Opinion: Meritocracy in Silicon Valley a worthy goal but not a reality

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/20/opinion-meritocracy-in-silicon-valley-a-worthy-goal-but-not-a-reality/

by iProject • 14 years ago

14 13 14 years ago

inamerica.blogs.cnn.com

GuiA2• 14 years ago

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>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.

shrughes• 14 years ago

Hello? There's Palo Alto, Shoreline, Sunnyvale, Sunken Gardens, Santa Clara, just to name a few east of El Camino. This place has the second-best year-round golfing weather in the country.

Edit: Also the U.S. Open was held this year at a course in San Francisco.

GuiA2• 14 years ago

Ha, the more you know. Thanks for the info!

j_baker• 14 years ago

(CNN) – I look forward to the day when a pregnant engineer becoming CEO of a major tech company isn’t news.

I'm always skeptical of meta-Journalism. To me, this translates into "Major media outlet criticizes major media outlets (itself included)".

scott_w• 14 years ago

Does racial/gender diversity really make your business better? Actively preventing diversity can clearly be negative e.g. refusing to hire women, but blindly promoting diversity for the sake of it can be just as bad.

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.

gojomo• 14 years ago

Indeed. From the linked PDF, the numbers seem to have been percentage of startup men who 'agreed' with the specific statements:

"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".

jaems33• 14 years ago

What's interesting to me is that there are clearly a lot of Asians who study engineering/comp-sci at excellent North American schools (let alone schools around the world), yet very few represent CTOs/CEOs/execs of tech startups/companies on this continent. Tony Hsieh and Jerry Yang are literally the only guys I can think of in the U.S., while Google does have a number of Indians on their leadership committee.

azylman• 14 years ago

while 60% of men in start-ups believe diverse teams are better at innovation and problem-solving, only 41% would be in favor of a companywide hiring practice to increase diversity.

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."

confluence• 14 years ago

Meritocracy is bullshit. End of story.

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.”

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

morphy• 14 years ago

"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. "

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.

givan• 14 years ago

What should we do with the people that were born on the wrong date and because of this they can never be hard working? Just work hard, pay taxes so they can get social help? And if meritocracy is bullshit what is cool? communism?

cdi• 14 years ago

Good straw man here. It looks like you think that meritocracy is some kind of moral theory of what is just. It's not. It's an approach to selecting people for the task. And it works. Universities are mostly meritocratic. Or at least should be.

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.

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

Meritocracy is the reality in every field. The problem is that people incorrectly define merit.

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.

Opinion: Meritocracy in Silicon Valley a worthy goal but not a reality

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