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Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy

117 points by droz 13y ago

jpeg_hero 13y ago
Pretty vapid. Author doesn't seem to be that knowledgable on the valley.
- ritchiea 13y ago
  I'm really interested in this kind of sentiment. Why do you feel so certain SV is a meritocracy?
  - sanskritabelt 13y ago
    People in SV who have some success want it to be a meritocracy so they can feel that they succeeded on their own internal merit.
mathattack 13y ago
I think it's fair to start with, "No industries or geographies are pure meritocracies." Then it's worth asking, "Where does Silicon Valley fit in the spectrum?" Is it more or less meritocratic than teaching? Being an actuary? A politician? A banker? A lawyer? Advertising? Writing? I don't know all of the answers, but my impression is the market forces on startups (Can you get funding? Can you get customers?) at least pushes them towards being meritocratic. Software also is more binary than fields like writing. The program does have to compile and work. But is it a pure meritocracy? I doubt it.
- arethuza 13y ago
  It's worth noting that the term "meritocracy" was defined to be something quite different, and rather more interesting, than it's current usage: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
  - subsystem 13y ago
    Somewhat similar to the "American Dream". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Truslow_Adams#American_Dream http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Truslow_Adams#American_Dr...
- jnovek 13y ago
  The thing the author is challenging here is not whether Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but whether it is as much of a meritocracy as its participants believe. It doesn't matter much how it compares to other industries. In my (limited) experience, among successful founders and investors -- the "trend setters" of startup culture -- there is a widely held notion that anyone with a computer, a good brain, a decent idea, a little bit of luck and the gumption to do some hard work can build a billion dollar company. The author is suggesting that this is not true.
  - MAGZine 13y ago
    I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal that is truly worth 1B, you have know-how to get it off the ground, and have exceptional presentation skills (its all about the sell, at this point) a VC wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. VCs are their to make money, and they see white male harvard dropouts with no social life to be a safe bet. Convince them that you have a plan to net a return, that is, convince them based on your MERIT, and you'll be successful. Meritocracy is based on merit, not "giving everyone a fair chance," even if that's what the author would prefer. Though, that's not to say that a bias doesn't exist.
    - mtrimpe 13y ago
      It says enough that when thinking of what would overcome the obstacles of being black, female and gay you come up with a "sure-thing 1 billion dollar deal."
    - untog 13y ago
      I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal [...] a VC wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. But what data causes you to 'tend to believe'? That assumption is kind of at the heart of the article - not that SV is a pure meritocracy (I doubt many places in the world really are) but that people's perception is that it is a lot more meritocratic than it is - and no-one ever checks to see if their perception is backed up by fact.
      - 13y ago
- mcguire 13y ago
  "Can you get funding?" I believe that was actually part of the argument: the necessity of looking the same for the venture capitalists pushes them away from meritocracy. And software doesn't care whether or not you dropped out of Stanford or Harvard.
kazagistar 13y ago
Not sure when it became ok to call something a myth without emperical evidence.
- jes5199 13y ago
  The definition of a myth is that there's no evidence!
- Crito 13y ago
  Well... yes it is. You don't need empirical evidence to call unicorns a myth, it is sufficient to point out the lack of empirical evidence supporting the existence of unicorns.
beachstartup 13y ago
> But if the tech scene is really a meritocracy, why are so many of its key players, from Mark Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs, white men? a jewish guy and a half arab guy aren't exactly the best examples of the point this guy's trying to make. there's also no shortage of asian and indian "key players" so ... i think this guy is trying to make one point, but accidentally making another point altogether, and then failing at it.
- mrcactu5 13y ago
  She might be referring to the 36M African-Americans & 50M Hispanich-Americans in this country. So American still has a White majority at around 60% of the population. In the year 2010, only 36 million African-Americans in the US, is that right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat... Anyway, these groups are under-represented in the Technology field. I heard one response that maybe these groups "don't value education" - I don't know how to respond to that one actually.
  - ars_technician 13y ago
    >I heard one response that maybe these groups "don't value education" - I don't know how to respond to that one actually. I'm not sure about Hispanics, but this is definitely a problem in many African-American communities. It's considered 'white' or essentially bending over for the system if you go to school and actually try.
    - mrcactu5 13y ago
      I think that's the general idea. Going to school - rather than getting a job right away - is considered a waste of resources, or elitist and therefore a rejection of one's community. For some reason, education does not carry the stigma of sports or the arts or business in these communities. It is trendy to talk about Women in technology, but we need to think about Race and technology. Everyone notices it nobody wants to talk about it.
    - michaelfdeberry 13y ago
known 13y ago
I think it's https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy
yummyfajitas 13y ago
The article, like most following this formula, assume that because rewards are not distributed among a sufficiently racially/sexually diverse group, meritocracy must therefore be absent. They fail to account for the possibility that merit might not be distributed in the manner that they think.
- kazagistar 13y ago
  Agreed. However, an uneven distribution of merit might still be a social problem; it might be indicative of vast inequality of opportunity for developing said merit. However, in this case, the problem is not one specific to silicon valley in any sense.
- pasquinelli 13y ago
  honestly, which explanation seems more likely?
- freefrancisco 13y ago
  In fact, a true meritocracy in a very competitive field is more likely to exacerbate the differences that already exist in society and result in an extremely uneven distribution. In a non-merit based industry uncle Bob can get a top job for his 3 children, and his friend's children regardless of gender, race, and any other characteristics. He can also appease reporters that criticize the distribution of his company and hire more people in the less represented populations to correct the problem. In a purely meritocratic field uncle Bob has no influence, no control, and each of the kids has to fight his or her way in. All uncle Bob can do is pay for the best education and the best opportunities for his children to compete in the meritocracy. To the extent that there are small inequalities among the population, those with the most resources will prepare their kids best to compete, and those kids will be over represented in the most competitive fields. The fact that the tech industry is dominated by white males only indicates that it is very competitive, and that white males historically have had a leg up in American society. A leg up that the meritocracy is quickly erasing.
freefrancisco 13y ago
' Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”, “assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”, “competitive”, and “ambitious”.' I don't see anything male about any of these words, I know many women who can be accurately described by these words, as well as many men who cannot. Why is the author conflating being male with these descriptions? I find the assertion that those words are indeed "male-gendered" very disturbing.
