The interesting question is not the choice between diversity and merit, but how you attract and select the most meritorious candidates in a setting where your company overwhelmingly skews towards one demographic, given that people are more likely to hire others that are similar to them (and conversely, potential candidates are not likely to join companies when there are no people similar to them).
Meritocracy at Scale
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#22[flagged]
DEI is fundamentally anti-marxist. The core principle of marxism is that capitalism cannot be reformed. DEI is an attempt to reform capitalism. Not to mention Marx was quite explicit that class (not nebulous identities) was the primary division in society. Proponents of DEI are radical liberals.
There are a multitude of conflicting bad ideas burning through the zeitgeist.
They try to grab a toehold by appearing more popular than they actually are.
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#23This is all fine but it's virtual signaling to the likes of PG and other VCs. To be merit based they'd need blind entrance exams so as not to fast lane referrals, friends of friends, alumni networks etc.
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#24The interesting question is not the choice between diversity and merit, but how you attract and select the most meritorious candidates in a setting where your company overwhelmingly skews towards one demographic, given that people are more likely to hire others that are similar to them (and conversely, potential candidates are not likely to join companies when there are no people similar to them).
[flagged]
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#25How brave of a company to say they will only hire those who will contribute the most to the bottom line!
While also providing no actual metrics for their so-called "merit"-based system. Oh, you prefer "smart" people, you say?! What a concept!
It's like the screechers about "meritocracy" never get the memo that the issue people have with it is not it's conceptual structure, but that its details aren't ever (in any situation I've seen) spelled out with the kind of logical consistency that they pretend they are relying on. Does "smarter" mean "came up with a working solution in the shortest time"? Or maybe "came up with the most robust solution during an allotted time"? What if they both come through, which one has more merit? Is it contextual? If so, when does the context determine precedence? In short: How would a rational actor plan for upward mobility using actual metrics (no wiggle-words like "think nimbly", in your so-called "meritocracy"?
I mean, I get that it's easier to just handwave the details and blame any counter-argument on "woke"-ism or an affinity for DEI, but I've never had a single person be able to satisfy my very simple logical questions about their meritocracy with any kind of truly actionable information. And most people who try to convince me haven't even - themselves - experienced these meritocracies. The people who work for these companies usually say they're not meritocracies. It's mostly the people on the outside, looking in, (or on the top, looking down) preaching the company lines rather than trying to hone in on specifics.
But I'm sure Scale is different...
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#26That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart.
We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual.
That sounds great and all, but how? How exactly do you ensure that you only hire the best person for the job? How do you prevent unconscious biases from causing you to unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual?
There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity.
I think there is a very well founded belief that organisations that claim to be pure meritocracies struggle with diversity.
I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas.
That’s probably true, if the hiring process truly is based on merit and nothing else. We have no way to tell if that’s the case here.
MEI has gotten us to where we are today.
Or maybe it was just product/market fit.
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#27[flagged]
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#28I was eating lunch at a place I'm applying to, and volunteering at, and someone casually dropped a hateful comment towards "straight white males." At work! Nobody called her out on it. It boggles the mind. So I stopped volunteering and applying there. Good luck with the hate, that's my thought.
I’ve reported comments like this that were delivered in writing and HR couldn’t care less.
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#29I work for a Fortune 250 that is literally withering on the vine because they chose to focus on DEI before it was even a publicly-recognized thing. A VP of HR once told a former boss -- who had a resume of a good, local choice for a role he needed to fill -- that he was not allowed to hire his guy because "that's not our focus," and was forced to fill the spot with a random H1-B with the right keywords on his CV.
As a company, we're not making the turn on a critical changes that need to happen in order to remain competitive. I expect that the product lines will falter within a few years, because of our inability to meet customer requirements and a complete miss in engaging with emerging technology in the space. As our stock takes hit after hit, the remains of the company will be subsumed by an even larger company within 10 years, and all the execs will make out like bandits.
I posit that the natural state of any corporation over 1000 employees is a giant game of politics, where the only thing that REALLY matters in hiring is getting more warm bodies, because that means budget, and budget means "power" amongst managerial peers. Fighting THIS driver towards mediocrity is the key to standout success.
Re: Meritocracy at Scale
#30This is all fine but it's virtual signaling to the likes of PG and other VCs. To be merit based they'd need blind entrance exams so as not to fast lane referrals, friends of friends, alumni networks etc.
Thank God it is virtual signaling and not done by physical means