Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#101

Post by Crito » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

eliteraspberrie wrote: post #89

Crito wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting example, both math and entrepreneurship are abound in examples of people making a big splash after going off on their own. From mathematics, people like Srinivasa Ramanujan and Gottfried Leibniz made an impact despite lacking formal mathematics educations. Their results spoke for them, not their credentials. Edit: Nash apparently did study mathematics, not sure what I was remembering...

Better examples of autodidact mathematicians are Galois and George Green.

Those are indeed better examples, though I had to look them up. The history of mathematics is really something I should read more about.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#102

Post by jacalata » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:36 PM UTC

newnewnew wrote: post #79

jacalata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point, no? "male or female, you will only succeed if you can act in these typically male ways, regardless of how good your idea and execution are." Therefore, the tech scene is clearly not judging you solely on your idea and execution as they believe they are.

Those qualities are what's needed to build something out of nothing. It has never been easy. If you don't think females can do it, well that sounds sexist to me. Nobody has a magic wand they can wave to give startup success to timid, easily defeated people. If it is your nature to make excuses, I suggest you go get a government job. No amount of feminist cultural revolution is going to convince VCs to throw away thei…

No, most of those qualities are what it takes to make other people believe you can build something. It's an important distinction between 'people who can build amazing products' and 'people who can convince PG/YC that they should be given money because they can build amazing products', and the areas where the two do not overlap are the ones which demonstrate that SV is not a strict meritocracy based on tech skills and execution. You may be attempting to argue that it is a strict meritocracy based on 'the skill of convincing people that you are worth giving money to', and I might agree, but that is not what people generally seem to think they are arguing when they say SV is a meritocracy (although I think there is increasing recognition for this, based on slight differences in the themes of articles across HN).

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#103

Post by elchief » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:39 PM UTC

So I was editing OpenStreetMap the other day, because I wanted to fill in the shops in my neighbourhood.

They have a feature where you can see all the editors that are near you. There were dozens of them, and they were all men.

Why? What could possibly be preventing women from editing OpenStreetMap? Why are men at the vanguard of this project? This project is good for society, and I saw no women.

I was actually surprised, after the Wikipedia-is-dominated-by-men articles from a few months ago. I expected that women would purposely be seeking out opportunities to contribute in other areas.

In a few years when OpenStreetMap is larger, feminists will complain that there aren't enough women editors, and that men are preventing them. But men aren't preventing them.

When there's nothing preventing your group from doing something, and your group is under-represented, it is your group's fault.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#104

Post by freefrancisco » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:39 PM UTC

21echoes wrote: post #84

pg wrote: post #50

The same arguments would prove that math isn't a meritocracy. Which it presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely. And if SV is only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good. Indeed, that's what the word means in ordinary usage.

Math is a field famously overrun with white men. Probably not the best comparison to make if you really want to talk about what a "meritocracy" should look like. Unless, of course, you think white men naturally have more merit than everyone else..

So just because white men predominate in a field that automatically makes the field less meritocratic? If you live in a society where white men have more access to the tools that will allow them to forge their merit, when those white males encounter a meritocracy they will naturally rise to the top. You can argue that the society where these men come from is not meritocratic, but you can not argue that the field they enter is not meritocratic just because they are over represented.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#105

Post by mathattack » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:40 PM UTC

jnovek wrote: post #8

mathattack wrote: post #3

I think it's fair to start with, "No industries or geographies are pure meritocracies." Then it's worth asking, "Where does Silicon Valley fit in the spectrum?" Is it more or less meritocratic than teaching? Being an actuary? A politician? A banker? A lawyer? Advertising? Writing? I don't know all of the answers, but my impression is the market forces on startups (Can you get funding? Can you get customers?) at least…

The thing the author is challenging here is not whether Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but whether it is as much of a meritocracy as its participants believe. It doesn't matter much how it compares to other industries. In my (limited) experience, among successful founders and investors -- the "trend setters" of startup culture -- there is a widely held notion that anyone with a computer, a good brain, a decent idea…

Fair enough. But I'd suggest that it's much easier to get to $20 million as a non-white-Male than it would be in most other fields with similar educations. I don't see too many non-white Males at the top of law firms, in our country's cabinet, or atop large investment banks.

