqueous 12y ago
I'm not trying to take a cheap shot. The fact that meritocracies are 'messy' doesn't mean you get rid of the central message - which is that people are awarded commensurately with their talent and effort. That seems completely in line with the 'justice is fairness' version of liberal democracy - which is what I thought most progressives were fighting for. And this idea that someone rejected the employee in question because of a rug sounds very implausible.

b0nz 12y ago

If JAH didn't believe that Github is a meritocracy than she should have quit.