You keep using that word "meritocracy"
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You keep using that word "meritocracy"
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Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#2Might be worth changing the submission title ("You keep using that word") to include the word "Meritocracy". It's really opaque right now.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#3"If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly Asian people."
Just had to pick up on this, purely because it's symptomatic of another form of blindness. We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. There aren't many Asian programmers in companies in my current town because the demographic is not a small scale mirror of the world demographic. I wouldn't expect to find even 8% white guys in a programming office in Manila.
That's not to ignore the fact that certain sections of populations are, for whatever reason, dramatically underrepresented in companies in various prominent countries, but throwing around random meaningless soundbites like that doesn't help anyone's argument.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#4"If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly Asian people." Just had to pick up on this, purely because it's symptomatic of another form of blindness. We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. There aren't many Asian programmers in comp…
It's also worth noting that female developers seem much more common in asian countries too.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#5While I agree that we fall well short of the utopian ideal (rather than the farcical interpretation) there are plenty of other bureaucratic barriers to meritocracies as well.
In my experience even the most dedicated, agile people hit organizational limits on complexity or continuity and ultimately have to settle for sub-par network topologies, software stacks, and yes even coworkers.
To the extent that we all understand a meritocracy to refer to a system where things are evaluated on their merits, hopefully all agree that it is a fine ideal even if the historical meaning (like 'begging the question') is different.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#6"If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly Asian people." Just had to pick up on this, purely because it's symptomatic of another form of blindness. We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. There aren't many Asian programmers in comp…
> We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia.
Middle-aged women, on the other hand. Since the article he's responding to is about sexism, that seems a little more salient.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#7I had this argument with my mum about the word 'meritocracy' a few years ago. She was convinced that it couldn't have originated in a satire, as otherwise politicians wouldn't have adopted it because that would just make them look silly.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#8The inflammatory and rambly tone will likely cause a lot of people to miss what I think is actually a point worth considering:
>A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules.
It's analogous to IQ tests having cultural biases, but people's claiming they measure intelligence objectively. Whoever sets the metric controls the outcome, and whoever is currently in charge sets the metric.
I'm not sure it's actionable information, but it seems worth remembering.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#9"If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly Asian people." Just had to pick up on this, purely because it's symptomatic of another form of blindness. We DO have Asian people. Go and look in Asia. There aren't many Asian programmers in comp…
Look at how many asian computer scientists there are in Seattle and the valley, or even NYC? This just baffles me, because Microsoft (my employer) is very diverse, I would bet that Asians make up a super minority if not a majority of the Redmond office. As for my own office in China, I think we have 1 or 2% Caucasian, maybe less. But to be honest, it doesn't feel that much different from the west coast.
Re: You keep using that word "meritocracy"
#10I had issues with the way the article made the following argument:
1) If computer programming was a meritocracy, we'd only have the best computer programmers in the field.
2) Most computer programmers are white males.
3) Most people are not white males.
4) Ergo, computer programming is not a meritocracy.
I trust most people saw the logical flaw - the author is assuming that the ability to program is currently evenly distributed. This is not the case. Pick 20 people at random, off the street in Palo Alto, put a gun to their head, and tell them they must solve FizzBuzz, in ANY language. FizzBuzz is famously hard, but it's not that hard; you've got a good chance of getting a few solutions.
Now do the same thing in Bangui (capital and largest city of the Central African Republic). Odds are you'll get a lot fewer. Probably none.
This doesn't tell us anything about whether white males are unusually good at programming; it tells us a lot about the availability of computers and programming training in the 179th (out of 187) poorest country in the world.
In other words, the central argument of the blog rests on conflating ability with opportunities. Because a black female from the CAR is every bit as capable of being a good programmer as a white male from Brooklyn, it follows that black females ARE just as good as white males, and since there are more black females than white males in the world, if a tech company has more white males than black females, it is clear proof of racism and sexism. Except no; in the world we actually live in, the number of people who have the skills, background, and experience to work at, e.g., Google is quite small, and (sadly) mostly male and a mix of white and asian. And yes, that is due to racism, but it isn't itself racist.
But the article seems unable to make that last step, and as such it renders the whole thing rather pointless.