Opinion: Meritocracy in Silicon Valley a worthy goal but not a reality
inamerica.blogs.cnn.com
inamerica.blogs.cnn.com
>Wouldn’t it be great if the hottest deals were done in the nursing mothers’ lounge as often as they were done on the golf course?
Who plays golf in Silicon Valley? The only course I'm aware of belongs to Stanford, and only some students/professors/old people ever go there.
Edit: Also the U.S. Open was held this year at a course in San Francisco.
Really?
If 60% believed, for example, that knowing how to code made for better hires, would only 41% be in favor of hiring people who know how to code?
Those are... not the same thing at all. That is an extremely flawed analogy.
The survey is taking about what makes for a good TEAM - further, it's only part of what makes a good team - one factor of many. You don't hire a team, however, you hire an individual.
The comparison that she draws is significantly more black and white: "Person A is strictly a better hire than person B, but we're hiring person B."
I'm always skeptical of meta-Journalism. To me, this translates into "Major media outlet criticizes major media outlets (itself included)".
I would be interested in seeing the questionnaire. The article frames the question in a way that could easily mean "Should companies have a diverse range of skills in their workforce?" which most people would answer positively to. Asking whether they should try to hire people with diverse skill sets could elicit more divided responses.
"Diverse teams are better at problem-solving and innovation." (60%)
"I am in favor of a company-wide hiring practice to increase diversity." (41%)
In common workplace parlance, the words 'diverse' and 'diversity' in those two statements aren't necessarily referring to the same qualitative goal. "Diverse teams" can be taken to mean "diverse in the relevant dimensions for problem-solving and innovation", such as having a variety of skills, temperaments, organizational-responsibilities, or life experiences. Meanwhile, "hiring practice to increase diversity" often means a focus on certain broad categories (of race, gender, age) during hiring.
Such an interpretation does not create the 'striking' logical tension Klein ascribes to the data, as would exist if these two phrases were as closely related as Klein's analogy to "knowing how to code" and "hiring people who know how to code".
If I'm a developer who gets promoted to architect because I'm dating the boss' niece, I've exploited my social skills and have reaped the benefits. People tend to naively assume that the only skills that matter are those directly related to the job at hand. This is false.
It is a useful theoretical concept that has absolutely no grounding in the reality of human incentive structures, randomness and extreme path dependence. Meritocracy can only exist if all humans are equal - as in perfect clones of each other - prepared in the exact same way, at the exact same time.
Given the proposition that 'a persons life prospects should not be decided by factors outside of their control or for which a person cannot claim personal credit' (i.e social status, inherited wealth, race and other accidents of birth) a meritocracy proposes a system where people are rewarded based on their efforts, and if everyone can start on equal footing with the same opportunity to advance, then the results are just. However, some studies have shown that even our motivation, work ethic and conscientious drive is in fact outside of our control and can be affected by such arbitrary factors such as birth order. Children who are first in birth order are more likely to be hard working. Therefore, a system which rewards effort in this way is not just, because effort and hard work is not something we can claim credit for.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
Check and mate.
People continually say they are for equality of opportunity and not for outcome (bullshit!). That is impossible.
Hence we modify the outcomes (welfare/taxes/public goods/roads/sewers/national defence etc.) to mitigate the messier parts of humanity and stabilize societies from uprisings and violence. If the people don't eat bread - the people get angry - and heads roll. Just ask the French!
Meritocracy began its life in an essay parodying the self-same concept that brought its name into existence.
Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term meritocracy was first coined by British politician and sociologist, Michael Young in his 1958 satirical essay, "The Rise of the Meritocracy"
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy
It is such a ridiculous concept I have no idea why humans believe it. Actually I do - it's called the Just-world hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis) - a systematic and problematic cognitive bias seen throughout human culture - Karma/Santa Claus/Heaven-Hell/Justice systems and many others I am sure. It is a derivative of the fundamental attribution error (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error).
Meritocracy is bullshit. Always has been - always will be.
Along with a ton of other systems/ideas/thoughts that I won't go into to avoid unnecessary down votes and the brutal thought pain I might cause others :D.
In the words of sociologist Laurie Taylor:
“The hideous thing about meritocracy is it tells you that if you’ve given life your all and haven’t got to the top you’re thick or stupid. Previously, at least, you could always just blame the class system.”
Personally, I hear about meritocracy not from people who want more just society for all, but from people who hate the weak and want more just society for themselves. "The Weak" are entitled to their opinion about their entitlement, and could pressure system to get what they want. But meritocracy works. Modern civilization is built on it.
If that were true, then it would not matter if the system was bullshit. We would just keep believing in it anyway because that is what we were programmed to do. Nothing is anyone's fault. I am free, because I am the youngest of my brothers.