Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CWuestefeld | Hacker News Reader

I personally long for a word that conveys a person’s ability to demonstrate competence and expertise and commitment separate from

We have a word for that: "meritocracy". The fact that we may have failed to achieve this fully doesn't mean we should throw out the word.

By the Mozilla logic, we should also throw out "democracy" because our government(s) have failed to include all stakeholders; throw out "feminism" because a few of them have demonstrated that they're anti-male rather than pro-female; "education" because we've so badly failed to properly educate our youth (and adults!).

Really, pretty much everything we've set as a goal for ourselves, we've failed to achieve in its entirety: such is the nature of goals. But those lapses are just further goals for us to cover. Throwing up our hands and changing the goal posts, or at least how we reference the goal posts, isn't going to get us any closer to them, and seems more likely to confuse the issue, taking us at least somewhat farther away.

There is another point in a very similar vein - maybe a decade ago, Firefox was one of the jewels of open source. An example of how a group of volunteers could come together and assemble great software without hiding the source code and going for a quick buck.

Whatever Mozilla sees themselves as today, this language is clearly different from that original vision. Meritocracy is closely aligned to technical outcomes in a way that diversity and inclusiveness are not.

What I mean is, if your meritocracy fails to produce good software, obviously it is broken. If your ... inclusivocracy? ... fails to produce good software then it doesn't mean anything.

Obviously this language doesn't preclude the technical, but the focus has clearly shifted in the intervening years.

It happens a lot actually. The word "empower" has done so many circuits on this track that I don't know if it is good or bad this year. It was once (90's, but probably still) good grant writing practice to know what the "in" words were at a department or agency. The word churn was a real item. "Socialize" was another word that went through some gyrations.

Frankly, I looked at this aspect of word smithing as a sort of shibboleth to identify the accepted crowd.

Meritocracy as a normal read of its definition should be a fine word, but Silicon Valley seems to be going through the same word smithing that DC goes through. New beliefs, new words, and must demonize the old words.

We need a word that conveys “yes, there are systemic problems that are unaddressed in use of this word, and I did not include it in the document using this word, please direct all conversation unrelated to the topic at hand off thread.”

And then we can use it instead of meritocracy*. Inventing a new word will have the same problem and likely be worse due to the confusion around using a word with the same meaning except it’s not bad.

Meritocracy, when the term was coined, referred to a society that was essentially a reboot of aristocracy.

A new group takes charge by their own merit, then they embed their own descendants in the leader caste through a combination of shaping society to their own definition of merit, and designing an education system to confer "merit" on their own offspring at the expense of less "merit-worthy" children (i.e. most children who do not have meritorious ancestors).

A meritocratic society also suffers from an additional problem over that of an aristocracy because it embeds the complementary statement - that those who are not well rewarded are in that position because they are not as good/hard-working/clever as their "betters".

I get it; meritocracy often breaks down over time. But then it's become something else (perhaps a new aristocracy). But its not a different word for the same thing.

The problem in my last paragraph exists from the beginning. I would not be surprised if one of the reasons that the gap between C-level and worker salaries has widened so much, is due to the adoption of the term "meritocratic".

On a smaller scale, the aristocracy problem exists from very early on in the forms of "hiring in ones own image" and placing certain roles in higher regard (with higher reward or more opportunity for career progression) than others (e.g. sales > developers > UX > QA) even if they make equal contributions.

It is very difficult to evaluate merit across different professions (e.g is Tom Cruise a better actor than Lionel Messi is a footballer? Does a lawyer contribute more to society than teacher?) However, once you start claiming that you have a meritocracy, you are also claiming that those who receive the most reward have the most merit. i.e. in the example above, that your sales people are more hard-working and clever than your developers, who are in turn more hard-working and clever than your UX people etc.

Aristocracies also have that statement. Usually the aristocrats are there because of divine decree showing their merit, and the underclass are similarly slotted into that position due to their bloodlines.

Unlike meritocracy though, there is no way out of the situation beyond tearing down the system.

It is also possible for commoners to be ennobled if they show sufficient merit. It also doesn't take many generations of second and subsequent children under primogeniture to fall out of the nobility entirely.

Neither system necessitates the active oppression and exclusion of out groups.

The problem in both systems is that "merit" is defined by the few at the top, and is often either defined or executed in a way that favours individuals in a preferred class.

What is usually meant is that everyone is to be judged by results. (of course, how they're judged and by whom is important too)

What often actually happens is they're judged on executing a standarised test (bureaucracy) or by peers. (oligarchy)

Worse, some systems called meritocracy do not try to properly fit people into functions at all, forcing them instead. In those, you get thrust into a function despite not fitting it and then judged low merit, preventing changing the function. This is a typical bureaucratic failure.

The definition of "results" and the criteria by which they are measured is the critical thing.

