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Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

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Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#91

Post by crusso »

untog wrote: post #35
MAGZine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal that is truly worth 1B, you have know-how to get it off the ground, and have exceptional presentation skills (its all about the sell, at this point) a VC wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. VCs are their to make money, and they see white male harvard dropouts with no social life to be a safe bet. Convince them that you have a pl…

I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal [...] a VC wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. But what data causes you to 'tend to believe'? That assumption is kind of at the heart of the article - not that SV is a pure meritocracy (I doubt many places in the world really are) but that people's perception is that it is a lot more meritocratic than it is - and no-one ever che…

But what data causes you to 'tend to believe'?

Probably the same level of data behind the article we're discussing.

If she had started the article with "I'm just basing this whole article on my own biases and no real data, but..." then we wouldn't really have much to argue about.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#92

Post by pg »

freefrancisco wrote: post #81
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.

That's an interesting question, is there an institution or subculture in the world that is more meritocratic than Silicon Valley? If there is, then the author's argument has some merit. If there isn't, then the author is wasting time attacking the one institution that comes the closest to embodying the meritocracy ideal. To what end?

That is an interesting question. I still can't think of one better than math and the hard sciences, which in my experience are roughly tied with SV.

The to what end question is easy to answer though. It gets you a lot more attention to claim SV isn't a meritocracy than to claim that math isn't.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#93

Post by ars_technician »

icegreentea wrote: post #43
freefrancisco wrote: post #19

' Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”, “assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”, “competitive”, and “ambitious”.' I don't see anything male about any of these words, I know many women who can be accurately described by these words, as well as many men who cannot. Why is the author c…

I don't think that that was Ahl's intentions when she labelled those terms as 'male-gendered'. I do not believe that she meant they were male-gendered like say.. 'he' or 'him'. Likely, male-genderedness is suppose to mean something along the lines of "without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to a male rather than a female". The point isn't that you can't use these words to describe f…

No, that's Ahl's intentions. Check the previous quote: "celebrating masculine concepts of control, competition, rationality, dominance, etc."

Apparently she believes being rational is a masculine concept.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#94

Post by mtrimpe »

SilasX wrote: post #82
mtrimpe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to miss the point and exemplify it in the same breath. The article is about how SV thinks it's more meritocratic than it actually is and how this false pride is a problem in and of it's own. P.S. P.G. When this thread started I was almost tempted to make a snide comment saying "3.. 2.. 1.. Flagged off the front page." It actually took a bit over an hour but it's now indeed been flagged off of the front page despi…

"SV thinks it's extremely meritocratic. It's only very meritocratic. This is a big problem."

And what if it's only moderately meritocratic? Or even below average?

I'd love for PG to run an analysis once of what words occur most frequently in flagged posts and their comments.

I don't think you could get a better representation of this community's unspoken biases than that.

I'm also pretty sure you'd find that words like feminism, female, sexism e.a. would feature quite high on the list.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#95

Post by newnewnew »

hacker789 wrote: post #87
mtrimpe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to miss the point and exemplify it in the same breath. The article is about how SV thinks it's more meritocratic than it actually is and how this false pride is a problem in and of it's own. P.S. P.G. When this thread started I was almost tempted to make a snide comment saying "3.. 2.. 1.. Flagged off the front page." It actually took a bit over an hour but it's now indeed been flagged off of the front page despi…

In your mind, is it possible for someone to disagree with the article without "exemplifying the problem"? That's the issue with first-world "social-justice warriors", like the author of the linked opinion piece. If you disagree with their premises on factual grounds, you're labeled as part of the problem . It makes honest discussion impossible. For example, you completely ignored the point that PG made. You didn't ev…

In post-modern Marxist discourse, who is speaking matters more than what is being said[1]. There is literally no way a white male could win the argument. Since he belongs to the oppressive/over class, his viewpoint is corrupted and invalid.

By the way, this is the bread and butter of what they teach to kids in the soft majors in university nowadays.

[1] http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#96

Post by sp332 »

SilasX wrote: post #82
mtrimpe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to miss the point and exemplify it in the same breath. The article is about how SV thinks it's more meritocratic than it actually is and how this false pride is a problem in and of it's own. P.S. P.G. When this thread started I was almost tempted to make a snide comment saying "3.. 2.. 1.. Flagged off the front page." It actually took a bit over an hour but it's now indeed been flagged off of the front page despi…

"SV thinks it's extremely meritocratic. It's only very meritocratic. This is a big problem."

SV believes so strongly that it's meritocratic, that every successful person believes they deserve it. That's a problem.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#97

Post by pasquinelli »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #16

The article, like most following this formula, assume that because rewards are not distributed among a sufficiently racially/sexually diverse group, meritocracy must therefore be absent. They fail to account for the possibility that merit might not be distributed in the manner that they think.

honestly, which explanation seems more likely?

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#98

Post by yummyfajitas »

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.

You said: You are much, much more likely to get funded if you're a young white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford than if you're a black woman studying at Berkeley.

Your data does not show this. You'd need the denominators as well, you have only the numerators.

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#99

Post by Crito »

icegreentea wrote: post #70
Crito wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "without additional information, most people would assume these words refer to a male rather than a female" Surely that is the problem. The problem isn't that those traits are seen as desirable or common for entrepreneurs. The problem is the people think those traits can only be found in men. Particularly the idea that "self-reliance" is a male trait is a classic example of something that feminists have been succes…

Maybe. So there are two branch points for this, and one little thing first. Firstly, I don't think anyone ever thinks that those traits can only be found in men. It's just that they believe that its more likely men to have those traits. Like the chopstick example I gave, no one is ever going to say only asians use chopsticks, and if you told them that the person in question was actually white, they likely wouldn't ba…

I don't think that skill with chopsticks is a good comparison. Chopsticks are an invention with an invention date and location that give them a very tangible cultural association to this day.

The traits listed in the article are not skills with a certain tool, they are more accurately described as personality traits. Men didn't invent and popularize them. There is no inventor of self-reliance, that is something that anybody can exhibit. (And even if we look at so called "traditional" gender roles in society, how many single men raising children are there? How many single women? Anyone saying that women cannot be self-reliant is delusional).

If we want to stick with a 'skill with invention' analogy, why not plow? If I told you that somebody was skilled with a plow, would you first guess that they were Egyptian?

Re: Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

#100

Post by hacker789 »

21echoes wrote: post #86
SilasX wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SV thinks it's extremely meritocratic. It's only very meritocratic. This is a big problem."

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.

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