But this is speculation. What would be interesting to see is hard data based on an entry point (People graduating with CS degrees applying for VC funding versus people with law degrees applying for an associate spot) and watching how the funnels change over time. This type of data has to exist somewhere. It won't prove causality, but it will at least tell part of the story better than personal experience and anecdotes.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#106

Post by DamnYuppie » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:40 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #83

crusso wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where is your data showing that?

http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capit... According to that report, 87% of funded founders are white; 92% of funded founders are male.

But what percentage of applicants were neither white or male? Without knowing that your statement is essentially propaganda dressed up as statistics.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#107

Post by brosco45 » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

It's who you know, not what you know.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#108

Post by Crito » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

hacker789 wrote: post #100

21echoes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would in no way say that SV is even very meritocratic. Compare start-up demographics numbers to population-at-large numbers... The fact that commenters like you would read this article, hopefully think for half a second, and then still insist that SV is " very meritocratic" is exactly the problem.

Yes, there are too many pesky east-Asians and Indians. There might be a Jewish problem as well.

I'm not sure if you are making an intentional reference to this or not, but it does make an interesting counter-point to the assertion that mathematics is a meritocracy: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

"This is a special collection of problems that were given to select applicants during oral entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. These problems were designed to prevent Jews and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals. This collection therefore has mathematical as well as historical value."

(Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793 and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759642)

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#109

Post by katrinae » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:47 PM UTC

I am so happy that this view is being shared - so happy, in fact, that I created a HN username just so I could comment on it. I am female and graduated from MIT several years ago. While I was there, tech entrepreneurship far and away the sexiest thing to be doing. It was at the point where you felt like a loser if you didn't have your own startup.

Unfortunately, this fetishization of startups resulted in many ideas that were, to put it bluntly, stupid. I couldn't believe how many people - including investors, not just students - were obsessed with creating iPhone apps and social media networks.

I had a telling encounter a year ago with a woman who ran an incubator; it was somewhat tech-focused, but also had a creative bent and was partially funded by state money for assisting small businesses. I wanted to invest my money locally (a la Slow Money - www.slowmoney.org ) and was looking for mentors and partners. We had a long conversation during which this woman said things like, "what a great idea, I've never heard of anything like that before". At the end of it, though, she asked: "so let me get this straight. Are you an innovator, or do you just want to fund innovators?". This kind of myopia about what constitutes innovation devalues the contributions of non-tech entrepreneurs (and many others, too); furthermore, it discourages young people from attacking important problems outside of technology.

Interestingly, the Economist had an article recently about how public veneration of the tech elite may be ending: http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-.... Even though I'm part of this group, I'm glad this issue is being discussed.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#110

Post by alanctgardner2 » Mon, Nov 25, 2013, 6:48 PM UTC

FD3SA wrote: post #21

I agree with most of what this article is saying, but the existence of YC is a perfect counter-argument. Although I've disagreed with PG regarding his opinions on "Zuckerberg-likeness" being important in founders, I know that YC selects for merit above all else. How do I know this? Because PG has stated many times that he is excited about founders from the University of Waterloo in Canada, which used to be unknown on…

Waterloo has been prestigious for at least 5 years (when I was applying it was among the hardest Canadian universities to get into, and it was already globally recognized). The only thing that has changed is more VC money, and more startup incubators, drawing the interest of progressively larger institutions.

I think the whole "meritocratic" argument is stupid. But it's worth pointing out that Waterloo is a self-fulfilling prophecy: a lot of startups are being founded because a lot of support and infrastructure is being thrown at the students. Whether the students are more suitable than others is anyone's guess, but they're in the right place at the right time (and they can afford the tuition).