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Is Believing In Meritocracy Bad For You? (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Fast Company:
Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called "grit," depend a great deal on one's genetic endowments and upbringing.
This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck, the U.S. economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates's stellar rise as Microsoft's founder, as well as to Frank's own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best. According to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. There are certainly programmers nearly as skilful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck.
In addition to being false, a growing body of research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that believing in meritocracy makes people more selfish, less self-critical, and even more prone to acting in discriminatory ways.
The article cites a pair of researchers who "found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate.
"They suggest that this 'paradox of meritocracy' occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides."
This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck, the U.S. economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates's stellar rise as Microsoft's founder, as well as to Frank's own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best. According to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. There are certainly programmers nearly as skilful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck.
In addition to being false, a growing body of research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that believing in meritocracy makes people more selfish, less self-critical, and even more prone to acting in discriminatory ways.
The article cites a pair of researchers who "found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate.
"They suggest that this 'paradox of meritocracy' occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides."
It's a really really old saying. So yes luck bestows merit but the important part isn't that. True Merit is needed to take advantage of Luck. Nearly every experimental graduate student will tell you it takes 2 weeks of work to get a PhD but it takes 5 years to find be prepared to recognize the 2 weeks.
It's also slightly like the repairman called in to repair the machine after the comapny techs have exhausted themselves with no success. He just taps it with a hammer on the side, it works, and he sends a $1000 bill. When they company thinks the hourly rate for just a single tap can't justify the bill they denad he itemize it. So he sends the new bill. $1 tapping in side, $999 knowing where to tap.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Meritocracy is a concept so nebulous that it's hard to say much about because "merit" is a very nebulous concept. I can feel the downmods already.
The thing is very very few careers and jobs are solo ones. Engineering in particular is a team sport. Even the very best 10x engineers cant build the entire system all by themselves; there are too many niche areas of expertise and just too much stuff to get done.
The thing is once you are in a job with other people, merit isnt just about *technical* merit. Metit is about your ability broadly speaking to generate value for the company you work at.
Now here's where it gets trickier still: good people generally find it easier to move between jobs. Bad people cling on to their job like a life-raft because they don't know where the next one is coming from. Bad working environments tend to concentrate bad people because the good people cycle out faster and the bad people stay.
We have all (well probably many of us) been in or seen situations where that's happened. Even something as neutral as "attrition" where the budget is cut and they stop hiring new people (even replacements) and rely on natural cycling to redcue the workforce. As the project tems get strained the working environment gets worse until the good people start to leave.
Well, toxic individuals are part of it. A great programmer who causes other pretty good programmers to leave is not a net asset. Unless that programmer can do everything (which we know isnt the case), the company would be better off with someone with les sharp techincal skills who doesn't cause all the other techincally skilled people to leave.
And the thing is good people do leave. You spend a lot of your life at work. You've only got one life and there's a ton of interesting stuff to do in it, so why waste any time on arseholes?
And that is the point where merit becomes a whole load more than "can code well" and so on. Engineering is a team sport and teams do not work well with lone wolves no matter how skilled.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Meritocracy is about identifying merit, not punishing those who lack merit in some way. Everybody lacks merit in some way. If you want the best answer, use a meritocracy. It doesn't mean you throw the losers off the lifeboat. The losers may very well win the next round. I find the people who eschew meritocracies generally enjoy some sort of secret advantage that would disappear if truth came out and the best solution were found. Ultimately trust makes meritocracy work best as the ultimate win in a meritocracy comes from putting yourself out of a job by training and encouraging those who seem to have more talent than you at different tasks. Winning by losing is a standard tactic in merit-oriented organizations.
That's not an example of meritocracy, it's one of nepotism. Affirmative action is another.
Societies that can't handle reality are doomed to fail. Some people are better, faster than others. Deal with it. People are tribal and place undue value in charismatic leaders. Deal with it. If you can't, there's always Sally Struthers' offer of TV/VCR repair and auto mechanic training. In the meantime, focusing on merit helps mitigate these tendencies.
Those of us who have "underclass" relatives, no matter our race, have also see how black, white, etc. they almost always dismiss the role that hard work plays in others' success. Most of the time "life just happens to them." Drugs, booze, kids out of wedlock? Shit happens. Little concept of "damn, I did this to myself."
It's conveniently fatalistic and ignores the fact that yes, you can make your own luck in many cases even if it's not the level you would like to have.
What a load of horseshit. In all my years, I have never come across a situation where I couldn't prove my worth to an employer or client through hard work.
I'm not particularly intelligent. I'm not good looking, nor am I all that charismatic. What I am is persistent, and I have an understanding of what it takes to succeed ( it may sound cliche, but "never give up" ).
Oh, I've had set backs because of nepotism. Idiot managers and bosses surely have gotten in my way. I don't let that slow me down, however; I keep pushing through it.
Meritocracy isn't perfect, but it works when you do that one thing; don't give up. What more could you ask for?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
A central tenet of post-modernism is that "there is no such thing as merit". Anyone who succeeds can only do so because privilege, as there is no such thing as merit. Every successful person is an oppressor, as there is no such thing as merit.
