The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14923102
Finally progress in the tech industry.
Postmeritocracy wrote:
The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto

Meritocracy is a founding principle of the open source movement, and the ideal of meritocracy is perpetuated throughout our field in the way people are recruited, hired, retained, promoted, and valued.

But meritocracy has consistently shown itself to mainly benefit those with privilege, to the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology. The idea of merit is in fact never clearly defined; rather, it seems to be a form of recognition, an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.”

(If you are not familiar with criticisms of meritocracy, please refer to the resources on this page.)

It is time that we as an industry abandon the notion that merit is something that can be measured, can be pursued on equal terms by every individual, and can ever be distributed fairly.

What does a post-meritocracy world look like? It is founded on a core set of values and principles, an affirmation of belonging that applies to everyone who engages in the practice of software development.
Our Values

These core values and principles are:

* We do not believe that our value as human beings is intrinsically tied to our value as knowledge workers. Our professions do not define us; we are more than the work we do.
* We believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills.
* We can add the most value as professionals by drawing on the diversity of our identities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Homogeneity is an antipattern.
* We can be successful while leading rich, full lives. Our success and value is not dependent on exerting all of our energy on contributing to software.
* We have the obligation to use our positions of privilege, however tenuous, to improve the lives of others.
* We must make room for people who are not like us to enter our field and succeed there. This means not only inviting them in, but making sure that they are supported and empowered.
* We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.
* We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors.
* We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right. The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions.
* We are devoted to practicing compassion and not contempt. We refuse to belittle other people because of their choices of tools, techniques, or languages.
* The field of software development embraces technical change, and is made better by also accepting social change.
* We strive to reflect our values in everything that we do. We recognize that values that are espoused but not practiced are not values at all.



Publishers are much more advanced already.

BBC wrote:
Lionel Shriver attacks Penguin publisher's inclusion policy

Writer Lionel Shriver has accused publisher Penguin Random House of putting diversity ahead of quality.

It says new authors should reflect the UK population by 2025, "taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability". The company said: "Books shape our culture, and this should not be driven only by people who come from a narrow section of society." It has also said job applicants would no longer need to have a degree.

The We Need to Talk About Kevin author said the publishers were "drunk on virtue". Writing in the Spectator, Ms Shriver said: "Penguin Random House no longer regards the company's raison d'être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. "Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision." In the article she suggested that a manuscript "written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven" would be published "whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling". Ms Shriver also said she found it "alarming" that the publishing house was no longer requiring new staff to have degrees.

On its website, Penguin Random House says the publishing industry does not reflect current society and that making publishing more inclusive is "both a cultural and commercial imperative." It is for this reason, the company said, that it would aim to have its staff and authors mirror the population of the UK by 2025. Progress towards this goal - which was announced last year - will be published on an annual basis.

Candice Carty-Williams is a writer who has also worked at Penguin Random House for almost two years. She supports the company's attempts to make both its staff and authors more reflective of the UK population. "It's been proven that more diverse workforces foster a more innovative and creative environment and results," she says. She argues there are many longstanding barriers preventing people from minority groups getting into the industry. "How will this change unless initiatives are put in place to redress this balance?" she asks.

Concerning Ms Shriver's argument that quality will suffer as a result of the policy, Ms Carty-Williams says: "Since when were good books and cultural representation mutually exclusive?" She argues Penguin Random House are simply trying to make literature culturally reflective, "not because it's a box-ticking exercise or because it's the 'right thing to do', but because it matters".

I've witnessed lots of arguments and debates that involved the right claiming the ultimate goal of the left is equality of outcome and the left laughing and calling the right crazy. Considering where we are heading, I'm not so sure if the claim was all that crazy.
#14923107
It's often noted that the number of people who can noticeably contribute to society is smaller than ever, almost as often noted is how over-worked those people can be. But what if they don't want to be overworked and start refusing to participate?

