Hackathon Accidentally Picks Perfect Metaphor for Its Own Awfulness

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/07/hackathon-accidentally-picks-perfect-metaphor-for-its-own-awfulness/

by angersock • 12 years ago

48 21 12 years ago

minimaxir2• 12 years ago

This is solely a link to http://valleywag.gawker.com/hackathon-accidentally-picks-per... , which is from a banned domain on HN. (the article itself has good points)

IgorPartola• 12 years ago

Why is Gawker banned here? Are other properties of theirs banned as well, such as Gizmodo? I've tried in the past to submit a couple of Gizmodo articles with no success. I know that they are generally not written in a way that would be welcome here, but every once in a while they have some great original writing that I think is interesting.

minimaxir2• 12 years ago

gawker.com is banned because it's gossipy, which means that the subdomain valleywag.gawker.com is also banned.

I believe Gizmodo and other Gawker properties are not banned. (there was a Gizmodo submission 7 minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8043765)

angersock2• 12 years ago

Ah, fair enough--didn't think to link the original.

JWZ is a brand I can trust. :)

justincormack• 12 years ago

I think the link to the original is sufficient alas http://greylocku.com/hackfest/

baddox• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure that's not an accident.

scintill76• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Moxie Marlinspike's "The Money Machine": http://thoughtcrime.org/stories/money-machine/

lockes5hadow• 12 years ago

Loved that post.

im3w1l• 12 years ago

As a European there seems to me that there is an anti-meritocracy trend in America right now. Could anyone explain if and why this is so?

benmathes• 12 years ago

"Meritocracy" is often the idealized thing we like to call the American economy, but it is far from that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfgSEwjAeno

htaunay• 12 years ago

Another interesting perspective over meritocracy, definitely a good read/watch: http://alaindebotton.com/status/

angersock2• 12 years ago

You'd have to explain a bit more on what you've seen that leads you to that conclusion.

I think the trend is really only displayed by VCs--consider what is getting funded and talked about (social apps, me-too secret messaging, analytics platforms) and what isn't (medical software for informatics and analytics, robotics, clean energy).

Additionally, there is a lot of double-speak being thrown around by people that should, theoretically, "know better". Andreessen is a smart guy (and slung actual code back at Netscape), for example, but a lot of what he says recently is so clearly pandering to his own business interests that it's hard to respect him for his technical ability.

In short, America is as much of a meritocracy as it has ever been--which is cold comfort for students of history.

mattzito• 12 years ago

That is a big, huge question and issue to try to tackle in a comment.

From my perspective, it's not so much that there is an anti-meritocracy trend in America, as that America has classically had a popular culture of "if you work hard, you will succeed" that has been taken to the extreme (Horatio Alger, as an example).

However, rising income inequality, a weak job market for certain classes of individuals, poor employment prospects for college grads and the like have created a situation where there is increasing cynicism that in reality working hard will not let you get ahead.

Couple that with a vocal set of extremely wealthy individuals saying stupid things and getting lots of press for it, and you start to create a growing perception that there's a "landed elite" that disdains the shrinking middle class.

So - in this particular case, it's not that anyone is angry that there's a hackathon - it's the perception of extremely wealthy professional investors challenging undercapitalized individuals to write code, with a prize of literally jumping around in a booth for cash.

I don't think America is anti-meritocracy, but to paraphrase John Oliver from his show, many Americans are thinking it's more of a rigged game, and not in their favor.

ctdonath3• 12 years ago

As an American, I am equally puzzled.

We've had decades of sociopolitical groups pushing "social equality & justice", grossly summarized as eliminating any reason one person should have something while another should not. Much of it is valid (overcoming abject discrimination based on race, disability, gender, etc) but as those problems are solved, smaller issues are magnified into the same intensity & rhetoric, asymptotically approaching a demand for absolute equality in all things. As such, this manifests as a "war on meritocracy", whereby nobody should have "more" than anyone else for any reason whatsoever. I'd theorize that it's a combination of good intentions gone wrong, leaders having to "continue the fight" lest they work themselves out of a job thru success, ad-driven culture taught to want everything for nothing, frustration of efforts not reaping tacitly promised rewards, and straight-up greed.

Odd, as it wasn't long ago that hard work was the dominant ethos. Now it's an awful lot of "get mine" by making up excuses to take someone else's.

[downvotes commence]

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

I'm an American too; I don't see this happening. Straw Man.

mwcremer• 12 years ago

In my experience, most of those complaining the loudest are upset that others have more than they do, not that they have more than others do. It's really more of a me-ritocracy.

wonderzombie3• 12 years ago

This summary of social equality & justice is not something anyone should take seriously. It is a very one-sided, reductive description of the issue. If nothing else, this comment is a good example of the siege mentality on display in folk of a conservative bent: long on cynical rhetoric about "those people" and politicians while short on nuance or compassion for fellow human beings.

Long story short, some people question the idea that people who are successful deserve what they have merely because they have it, and that those who do are unsuccessful deserve to be poor because, in a word, they're meritless. Furthermore, some people want society at large to acknowledge the role chance and circumstance play in whether or not someone is successful.

Your last complaint is so old it's a cliche.

wonderzombie3• 12 years ago

It's the idea that meritocracy in America is a sham, and a self-congratulatory idea in any case. It starts from the premise that if you have succeeded, you deserve to have succeeded without taking into account circumstances that led to your success (e.g. parents' wealth).

Contrariwise people are sick of being told they're "meritless" because of circumstances beyond their control-- the deck is stacked against you if you happen to fall into one of many less-than-fortunate categories.

Hackathon Accidentally Picks Perfect Metaphor for Its Own Awfulness

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