[tomp]

Nobody argues that tech is a meritocracy. Meritocracy is just an ideal, just like freedom, equality and defensive driving; it’s worth striving towards but you cannot ever reach it (and if you think you’ve reached it, you’ll inevitably start falling behind).

Having said that, it’s one of the most meritocratic industries; do you know any billionaire doctors or lawyers that are college dropouts?

[kelnos]

> Nobody argues that tech is a meritocracy.

That's not true even in the trivial "well I mean that most people don't argue that". I think people in tech are a lot more self-aware then they were 10-15 years ago (when most people in tech I knew would assert that tech is a meritocracy), but I still hear plenty of aspirational rhetoric that either assumes or explicitly asserts this "fact".

[eternalban]

late 80s and early 90s were very meritocratic, in my experience. In fact, I left architecture and switched to software precisely because of this fact. Don't forget, this is the time period when you did not tell people in parties you were a programmer. It was decidedly the un-sexy un-cool profession. Check out 80s hollywood products and their portrayal of programmers.

The turning point in this industry was recorded in popular culture in 1995:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_49

Look at all those beautiful people! /g

The influx of "new blood" into the field -- people who would otherwise never ever would have considered living the geek life -- in the new gold rush of post-WWW software world fundamentally changed the character of the field. Far more politically and socially savvy personality types were now competing for position.

And oh yes. One of my esteemed coworkers when I was all of 25 was this wizzard looking man. I mean he had the beard, the hair, and a program of his hanging on the wall (hardwired, you see), and hailed from Bell Labs.

I wonder how he would do these days in the market. Obviously, (software) tech can not possibly be a meritocracy when the most experienced workers are routinely discriminated against.

[peatmoss]

I think I’m a little younger than you, but I too remember when being “into computers” was the sort of thing that got you bullied and made your family question whether you’d amount to anything in life.

[guerrilla]

> Nobody argues that tech is a meritocracy.

Yes they do, constantly. Pay attention. Even sibling comments here are doing it.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Yes, tech is meritocratic- as long as you are a white middle-class dude in your twenties. That is, in order to make it in tech you have to be a white middle-class dude in your twenties, but once you have that bit down pat, everything else is a matter of skill and intelligence.

Edit: I'm speaking from my experience working as a developer in the UK. About 99% of the people I've worked with were white, middle-class dudes in their twenties or at most mid-thirties. There were the odd female developer. I had two coleagues who were Indian, one of whom was female and every other Indian person I've worked with was a consultant. I had one technical coleague who was of Chinese descent. And I've never had a colleague who was black (although I knew a black man who was a soft. eng.).

So, you want to make it big in the software industry in the UK? Better be white, male, middle-class and be in your twenties. Oh- and be good with code, of course. But first be white, male and middle-class.

[cool_dude85]

By analogy, one might look at the number of not-college-educated millionaire lotto winners and say that playing scratchers is the most meritocratic business you can be in.

[sjy]

The relatively large number of tech billionaires – people with tens of thousands of times the median wealth – is a strange thing to use as an indicator of “meritocracy.”

[tomp]

Actually, one of the main criticism of meritocracy (as in, the social structure that we (the Western civilisation) strive to have, not the stupid "it's not actually a meritocracy" argument) is that, combined with assortative mating, it would eventually result in incredibly unequal society, with high-IQ genes becoming increasingly concentrated.

[kyuudou]

Isn't there some observed regression to the mean with children of high-IQ couples, though? I can't help but think of that part in Idiocracy where the high-IQ couple ends up dying before they can have even 1 kid while the regular-IQ guy is impregnating multiple women multiple times.

Not to mention that high-IQ is itself by definition less common...

Also, I think a "fair" meritocracy is still possible because merit isn't necessarily dependent simply on G; dedication and moral fortitude contribute greatly to merit in companies as well as societies, in my opinion.

[licebmi__at__]

Care to elaborate why "it's not actually a meritocracy" is a stupid argument?

IMO every metric we define will be gamed by bad actors so "meritocracy" will only be used to provide legitimacy to said bad actors. It's quite telling that "aristocracy" (the government of the best) which was supposed to be just like "meritocracy", became to mean just the opposite, meaning nepotism and idiotic inbred leaders.

[tomp]

To make it a smart argument, you’d need to prove (or at least attempt) that being further away from a worthwile goal is better than being closer. Personally, for a lot of these “social systems”, I’d argue the opposite is true; a bit of democracy (Russia) is better than no democracy (DPRK, Soviet Union), and even for the counterexamples (e.g. China vs India) personally I’d still prefer to live in a democracy. Same with meritocracy, making each step towards a worthwhile goals is worth it.

By attacking the goal, you collapse the whole argument. Meritocracy is bad because it results in super-inequality. Representative democracy is bad because it collapses all policy dimensions into one. Of course, it’s also helpful to propose an alternative; I’m a big proponent of direct democracy; no idea what’s better than meritocracy.

[johnrgrace]

That assortative mating can also quickly leads to autism. We've got 30,000 engineers stuffed into a one square mile campus and they get married and have kids. The autism rates of kids with two technical parents is really high.

[gurkendoktor]

The point that OP made was not the number of tech billionaires, but their backgrounds.

[fhood]

Err, I don't understand why you would choose doctors and lawyers as your example given both require scholastic qualifications to receive the title.

[MisterBastahrd]

Rand Paul does not have a bachelor's degree.

He does have an MD. And is a US Senator.

Wonder how that happened. Oh, right, meritocracy.

[kyuudou]

Neat, "today-I-learned".

I have to wonder if it being his father's medical school also was a factor, considering it's a private school. But still, that's quite impressive.

[MisterBastahrd]

He also created his own medical board to certify himself with a take-home test because learning is hard.

[dragonwriter]

That's not true, he was board certified by an existing board, but created his own (never accepted by anyone that matters, apparently) board to fleece other doctors, or, nominally, at least the first time, to protest the board he was certified by. He then let it lapse by failing to file paperwork, reformed it years later, and let it lapse again.

[_v7gu]

Wikipedia claims that Duke simply didn't require undergraduate degrees for admission at the time.