IMHO this is the real issue. Saying "I don't care how good someone is as their job" will simply never work for any serious business, even early communists were not this retarded, yet the trend towards treating people as equal might really be about freeing up those few who can actually do something new at this stage of history.
#14923121
SolarCross wrote:What the hell is that linguistic effluvia supposed to mean (if anything)?


:) It seems to be a modern ‘intellectual conceit’ that you can change reality through phraseology.
#14923126
SolarCross wrote:What the hell is that linguistic effluvia supposed to mean (if anything)?

It just means that homogeneity (i.e., everything being the same) is the lack of any pattern or structure. Which is true. It's just an annoyingly conceited way of stating the bleedin' obvious.
#14923130
Potemkin wrote:It just means that homogeneity (i.e., everything being the same) is the lack of any pattern or structure. Which is true. It's just an annoyingly conceited way of stating the bleedin' obvious.



Antipattern is coder speak for counterproductive practices.
#14923131
Sivad wrote:Antipattern is coder speak for counterproductive practices.

Which is what I said. Lol.
#14923325
Besides the "antipattern" babble which appears to suggest that productivity comes from a diverse "pattern" and not from people knowing how to do their jobs, anyone else notice the subtle totalitarian statements in that manifesto? Things like, I understand my position is not secure, I can't work on certain kinds of software. Sad!
#14923413
I miss the days when you could enjoy a book without giving two shits about the author. I read a lot of East Asian literature and can't even tell if the names are male or female much of the time. Now books come with full page photos of the author so you can check if they're ugly or ethnic before judging their work.
#14923560
It will take totalitarianism to make this kind of thing work. If one or even many organisations adopt pathological practices in a free society then as long as at least some organisations are allowed to operate in a healthy way then they will grow as the broken organisations decline and crash. Call it economic darwinism. Eg: SJWtech inc decides to sack all the programmers that actually have the skills to do their job and replaces them with a bunch of pink haired lunatics who couldn't even brew a coffee right, consequently producing garbage products or even no product at all. CommonSense corp hires all the programmers sacked by SJWtech or is started up by said programmers and produces products people actually want to buy in a reasonably economic way and so wins the custom of all the SJWtechs customers and SJWtech earns itself a darwin award.

The only weakness a free society has is the law because through the law the good can be made enslaved to the bad. We can completely ride out the SJW craze, it's destined for ruin, but if they can contaminate the law with their lunacy then they can drag us all down with them. The number one imperative is to keep them out of law making.
#14923765
SolarCross wrote:It will take totalitarianism to make this kind of thing work. If one or even many organisations adopt pathological practices in a free society then as long as at least some organisations are allowed to operate in a healthy way then they will grow as the broken organisations decline and crash. Call it economic darwinism. Eg: SJWtech inc decides to sack all the programmers that actually have the skills to do their job and replaces them with a bunch of pink haired lunatics who couldn't even brew a coffee right, consequently producing garbage products or even no product at all. CommonSense corp hires all the programmers sacked by SJWtech or is started up by said programmers and produces products people actually want to buy in a reasonably economic way and so wins the custom of all the SJWtechs customers and SJWtech earns itself a darwin award.

The only weakness a free society has is the law because through the law the good can be made enslaved to the bad. We can completely ride out the SJW craze, it's destined for ruin, but if they can contaminate the law with their lunacy then they can drag us all down with them. The number one imperative is to keep them out of law making.

I wrote something similar to this in another thread, but it's more on topic here I guess. There's no way anyone who does computer programming thinks that inept people can make good programs. The real point of these kinds of things, according to some people, is to see who will criticize them, not to try and convince people of something that they know is false.

The strategy is basically, try to break down their sense of probity, get them to agree that their position is not secure and so-on. If anyone stands up to you, they get treated like the bad guy.
#14923768
SolarCross wrote:The only weakness a free society has is the law because through the law the good can be made enslaved to the bad. We can completely ride out the SJW craze, it's destined for ruin, but if they can contaminate the law with their lunacy then they can drag us all down with them. The number one imperative is to keep them out of law making.


Hence why a "free society" with a "government" is an oxymoron.

