| The reasoning goes like this: "Meritocracy is all well and good as a theory. It's all about who decides what merit is. If it's a privileged group of people who decide the merit, then it's going to be biased. Thus championing meritocracy in this organisation means upholding a hierarchy which is unfair, biased and oppressive to those outside of the people at the top". In other words, meritocracy = an aristocracy of white males, where if you do good according to white male values you progress. Therefore meritocracy is not progression based on good work. In a less gender explanation - removing the rug equated to a statement of a lack of trust in the employers. The employers agreed to it being removed in an attempt to gather back some of that trust. What the whole issue ignores is that the rug was about the platform - meritocracy - because all people see is code, where the better projects get the more stars. Now there is a valid argument here that popularity doesn't equal merit - but it does not negate the concept of meritocracy. Anyhow, I'm just the messenger - I think that there are some serious problems with this reasoning. It's horrible to twist something good to something bad. |
I'm amazed the company wouldn't respond to her by saying: while the tech industry is a very imperfect meritocracy, and our company is still an imperfect one, the service we provide attempts to be a true meritocracy. The rug is about the goal, not the status quo.