[ltfey]

School is a flawed meritocracy, but it actually makes efforts to be one.

Corporate is a deliberate non-meritocracy whose purpose is to ratify the inadequate descendants of an existing oligarchy as meritocrats. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time; he punished people who said the trains were late. Corporate is the same: meritocracy by assertion--and only by assertion.

In school, you learn that hard work is rewarded (with some noise) and that cheaters eventually get caught. The system isn't perfect, and there's definitely some corruption in admissions decisions later on, due to the socioeconomic fuckery that infects everything... but the attempt to be a meritocracy is at least clearly there. If you are treated unjustly by the system, you can at least appeal to the concept of meritocracy, and you have a chance of winning.

Corporate is easier, in the sense that the work is almost never demanding, and the evaluation thereof is invariably political... but if you go in expecting a meritocracy, because that's what 16-20+ years of schooling had you believing you would find... then oh boy are you going to be disappointed when you see what it's actually like. If a professor played favorites the way the average corporate manager does, he'd be fired.

Corporate is also a lot noisier. In school, you might get a B when you should have gotten an A, once in a while, but over time the noise cancels out. In corporate, you can get fired, and have your income turned off, for all kinds of stupid political reasons.

[bko]

You have it exactly opposite in almost every way.

Corporate attempts to be meritocratic. They have every incentive to be. Executives want to hire the more effective people to perform tasks so they can maximize profits. They can be greedy or stupid, but not both. They can hire their friends and family, sure, and sometimes they do. But they have an incentive to make decisions on merit otherwise they would go out of business and be out-competed.

What incentive does a school have to reward hard work? The teachers and administrators don't get a bonus if they're school does well. Many don't even get evaluated and firing teachers is very difficult in the US. I knew plenty of teachers that would just phone it in year after year. Everyone knew this, but really couldn't do anything about it. Many do care because its the right thing to do, but it's not built into the system.

> [re schools] If you are treated unjustly by the system, you can at least appeal to the concept of meritocracy, and you have a chance of winning.

Yeah, I don't know your experience but I was treated unjustly in school. The disciplinarian (yes this was a real thing in my high school) was a tyrant. He would selectively yell at certain kids, humiliate others and apply uneven justice. What could I have done about it? Some parents complained sure but you're pretty much stuck there unless you want to pack your bags and move to a different town. In corporate world you just find another job. It's a lot easier than convincing your parents to move

> Corporate is easier, in the sense that the work is almost never demanding, and the evaluation thereof is invariably political

Not all jobs are bullshit jobs. Some jobs actually deliver some kind of value with a feedback loop

[BeetleB]

> Corporate attempts to be meritocratic. They have every incentive to be. Executives want to hire the more effective people to perform tasks so they can maximize profits.

Not where I work. They hire people who they think will make them look good, and it's not always by hiring the most productive. They'll deny promotions to their most effective workers out of fear they will leave. They block transfers.

Companies make a show of being meritocratic, but most of their rewards system fall apart under the smallest scrutiny. On average, those who self promote are more likely to get rewarded than those who do the better work. Some companies even formalize this by insisting the managers are not supposed to know who is better, and you have to convince them by writing your semi-annual review yourself.

Lots of managers who want "yes-men" who'll reward those who say "yes" and fail and punish those who correctly say "no".

[esyir]

I don't get this "promotion = leaving". I'm pretty sure there's a very sizable chunk of people leaving because they're stuck.

[BeetleB]

Not everyone is in SW where finding a job at another company is easy.

My company used to pay at the top of the market for certain fields. Leaving the company would mean a pay cut.

[francisofascii]

> But they have an incentive to make decisions on merit otherwise they would go out of business and be out-competed.

Yeah, you would think so. To some extent you are right. But I think corporations are still very inefficient and get away with promoting or hiring less than ideal candidates. Why do they not get out-competed? Because the competition is also flawed in similar ways.

[esyir]

Well, to provide a different case, compare the situation of the US corporate space to the US government. Both are flawed efficiency wise, but boy does the one with no incentives behave as expected.

[germinalphrase]

“Many don't even get evaluated and firing teachers is very difficult in the US”

I am a high school English teacher in the US. I have two to four performance reviews every school year (each entailing a pre & post meeting along with an in-class performance evaluation). I have tenure, but the only barrier to firing me between now and next September (barring fireable offenses) is a PIP which is ultimately based on subjective administrative reviews. If my boss doesn’t want me back next year, I won’t be.

Stories about ‘rubber rooms’ in NYC are hardly demonstrative of teaching conditions nationwide.

[onemoresoop]

I didn't know what rubber rooms were, here's the wiki link [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rubber_Room

[karmanyaahm]

> The teachers and administrators don't get a bonus if they're school does well

They don't, but a lot of administrators like showing off scores and stats to their administrator friends from different schools. There definitely is an incentive, even if it's imperfect - optimized for objective stats not subjective learning.

[eadmund]

I think that's needlessly cynical, and moreover does not align with my own experience in large and small corporations. I think that most folks in a corporation are trying to do well and do good. What you don't see is that 'politics' are one of the merits the corporate meritocracy is optimising for ­— and that 'politics' is just a single word shorthand for 'dealing with human beings.'

My experience has been that yes, both professors and managers have favourites: they tend to favour those who have positive, unselfish, engaged attitudes. And sure, that is itself selfish: positive, unselfish, engaged people are more pleasant to work with. And I have also found that those who complain the loudest — I include myself in that number, in my lesser moments — are those who are not engaging with the system as it is, rather than the system as they wish it would be.

The real trouble is that in a large enough organisation the system as it is may be so opaque that it really does defy understanding and consequently engagement.

Anyway, rather than assuming bad faith, try assuming good faith. But of course verify it, too!