Meritocracy, the idea of meritocracy, is the very antithesis of post-modernism. And post-modernism is the most evil philosophy that has ever been conceived.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Meritocracy is NOT the problem. The problem is what kind of controls are in place to ensure that Meritocracy continues to exist when those in power begin to find way to abuse the system. This argument goes to everything in existence.
Every system is fine so long as it is run by benevolent actors... any malevolent actors will cause damage... be it meritocracy or otherwise. The ONLY system that is the best system is one that creates controls for the "ocracy" to overcome the inherent corruption that humans will bring as they institutionalize the practice being used. This argument is at the core of our very political beings and everyone is missing that key important factor in favor of their political dogma..
Any "ocracy" you create will work well when it is run by benevolent actors. any "ocracy" you create will fail when it is run by malevolent actors. You must always count on a malevolent actor gaining a position of power and controls must be in place to treat that as a certainty, otherwise the system fails because there will be no control to remove malevolent actors without resorting to methods that are likely considered chaos.
Meritocracy is fine, the problem is when a person merits their way to the top and stops being meritorious of that position and finds a way to remain at the top despite no longer meriting this. So really the problem is closer too... how to start being a Meritocracy and STAYING a meritocracy.
Genetics = luck?
Great teacher in school = luck?
Choosing to follow intuition = luck?
Seems to me that, with a sufficiently large value of 'luck', you could encompass almost all circumstances. And I mean ALL.
How about;
Genetics at birth = luck, but study and intellectual exploration = merit
Great teacher = luck, but putting forth the effort to learn and developing your intellect with challenges (from the teacher) = merit
And I can't even touch the third one: if you develop the ability to use intuition to solve problems and choose the 'best' option, that's merit.
In other words, luck is a circumstance, but merit is the result of a series of choices.
And with that, my PhD thesis is complete.....
That sentence demonstrates without requiring much thought what the article demonstrates if you think about it -
the author is an idiot.
Bill Gates isn't a successful programmer, he didn't write DOS. He's an incredibly successful business person, he bought and sold DOS and managed a company to turn it into billions.
Here's a little story about luck. I recently got lucky and got a new high-paying job. Maybe my dream job. Lucky for me, the hiring managers were looking for someone to do the types of things I have been doing at work lately, such as teaching a CISSP course. My class consisted of about 50 employees ranging from our head of internal security to recently hired engineers. The reason I volunteered to do such a class was precisely to raise my profile as a security expert - to put self in front of these managers while I filled the role of security expert. If you want to eventually have options of good security jobs, it doesn't hurt to have the head of security see that you are an expert, I figured. Twice per month I attended a meetings of security groups like OWASP and ISC2. At those meetings I talked to dozens of people about the companies they worked for and which skill sets they were hitting for. I kept on eye on the open positions at three local companies I was interested in. I tried to learn more about the skills they were looking for. I kept my LinkedIn updated with accomplishments and fielded calls from recruiters several times per week - mostly pointless calls. I kept a copy my resume in my car and gave it to someone who might be able to hire me. I did a good job at my current role, asking my co-workers and my boss how I could improve. I struggled to actually be *nice* to co-workers, although my natural state is asshole.
Overall I did hundreds of things to increase my odds of landing a great job. Hundreds of things "didn't work" immediately, yet I kept doing them. Eventually I "got lucky" and two of the things I was doing aligned with what a company was looking for and I landed the great job. How lucky.
It's like wearing a seatbelt. 99.9% of the time, if you don't wear a seatbelt nothing bad will happen. But eventually there will be an accident, so if you don't wear a seatbelt 99.9% of the time, you're probably going to end up hurt.
A large percentage of people who found very successful businesses first started several businesses that were not successful. They learned from their failures and kept trying. Eventually they learned enough and try enough things to find one that worked well - they "got lucky" and did tell right things, by trying a lot of things that seemed likely to be right.
We all make a hundred decisions every day. Starting with whether to hit the anooze button and ending with going to bed in time. Do we stop to help the person on the aide of the road while we're on the way to work?
We have a hundred "luck" situations every day - the stranded motorist could be the president of our company, could be our future spouse, who knows. That's luck. When we cut someone off in traffic, or get cut off, the person we flipped the bird to might be in a rush to get to an interview on time - them interviewing us. In the elevator when we smile at someone oe don't, who that person is depends on luck. In any given year we have thousands of "luck" possibilities. Some will be great opportunities, some won't be.
Success and failure happens when our thousands of choices each year meet our thousands of lucky opportunities. Someone who is habitually rude will, by chance, end up being rude to the written person, eventually. Someone who is always helpful will, by chance, eventually be helpful to the right person.
Luck determines whether our fate happens on Wednesday or on Thursday. Our habits determine whether we'll be doing to right thing or the wrong thing when those opportunities come by.
While much of what you wrote is true, you clearly didn't RTFA.