If you measure everyone in a company by how much money they directly make, then salespeople are the best, and everyone else is just drifting along on their wake. You could measure by functionality added, defects found, bugs fixed, projects completed, requirements gathered, and in each case, you assign merit to one class and not to others. Even if you have a reliable way to measure merit in one job family, how do you align the merit metrics across them?

Trying to turn running a software project or a company into an algorithm is a definition of bureaucracy. You do not look at metrics but judge performance.

The solution is either to be a judge or appoint a jury, preferably as unbiased as possible. Get a devil's advocate too. You can rotate these people and pick some who do not know much about the person mentioned to be impartial and prevent oligarchies from forming.

Look at number of mistakes and their severity, flaws. Check when and if there are successes and the person working above and beyond the standard of service or overcoming adversity. Look for initiative and improvements.

It works almost exactly like military promotion if you think about it. It's a very human definition and not one turned into a metric. It's what we use and should use in courts of law too. There may be some guidelines to help judging but they should not be hard law as that way lies bureaucracy and lack of adaptability.

Ultimately, all metrics depend on someone's judgement so why not make it explicit and transparent.

The trickiest part is to maintain fairness. Fairness as defined by the subject accepting the judgement, which is different from equality. This generally comes with informing them of why a certain judgement has been made which is contrary to what happens in most companies - both in hiring and advancement.

Most of that doesn't translate well to open source projects, so I'd guess that "meritocracy" in open source means something else than "meritocracy" in a stratified British society of 1958.

For example, that the _code_ has to have merit (OSS), not the people (new aristocracy).

There's something to be said about _paid_ open source software development though: once money is involved the meritocracy that can work with OSS clashes with the demands of those who pay or are paid - and therefore want the paid-for work landed no matter its technical merit, since that brings along the business or one's own promotion.

I'd wager the guess that the politics aren't very different from any other corporate politics, but potentially more visible due to the projects' structure.

With that in mind, I blame the disconnect about meritocracy in paid Open Source on the "paid-for" part, not on "Open Source bros fighting to exclude those who are not Like Them".

A survey of projects with no monetary interests (no sponsors, no donations to pay devs, not even companies using the code) to see if they have similar issues could test that hypothesis.

(disclosure: I'm paid to do open source development)

No it’s more akin to black lives matter not allowing themselves to say “all lives matter”. Fine in a vacuum, but the phrase has become loaded by the opposition, which Mozilla mentions in TFA.

"All lives matter" was never fine with BLM. Their objection to the phrase began before any Republican uttered it, when they booed a Democratic Presidential candidate for saying it and forced him to apologize.

The OP specifically addresses that issue.

"Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and need to be set aside"

...and...

"Sadly, “meritocracy” is not that word. Maybe it once was, or could have been. But not today."

Like it or not, words have more than etymological meaning. They also have historical and cultural meaning, that might be sharply at odds with their etymology, and that precludes their use even in situations where they're technically accurate. "Meritocracy" has become such a word. Like "traditional American values" and "celebration of European culture" as synonyms for racism, "meritocracy" has become a rallying cry for opposition to diversity, inclusion, and egalitarianism. All as the person who originally coined the word meant it, BTW. We can coin new words that are just as etymologically valid without the cultural baggage.

Well, the OP mentions it. But you haven't actually provided any rebuttal to my analogy with terminology for other missed goals. I think they're pretty good examples of words that are "historically tarnished" in similar ways.

> Like "traditional American values" and "celebration of European culture"

Or diversity and inclusiveness.

We're not allowed to talk about celebrating European culture anymore?

What the hell is European culture? German culture, Italian culture, Romanian culture, sure. But...?

You just said what it is? I mean, what is Hispanic culture if not Mexican/Spanish/Venezuelan/etc., what the hell is Asian culture if not Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "celebrate Asian culture". Precisely because it's a barely meaningful agglomeration. Now if we examine the context in which "European culture" is celebrated... hm, yes I see.

I have heard it. There are just generic Asian American society functions, which celebrate the melting pot of everyone who isn't strictly first generation and has multiple ethnic backgrounds.

That would be Asian American culture then, except Americans tend to not notice that their culture is not everywhere and needs qualification.

http://portlandobserver.com/news/2018/apr/25/celebrate-asian...

> "Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and need to be set aside"

Every word, every ideal, and every good intention becomes tarnished by history. Humanity is not a perfect phenomenon: it is deeply imperfect. There is no way to have progress if our moral view of the world is purely associative.

"Meritocracy" is only tarnished by the very same people writing blogs like this. Don't be surprised if you spend years trashing a house then suddenly realize you don't want to live there anymore. Plenty of people will continue to use the word and try to live up to it's concept because they did not buy the FUD heaped on it (by the very people who now conveniently want to abandon it) in the first place.

Step 1: Point out how horrible "meritocracy" is

Step 2: Bemoan that you need a new word for what meritocracy used to mean

Step 3: ??? (my guess is: rinse and repeat)

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