[arvinsim]

> 'politics' is just a single word shorthand for 'dealing with human beings.'

No wonder why we are so messed up if this is the bar that we set and condone.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Corporate is weird. The tendency is to have an in-group and out group, but that is just normal human behavior. Nothing ground-breaking here.

But to say that work is not demanding and evaluation always political is very big generalization. Some hard projects go to people that can handle them ( or can't if you don't like them ). When that big project is over, there seems to be a very clear indication, who MVPs are ( even if they do not have 'in-group' status ). So some level of meritocracy exists. It is hardly perfect, but it is there.

On the other hand, school-wise I had a very wide range experiences, which kinda taught me that 'people tend to believe what they want to believe', by which I mean that teachers that think you are a good student will let you be a good student.

I am writing this as I am sipping coffee preparing mentally for this year's projects.

[ekidd]

> But to say that work is not demanding and evaluation always political is very big generalization. Some hard projects go to people that can handle them ( or can't if you don't like them ). When that big project is over, there seems to be a very clear indication, who MVPs are ( even if they do not have 'in-group' status ).

From what I've witnessed consulting, this varies greatly by company size. I once heard a Vice President of major bank explain it like this: "Look, beyond a certain size, almost nothing you can do will save or destroy a company. At that point, people mostly go to work to play politics. Occasionally, as a side effect of the political maneuvering, work sometimes gets done."

But at a 50 person company, or even a 500 person company, it's possible for single person to make a huge difference. And yes, if the company is competent, then saving the day will cut through the politics to a remarkable extent.

To some extent, this must also be true at a Fortune 500 company. But there, most of the people will the ability to "save the day" will usually be in upper management. The big tech companies may be an exception this: Google has their two "level 11s", and Microsoft had the massively talented team that they used to catch up to Netscape Navigator in the 90s.

[mattxxx]

> "Look, beyond a certain size, almost nothing you can do will save or destroy a company. At that point, people mostly go to work to play politics. Occasionally, as a side effect of the political maneuvering, work sometimes gets done."

From working at a big company, this is accurate.

> But at a 50 person company, or even a 500 person company, it's possible for single person to make a huge difference.

That's true, and you still might be stuck fighting politics to do it.

[ekidd]

> That's true, and you still might be stuck fighting politics to do it.

Yeah, politics are kind of built into the human condition. You can't avoid them entirely, and even if you could, I'm not sure it would actually be a good thing. You need to able to convince people, to recognize them and boost them up when they're doing good work, and to get groups onto the same page. And all of this involves "politics" to some extent.

But a company's politics might be relatively healthy, or completely poisonous. Or anything in between. The best organizations are the ones where the overall goal is important, and where ethics are important, and where the politics are mostly positive-to-neutral.

Finally, if you want to save the day, you have to convince someone to take a risk on your plan, and your ability to implement it. After a couple of successes, this can become easier the next time. But there's politics involved in that, too.

[ltfey]

I agree with what you're saying. However, I disagree on one bit:

But there, most of the people will the ability to "save the day" will usually be in upper management. The big tech companies may be an exception this: Google has their two "level 11s", and Microsoft had the massively talented team that they used to catch up to Netscape Navigator in the 90s.

The tech companies are not exceptions. You don't become a "level 11" at Google without playing political hardball. In a big company, the CEOs won't even know who you are, certainly not enough to invest in your career or give you opportunities (such as taking on Netscape in the '90s), unless you're willing to go lawful evil and collect some scalps.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

"Look, beyond a certain size, almost nothing you can do will save or destroy a company."

I wanted to reflexively say no, but then I remembered Equifax breach. Now that I think about it, I mostly worked for regional entities, but never really big ones.

[ltfey]

In school, you get multiple noisy grades per year but the noise cancels out. That's what averaging does. You might get a B or even a C when you deserved an A, and vice versa, but your grade-point average will, in the long term, approximately reflect what you put into your work.

In corporate, there's just as much noise, but rather than getting smoothed out over time, it accelerates. In corporate, some guy can turn off your income, even though you're good at your job, because a manager wants to show off that he "can make tough decisions" and impress his own manager--either to get a promotion, or to get into someone's pants. It's random and bad things happen for no good reason, and we're prime to just accept that this is "just business" but we shouldn't have to. We can build better systems, by far, than the ones we've got.

[dxbydt]

Both corporate & school seek feedback. Guess who acts on it ?

Here is some stellar feedback:

https://google.com/search?q="worst+professor"+https://www.ra...

Literally none of these fine folk have been fired. They have a job for life. For life. I can give you a long list of professors who have been utterly unethical in their dealings, but I could do nothing about it because they have tenure.

Whereas when corporate gets blackballed on their glassdoor, current employees bail, future employees won't bother to apply, word spreads & market justice is swift, stock ticker points down & to the right.

Now tell me who is meritocratic.

[stared]

The critical difference is simple: for students, the hierarchy is flat. In particular, there is no risk that a student gets promoted to being a teacher (even if they know more).

Even among teachers, it isn't the case - there is internal politics as in every workplace.

[swayvil]

Social media is very much like corporate in that arbitrary assertion backed with absolute power (downvoting, censorship, banning, cancelling...) runs everything.

And anything can be asserted. Up is down, black is white, beautiful is ugly. And you'd better go along with it or you're out.

Call it hive-corporatism.

It seems to be a natural social formation.

[ltfey]

I agree. I don't know what's "natural" because I don't think human nature is well-defined or stable; most humans seem to reflect the context they are in. Otherwise, you are absolutely correct, and this problem is not limited to the corporate adversaries or "the right". It is truly systemic.

[nsv]

At least social media has an element of democracy to it.

[selimthegrim]

>If a professor played favorites the way the average corporate manager does, he'd be fired.

Have you been near a grad school lately?