Don't Steppy on Snek as they say. 8)
#14923943
Your ability to get a job or get into a school should be considered using ability & merit ALONE. What you look like should have ZERO factor.

Anything else is dangerous social engineering and is literally the definition of discrimination, sexism, racism etc and is absolutely disgusting.

We need to stop all racism, sexism, and discrimination in hiring of any kind.
#14924018
Unthinking Majority wrote:Your ability to get a job or get into a school should be considered using ability & merit ALONE. What you look like should have ZERO factor.

Anything else is dangerous social engineering and is literally the definition of discrimination, sexism, racism etc and is absolutely disgusting.

We need to stop all racism, sexism, and discrimination in hiring of any kind.


So you want to replace one kind of totalitarianism with another slightly different kind, good job you must be a lefty. Amazing how totalitarianism is always the solution to absolutely everything for lefties, it's almost like what they really want above all else is totalitarianism and everything else they whine about are just spurious pretexts to get there.

Instead how about we just, as a civilisation, choose to embrace basic human decency and civilizational virtue by enshrining "freedom of association" into our laws, customs and conventions?
#14924021
SolarCross wrote:So you want to replace one kind of totalitarianism with another slightly different kind, good job you must be a lefty.



"We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right. The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions."

So basically they're gonna blackball anyone who doesn't conform to their PC ideology.



#14924047
The truth is that meritocracy can also be dehumanizing. These tech workers are well aware of it; some people study or work themselves to death, letting their lives pass them by, so that they can add a new feature to Google maps or something that only 1% of people will use. I'm sure it gets emotionally exhausting very quickly for a lot of people.

IMHO the real issue is laughably simple; the problem is bullying in the workplace. If you went to your job and everyone was nice, reasonable and pulled their own weight instead of playing office politics, almost any job would be bearable. I dunno what's going on that no one seems to address this and instead they come up with crazy shit about anti-patterns.

#14924053
Hong Wu wrote: instead they come up with crazy shit about anti-patterns.


Antipattern isn't crazy shit, it's a well defined term in software development.

According to the authors of Design Patterns, there must be at least two key elements present to formally distinguish an actual anti-pattern from a simple bad habit, bad practice, or bad idea:

A commonly used process, structure, or pattern of action that despite initially appearing to be an appropriate and effective response to a problem, has more bad consequences than good ones.
Another solution exists that is documented, repeatable, and proven to be effective.
#14924063
Sivad wrote:Antipattern isn't crazy shit, it's a well defined term in software development.

According to the authors of Design Patterns, there must be at least two key elements present to formally distinguish an actual anti-pattern from a simple bad habit, bad practice, or bad idea:

A commonly used process, structure, or pattern of action that despite initially appearing to be an appropriate and effective response to a problem, has more bad consequences than good ones.
Another solution exists that is documented, repeatable, and proven to be effective.

That's interesting, I hadn't heard that, although I think I can still maintain that applying this programming concept to things like social policy and "diversity" is crazy shit because those things aren't computer programs.

Edit: OK, so maybe "crazy shit" is an exaggeration but they're still wrong ;) It's the classic mistake of trying to solve a problem with a tool set that comes from a different profession, although occasionally it works out well or perhaps even really well, more often than not you ironically end up with a very un-diverse, tunnel-vision like view of the problem that doesn't understand the situation well.
#14924073
Business and education find and switch to ‘proven programs’ yearly. Stand in the cereal aisle and imagine each choice and you get the real value of these ‘proven programs’.
#14924277
SolarCross wrote:So you want to replace one kind of totalitarianism with another slightly different kind, good job you must be a lefty. Amazing how totalitarianism is always the solution to absolutely everything for lefties, it's almost like what they really want above all else is totalitarianism and everything else they whine about are just spurious pretexts to get there.

Instead how about we just, as a civilisation, choose to embrace basic human decency and civilizational virtue by enshrining "freedom of association" into our laws, customs and conventions?


You have a problem with selecting employees based on merit rather than group identity like race, sex etc?

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