[golden_apples]

>> Interestingly, the "divisiveness" of this rug was apparently turned into an issue by none other than Julie Ann Horvath.

I get that you're trying to take a cheap shot, but that wasn't the story as I remember reading it. There was bitterness about the "meritocracy" meme from a lot of people in tech who felt that it discounted their marginalized status. JAH ran into that response while trying to do outreach for the Passion Projects series, and relayed it back to the Github leadership, who responded respectfully.

There's a more complete retelling of that issue here: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

>> Horvath and other women at GitHub began to feel as if they were “bearing the brunt” of the rug’s message as well as “being excluded from other communities as a result.”

>> One employee, Horvath says, thought she was rejected for membership in Double Union, a feminist hackerspace, because of the rug. Double Union did parody the rug on its crowdfunding page, but denied that it would reject a possible member because of the rug.

[Aqueous]

I'm not trying to take a cheap shot. The fact that meritocracies are 'messy' doesn't mean you get rid of the central message - which is that people are awarded commensurately with their talent and effort. That seems completely in line with the 'justice is fairness' version of liberal democracy - which is what I thought most progressives were fighting for.

And this idea that someone rejected the employee in question because of a rug sounds very implausible.