Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic” • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#141

Post by danharaj » Sun, May 27, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

Presquare wrote: post #123

danharaj wrote: post #30

Meritocracy, like all words that reduce to "good thing", are always troublesome. No one ever claims to be a "bad thing"ocracy. The issue is the opacity of the concept of merit. How do you distinguish being a meritocracy in some good sense from insisting you are a meritocracy and thus poisoning any discussion that you are not one? Using words to maintain a culture has a sort of Newton's third law. It might push you to…

If you mean your post as a general argument against organisations claiming to value any vague "good thing", I can respect that. With few word changes in your comment, you could use it to argue against claims of valuing: privacy, diversity, inclusivity, environment etc. Do you believe organisations should remove all claims of valuing such things?

I never take such value statements at face value and neither should you.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#142

Post by OCASM » Sun, May 27, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #131

cucumberferity wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also adds language about debias. So it doesn't simply remove meritocracy to appease the far-left activists. It specifically inserts language to appear them, reaffirm their world view. Is it really necessary to create a safe space for fringe political activists to create substantive diversity? No. It's also promoted by high-level Mozilla employees in response to a recent anti-meritocracy movement. After what happen…

> It also adds language about debias. I'm confused as to why debiasing here is bad. If your contention is that bias doesn't exist, then this shouldn't have any effect. And if the distribution of authority does have a bias other than "ability and contributions to the project", why wouldn't they want to fix that?

"The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority through active interventions that engage and encourage participation from diverse communities."

That sounds a lot like affirmative action.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#143

Post by thecrash » Sun, May 27, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #83

ggggtez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you get "a" tries to succeed. You'd expect equally talented candidates x, and y, to have Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|a). But what if y only had "b" tries, where b And that's all there is to it. If you no longer assume everyone has an equal chance to show their skills, then the meritocracy isn't actually working as intended. Good "y" candidates are getting ignored for worse "x" candidates, just because "x" candidates ha…

I get the idea, but Mozilla is building things . If I want the best engineer to build my bridge , I don't want to give bonus points for skin color or private parts. It's not like the trucks going over it will be any lighter or have smoother tires because the person building it grew up in a single parent household or something. When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the en…

"When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product."

This is overly individualistic. A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense. They are better or worse at a given job, which takes into account many other contextual factors: the specific goal, the rest of the team (who will be pursuing a that goal cooperatively), and the unique challenges which face that team/goal combination.

For example, it may be that your engineer Dmitri is best at solving particular types of design problems, but he only speaks Russian, and he's having trouble on a team with no other native Russian-speakers.

In this case, the "best" engineer to hire for Dmitri's team is a Russian, even if they're "worse" at solving design problems on an individual basis. In the abstract, hiring an engineer based on the language they speak goes against the meritocratic ideal, but in practice it is obviously the decision which best moves the team toward their goal.

More generally, one could say that even though language-diversity is not obviously or directly related to engineering effectiveness, it is still related. Having many languages represented on a team increases the odds that the performance of people like Dmitri will not be limited by a language barrier in the first place.

It's funny you mentioned "the world as it is" vs "the world as you want it to be". Because from my perspective, you're describing the world as you want it to be: each person has an abstract platonic "skill value" which can be objectively and universally evaluated, and which translates predictably and directly into metrics like load-bearing capacity. This is a lofty ideal, but does not reflect how organizations and teams actually achieve goals.

"The world as it is" involves orgs with lots of subjective, local, interdependent systems which often involve interpersonal dynamics, norms, and emergent social phenomena, all of which have an indirect but very significant effect on metrics like load-bearing capacity.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#144

Post by moduspol » Sun, May 27, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

thecrash wrote: post #143

moduspol wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the idea, but Mozilla is building things . If I want the best engineer to build my bridge , I don't want to give bonus points for skin color or private parts. It's not like the trucks going over it will be any lighter or have smoother tires because the person building it grew up in a single parent household or something. When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the en…

"When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product." This is overly individualistic. A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense. They are better or worse at a given job, which takes into account many other contextual factors: the specific goal, the rest of the team (who will be pursuing a that goal cooperatively), and the unique challenges which f…

> A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense.

I'll just address this first: Often they are. It is idealist and simplistic to claim otherwise. Some surgeons are better at performing surgery than others, some engineers are better at building bridges than others, and some programmers are better at programming than others. They're not inherently better people, but that's not relevant.

I think the view expressed in your comment is overly reductionist. Of course everyone works on teams, and of course there are more factors at play than simply being better at some task in a vacuum. But that doesn't change facts like:

* Some people are smarter than others

* Some people are more dedicated than others

* Some people have more experience than others

* Some people have life circumstances that allow them to contribute more than others

* Some people have values more in line with the company's success than others

This is kind of what I mean by "the world as it is" vs "the world as you want it to be." The points above are common sense to people that don't have the world view expressed in your comment. The idea that all people are equally valuable is only true in the abstract sense. When you actually need to accomplish a concrete goal (like putting a man on the moon), some people are absolutely more valuable than others toward doing that, and an organization that pretends that's not the case is shooting itself in the foot.

