gruntmaster9000 · HackerTrans

gruntmaster9000

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An Untold Startup Story

modelviewculture.com

32 pointsby gruntmaster900012 anni fa9 comments

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gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

(My other reply is dead, apparently?)

The point is we can’t be truly meritocratic. It’s a utopic ideal that doesn’t hold up in the real world. Those who are deciding what merit is are the ones who already have power. Also, there are many barriers to entry before supposed meritocratic judging can even take place. The goal isn’t to completely abandon the idea of judging people based on their accomplishments, but to recognize that the supposed ideal of meritocracy is a harmful fantasy, and to think more critically and about how we evaluate people.

Selenda Deckelmann’s on meritocracy in the Postgres community:

“[…] in a truly meritocratic organization, privilege wouldn’t matter. But the truth is, not everyone can join the Postgres project. […] So, ending the pursuit of a mythical meritocracy doesn’t mean that we start accepting code which doesn’t meet high standards, or that all of the sudden we’re going to include more code from people in the bottom 1% of the world in terms of salary. It means that we take a look at different aspects of our project and see what is within our means to open up and make accessible to people who aren’t exactly like us.” — http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fa...

Everything else here is very much worth reading: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

The point is we can’t be truly meritocratic. It’s a utopic ideal that doesn’t hold up in the real world. Those who are deciding what merit is are the ones who already have power. Also, there are many barriers to entry before supposed meritocratic judging can even take place. The goal isn’t to just completely abandon the idea of judging people based on their accomplishments, but to recognize that the supposed ideal of meritocracy is a harmful fantasy.

Worth reading, Selenda Deckelmann of Postgres: http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2011/03/30/where-meritocracy-fa... and everything else here: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Missing the point. Meritocracy is not something to aspire to. In practice it masks and reinforces power structures, increasing inequality:

> The main finding is consistent across the three studies: when an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward.

From: http://asq.sagepub.com/content/55/4/543.short

Which was recognized by Chris Wanstrath when they removed it:

> @defunkt: We thought ‘meritocracy’ was a neat way to think of open source but now see the problems with it. Words matter. We’re getting a new rug.

https://twitter.com/defunkt/status/426104782894284800

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Negative reaction to “meritocracy” is hardly knee-jerk. In fact, the word was coined as criticism of the concept: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

I read this as an apology for not having the preventative processes or environment in place. Despite no legal wrong doing, they still failed miserably when faced with this situation. To their credit, they know this and are working to fix it.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

> I suspect that what founders really fear is being misunderstood in their motivations as their companies grow. They fear that employees view them as disconnected and only trying to build empires of gold.

These are the fears of a bad founder. Their job is to set the vision of the company. If the founder fears the employees feel they are disconnected, the founder probably is disconnected. If a founder should fear anything, they should fear not creating a safe environment where the employees can feel comfortable bringing their concerns to superiors — about any aspect of the company — instead of that self-centered fear of being “misunderstood”.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

> We aren't that far off from the Egyptians that were using hundreds of thousands of slaves per pyramid. It's a good thing that we've transcended the necessity for hundreds of thousands of slaves when raising buildings, don't you think?

False, they were skilled, paid laborers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_construction_t...

Apologies for being irrelevant to the main point, but this is a tired myth.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Of course not. But don’t use meritocracy as an excuse to not be proactive about diversity.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Death by a thousand cuts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

> For me, two adult individual can do whatever the hack they want to do, if it is legal and they are both consent of doing it.

Not at all true in a professional environment. And that statement doesn’t even correspond with the story. The specifics of the hula hooping anecdote are all but immaterial anyway. The men failing to acknowledge how it was problematic was just the point at which she saw the GitHub culture had not really changed. It won’t change without action by the leadership, which was questionable given all the other events.

This response from Chris Wanstrath is a step in the right direction, but, as he acknowledges, they still have work to do.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Meritocracy as an ideal may not be intrinsically sexist or racist, but declaring an organization a meritocracy doesn’t automatically eliminate existing sexism, racism, etc, and instead masks it. That’s the problem. It’s not unlike the “structureless organization”. It’s not really structureless — there are always informal social dynamics in play — and acting as if it is structureless results in avoiding problems instead of confronting them. Everything was all rainbows and unicorns at GitHub until the informal structure apparently resulted in an institutional inability to deal with certain issues. Valve has seen similar problems.

Organizing people is the fourth hard problem.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

No, it’s “X isn’t really Y, despite what we say, and it’s actually harmful, so let’s stop reinforcing problems by pretending that it is Y”. As being discussed elsewhere in this thread, the problem with meritocracy is that it’s dependent on value judgements by those already in power. Simply, it is a fine ideal, but in practice it is unachievable, utopic. Establishing an organization or community as “meritocratic” means ignoring the role of existing dynamics.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Horvath mentioned on Twitter they supported her coming forward about her experience:

  nrrrdcore: I'm thrilled to be joining a new team in just
  a few weeks and they completely support me coming forward.

https://twitter.com/nrrrdcore/status/444881221865054208

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

The BitBucket issue tracker is clunky garbage by comparison, and its general UI doesn’t feel as well thought out. GitHub as a tool is really great.

That said, company values matter.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Sort of. “Merit” is more a measure of those groups’ definitions of success. Calling it a meritocracy overly simplifies the circumstances for that success, often reinforcing the power relationships.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

It’s not “get rid of meritocracy” but rather “recognize that it isn’t really meritocracy and it’s preserving problems”.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Steve Klabnik explains it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7405881

In short, it’s a not-really-present ideal that’s often used to mask the existing power relationships that are really responsible for people being promoted/demoted to where they are.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Gross attempt at rationalizing inappropriate behavior. Plus, the male developer in your story would also be considered unprofessional.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Sass by default sets UTF-8 encoding.

gruntmaster9000

12 anni fadiscuss

Yes exactly. It’s the host’s job to talk to the audience. Unless you have something to specifically say to those watching, you’re better off focusing on the host and letting the director do their thing. It’s awkward when guests look at the camera but are responding to a question from the interviewer.