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Meritocracy at Scale

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Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#41

Post by mdp2021 »

catapart wrote: post #39
mdp2021 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you say not "worth" expliciting... worth it to whom? To the to-do list - it is (normally) not worth it to the one who should spend the time writing that metrics. It would also then become potentially heavy if those metrics become "red-tape", obligatory bureaucratic process, which consumed time and resources without returning benefits. > And the handwave is always the same as the one you're trotting out now: 'i…

just to be clear, for posterity: > Err... Noo? It was not what I meant. Yes it absolutely is what you meant, which is proven by your insisteneces here: > [...]common sense should do? > Yes I see that we require common sense[...] what do you think "common sense" is? would it, maybe, be a certain "level" of "smart" that you think "non stupid" people have? i honestly can't tell if you aren't able to recognize your crite…

I do not see any bias in stating that the example you provided, about time vs quality priority, has trivially judged instances - trivial judgement operated by so-called "common sense", uneffortful reasoning.

Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#42

Post by picklebarrel »

In my experience, the biggest impediment to this goal of always hiring the best people is what I call "good talkers". People who are good at talking, good at convincing, but not good at technical work. The bigger an org gets, the more likely some interviewer will be fooled by a good talker. Once there's one, they like to hire other good talkers. Good talkers don't know as much about tech, so they are more easily convinced by other good talkers. Good talkers strive for positions of power where talking is more important than the technical work they don't know how to do. Before long, your company is run by professional managers who don't know how to do anything but talk. Once those people are in charge, any kind of technical meritocracy is impossible. Like they say, "the turds always float to the top".

Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#43

Post by kwhitefoot »

AnAnonyCowherd wrote: post #29

I 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…

DEI?

Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#44

Post by ryandvm »

andrewstuart wrote: post #19

Max Levchin (Paypal) said this on diversity: "The notion that diversity in an early team is important or good is completely wrong. You should try to make the early team as non-diverse as possible" I'm not saying I agree, just seemed a good time to drag it up.

If you know what you want to build and how you want to build it, then maybe I would agree. You want a crew team of a half dozen interchangeable rowers and the fewer boat rockers the better. It might be a miserably bland social environment, and the jokes are all going to be the same, and they all have the same ideas, but they can probably work pretty efficiently because there is no translational loss between the team.

The problem is that most companies don't have savvy enough leadership to actually know what they need to build. In those cases you want diversity of experience, education, culture, etc. so that you have fertile soil in which to grow your solutions.

Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#45

Post by dano »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #43
AnAnonyCowherd wrote: post #29

I 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…

DEI?

Diversity Equity and Inclusion

Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#46

Post by hurrdurr57 »

mdp2021 wrote: post #34
bberrry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale. > Isn't this what everyone tries to do? You seem to have missed that meritocracy has recently become a bad word and undesirable in some political circles.

> You seem to have missed that meritocracy has recently become a bad word and undesirable in some political circles I also did (miss that). Could you explain, or were you just drawing conclusion from the Wang's «There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity»? Edit: I think I found an acronym in this page that I cannot recall ever meeting (at least, never so strongly highlighted), and I…

[flagged]

Re: Meritocracy at Scale

#47

Post by hurrdurr57 »

RobotToaster wrote: post #20
verticalscaler wrote: post #8

[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.

>DEI is fundamentally anti-marxist.

It's not explicitly Marxist, but come on, it does borrow quite a few key ideas.

That's kind of like saying Methodists are fundamentally Anti-Christian because they've deviated from Catholicism.

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