A few quotes that demonstrate what they are referring to:
The most common metaphor is the “even playing field” upon which players can rise to the position that fits their merit. ... wealth and advantage are merit’s rightful compensation, not the fortuitous windfall of external events. Most people don’t just think the world should be run meritocratically, they think it is meritocratic. In the U.K., 84% of respondents to the 2009 British Social Attitudes survey stated that hard work is either “essential” or “very important” when it comes to getting ahead, and in 2016 the Brookings Institute found that 69% of Americans believe that people are rewarded for intelligence and skill. Respondents in both countries believe that external factors, such as luck and coming from a wealthy family, are much less important. While these ideas are most pronounced in these two countries, they are popular across the globe. ... Where success is determined by merit, each win can be viewed as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth.
Thus their conclusions and the title. If you believe the world IS driven by merit, if your own actions and efforts alone can transform you into a C-suite executive or billionaire, the result ranges from being an unrealistic optimism about work, to a self-destructive attitude, to confusion and delusion about why their hard work is not being rewarded.
The belief is also why so many people tend to be self-praising, they write about that belief, "It licenses the rich and powerful to view themselves as productive geniuses.", and when used by the poor, destroys morale and self worth.
While it is valuable to put people in charge of projects because they have a demonstrated ability to get things done, hence meritocracy, the article is declaring that the world does not work that way and many other factors like family wealth, race, luck, nepotism, and good old fashioned boot-licking are the way a large part of how the world actually works.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Does it make you feel good to call people who disagree with you Nazis?
Of course it does. The GP's entire psychology is based up it. When you see a messed up situation you can do one of two things: 1) Separate yourself from it, 2) try to help. Trying to help is hard. You have to work with people already in the situation. You need to understand the issue, have a solution and then implement it. Separating yourself from the situation and blaming others is easy. And we have been teaching complaining as some sort of social good in the school system for the last 10 or 15 years. Turns out, when you teach people to complain instead of help, you end up with a situation where nobody helps, everyone complains about everything and things gets worse consistently. Sound familiar? The GP probably has probably never done anything remarkable their entire life but has been told consistently how great they are despite all evidence to the contrary. So someone else who actually does remarkable things must be bad because they disprove the GP's worldview.
The real problem is that we see self-esteem as some sort of good by itself instead of something to be earned by mastering some other task or skill. This causes Trumpism (ignoring of experts) and this sort of post-modern anti-merit idea at the same time. Turns out, artificially created and unearned self-confidence is bad for kids and society. Who knew?...Probably every generation of parents before us
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
For example, if an employer throws away the applications of minorities, then it's not a level playing field is it. And that HAS happened. Heck it's even been caught on camera. YOU just benefitted from racism. You didn't know it, but you did.
You might think so at first, because hey, you got a job you might not have otherwise received, but in reality you haven't benefited. You now work at a company that is willing to reject hiring talented employees because of skin color or some other characteristic that isn't meaningful to performance. That means you're going to be working with less skillful co-workers and that the competition is going to have a leg up on the company you work for because they hire more skilled employees. I would not want to work at such a place or be dragged down with it. Would you?
Sure, guys like you believe that we live in a Meritocracy, it makes you feel better about your selfishness, bigotry and racism: "Why those ghetto people are undeserving, they should do what I did. They're just lazy" But society as a whole was giving you XP boosts, extra loot, early access in the RPG of Life and you didn't even know it.
Now it's your bigotry that's showing. I'd look very carefully at the attitudes that lead to people living in ghettos and keeping them there. You'll find that there are plenty of people who manage to escape the unfortunate environment or situation that they were born into and that the poor attitudes and life choices that lead to ghettos don't care whether you're black or white. I'm sure that you're familiar with people who are referred to as trailer park trash. A pejorative typically used for white people, but essentially it's just a way of saying white ghetto. Why did they fail to receive all of these benefits, boosts, etc. that you think everyone else received? Black or white, ghetto or tailer park, it doesn't matter. One set of beliefs will keep you trapped where you've started, the other will allow you to escape and ensure a better start for your own children.
If you work hard and seek to create a world where merit is more important, then you will be more successful than when you started. Those who sit around blaming others for the world being unfair aren't going to improve and unfortunately they'll come to believe that their continued misery is only a manifestation of their beliefs and trap themselves further. Those people aren't undeserving, but they deserve exactly what they got. Perhaps you'll have an easier time in life because your parents worked hard to improve their own lives and by extension yours, but there's no shortages of cases where children squander all of the opportunity they're given and it amounts to nothing. Perhaps they're so wealthy that it's almost impossible for them to destroy the advantage that they had in their own lifetime, but given long enough to live and they would.
America is built on people rising far above their birth conditions, and as a result is one of the most prosperous nations on the planet. We've limited our potential as a nation only to the extent that we've failed to act as a meritocracy. If a close family member of yours needed surgery, would you not try to find the most qualified doctor you possibly can to perform it? Or would you base your selection on whether or not that person comes from some group that you consider more deserving? The problem isn't that meritocracy is bad, it's that we don't have enough of it. Do you think fighting inequality with inequality will help anything?