Having a meritocratic structure doesn't even inherently mean individualist. It could be measured at the team or project level. It also doesn't have to be (and typically isn't) exactly the measurable contributions ("load-bearing capacity") to the goal itself that determines the best "engineer." More often your "best" engineer is the one who is easy to work with, embraces tough challenges, and can adapt well to changes.

But honestly: I think everyone already knows these things. That's why I see this more as virtue signaling: it's one thing to change a governance statement. It's another when it's actually put into practice.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#145

Post by mabynogy » Mon, May 28, 2018, 12:31 AM UTC

Meritocracy is a word used by the right (you succeed by your will and your skills). It's not compatible with the system of believes of the left (the unlucky should be helped more - something like a rule, a rate must compensate that injustice).

It's logical they change that and it confirms the political nature of those subjects.

My advice is to avoid people dealing with that because it's not related to computers.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#146

Post by rich-w-big-ego » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

mabynogy wrote: post #145

Meritocracy is a word used by the right (you succeed by your will and your skills). It's not compatible with the system of believes of the left (the unlucky should be helped more - something like a rule, a rate must compensate that injustice). It's logical they change that and it confirms the political nature of those subjects. My advice is to avoid people dealing with that because it's not related to computers.

This is the core conflict. Do we judge people on their competence, or do we judge them by the degree to which they are oppressed?

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#147

Post by rich-w-big-ego » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

djajshgsjja wrote: post #74

tjpnz wrote: post #24

Why exactly do people contend that meritocracy somehow clashes with diversity? The implications being made by suggesting the two be mutually exclusive are frightening.

Suppose: 1. There exist some quality “merit” with a random uniform distribution across the population. 2. Some systems used to measure merit are biased for and against different subgroups of the population. 3. People obtain power and wealth based these biased measurements. 4. Subgroups with more power and wealth expend resources optimizing their performance on the tests, further biasing the results. 5. The winners in…

Why don't you come out and say what you really mean? djajshgsjja is attempting to justify a handicap against the successful subgroups. But what amount of handicap should there be? In what measure should the handicap apply? How can you apply any sort of handicap without a massive bureaucratic intervention, with swaths of each organisation dedicated to applying handicaps? Ah, but the bureaucratic intervention is the linchpin. We arrive at the diversity and equity offices in Universities across North America. We arrive at the Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion by Law Society of Ontario that requires every law firm of 10 or greater to complete an annual report about how they are advancing the goals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are parts of an ideology based on absolutely no science or literature, and ignores the deadly catastrophes of the 20th century whose millions of dead were preceded by cutting off the successful subgroups at the knees.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#148

Post by mabynogy » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

rich-w-big-ego wrote: post #146

mabynogy wrote: post #145

Meritocracy is a word used by the right (you succeed by your will and your skills). It's not compatible with the system of believes of the left (the unlucky should be helped more - something like a rule, a rate must compensate that injustice). It's logical they change that and it confirms the political nature of those subjects. My advice is to avoid people dealing with that because it's not related to computers.

This is the core conflict. Do we judge people on their competence, or do we judge them by the degree to which they are oppressed?

I tend to evaluate them on their intents. Do they try to make the good?

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#149

Post by rich-w-big-ego » Mon, May 28, 2018, 11:05 PM UTC

mabynogy wrote: post #148

rich-w-big-ego wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the core conflict. Do we judge people on their competence, or do we judge them by the degree to which they are oppressed?

I tend to evaluate them on their intents. Do they try to make the good?

Intention is also very important. Are they focused on people in the office, or code on the computer?

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#150

Post by thecrash » Mon, May 28, 2018, 11:18 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #144

thecrash wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end product." This is overly individualistic. A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense. They are better or worse at a given job, which takes into account many other contextual factors: the specific goal, the rest of the team (who will be pursuing a that goal cooperatively), and the unique challenges which f…

> A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense. I'll just address this first: Often they are. It is idealist and simplistic to claim otherwise. Some surgeons are better at performing surgery than others, some engineers are better at building bridges than others, and some programmers are better at programming than others. They're not inherently better people , but that's not relevant. I think the vie…

Having a meritocratic structure doesn't even inherently mean individualist. It could be measured at the team or project level. It also doesn't have to be (and typically isn't) exactly the measurable contributions ("load-bearing capacity") to the goal itself that determines the best "engineer." More often your "best" engineer is the one who is easy to work with, embraces tough challenges, and can adapt well to changes.

Yeah I totally agree with that. To me, that shows that the measure of merit is, #1: extremely subjective and #2: influenced by all kinds of factors that would not traditionally be associated with merit.

Basically, I think that it often makes sense to do affirmative action within a true meritocratic framework, but that the term meritocracy is generally used to juxtapose against affirmative action. If the term is being used to argue against its true meaning, then it's not a useful term and should be retired.