- woah 13y ago
  There's a very deep rabbit-hole of feminist studies...
- newnewnew 13y ago
  Regardless of your sex, you're going to have a tough time as a startup founder if you can't embody those qualities. As of yet, there is no affirmative action in startups, so it's put up or get an easier job.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    That's the point, no? "male or female, you will only succeed if you can act in these typically male ways, regardless of how good your idea and execution are." Therefore, the tech scene is clearly not judging you solely on your idea and execution as they believe they are.
    - newnewnew 13y ago
      Those qualities are what's needed to build something out of nothing. It has never been easy. If you don't think females can do it, well that sounds sexist to me. Nobody has a magic wand they can wave to give startup success to timid, easily defeated people. If it is your nature to make excuses, I suggest you go get a government job. No amount of feminist cultural revolution is going to convince VCs to throw away their money in order to be politically correct.
FD3SA 13y ago
I agree with most of what this article is saying, but the existence of YC is a perfect counter-argument. Although I've disagreed with PG regarding his opinions on "Zuckerberg-likeness" being important in founders, I know that YC selects for merit above all else. How do I know this? Because PG has stated many times that he is excited about founders from the University of Waterloo in Canada, which used to be unknown on the international level. Clearly, after having met some incredibly talented founders, the YC team has calibrated its "prestige" ranking to match their observations based upon UW founder success. To me, this is as close as one can get to a merit based system. Hire based on reputation, but adjust your reputation based upon the data you collect in real time. And most importantly, give everyone a fair chance. Never disqualify anyone preemptively without viewing their application. Furthermore, as far as VCs are involved, there can be no better stamp on your resume than having gone through a program like YC. Now, the counterpoint to all this is that, ideally, you should be able to crowd source/bootstrap this whole thing as a solo founder because you have merit. I think we are definitely moving in that direction, but some ventures will always be more capital intensive in terms of burn rate. As such, incubators and VCs will still be the "safe" path for fast growing and/or very ambitious companies.
- walshemj 13y ago
  You do know waterloo is where some of the builders/inventors of colossus ended up post ww2 and has along history in computing.
- untog 13y ago
  I'd disagree with that one data point proving too much. For a start, I don't think it contradicts the "Zuckerberg-ness" issue- graduates from Waterloo are also very likely to be hoodie-wearing white men, I don't think that being Canadian counts as particularly 'diverse'. Sure, PG is open to graduates that aren't from Ivy League universities. That's one factor. There are a lot of others.
- alanctgardner2 13y ago
  Waterloo has been prestigious for at least 5 years (when I was applying it was among the hardest Canadian universities to get into, and it was already globally recognized). The only thing that has changed is more VC money, and more startup incubators, drawing the interest of progressively larger institutions. I think the whole "meritocratic" argument is stupid. But it's worth pointing out that Waterloo is a self-fulfilling prophecy: a lot of startups are being founded because a lot of support and infrastructure is being thrown at the students. Whether the students are more suitable than others is anyone's guess, but they're in the right place at the right time (and they can afford the tuition).
steven2012 13y ago
This article is largely garbage. Sure, Silicon Valley isn't a "perfect" meritocracy, but it is the most meritocratic of any other place in the world, at least that I've been in. In Japan, and presumably other places in Asia, women are still supposed to include a photograph with their resume, and employers are reluctant to hire married women past a certain age because they feel they will get pregnant and stop working as hard. I had a friend who moved to Japan, and despite the fact that his wife was native Japanese, because she was 31 and married, she was practically unemployable. And the best he could do was get a job at coffee shop speaking English to customers. After 10 months, they moved back to the US. He hates Japan because there is no meritocracy whatsoever. Everything is based on age. There may not be a lot of women who are CEOs of startups, but it's getting better every day, and the corporate ladder is very rewarding to smart women and minorities, at least in Silicon Valley and probably other places like NYC, LA, etc. My wife, who is in finance, went from Senior Manager to Senior Director is 3 years because she's very, very smart and the CFO recognized this and rewarded her aptly. Her bonus was >$100,000 for the 3rd year in a row, and I'm willing to bet she's made more money from her bonuses than 90% of the aspirational startup founders on HN. Her peers in finance are >60% women, and they are all extremely smart and well compensated as well. If she were living in any other country in the world, who knows if she would have been given as lucrative of an opportunity. So sure, it's not perfect, but it's a pretty good meritocracy here, and as I said, getting better every year.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  The point of the article was that we're pretending it's an almost pure meritocracy though; which itself is hampering efforts to improve on the current situation. More than anything else it's about the tech industry being in denial about this.
- Anechoic 13y ago
  but it is the most meritocratic of any other place in the world Really? I think most pro sports leagues would give SV a run for it's money in terms of meritocracy.
  - parsnips 13y ago
nawitus 13y ago
Things are nuanced rather than binary.
altoz 13y ago
tl;dr silicon valley isn't the liberal utopia and therefore not a meritocracy.
- delinka 13y ago
  That presumes liberals are redefining 'merit' such that it's meaningless. While I would not be surprised in the least if that's the case, I have yet to see indications from any liberal thinkers that they'd ever want to base anything on merit. Even a redefined "merit."
  - beat 13y ago
    I'm a liberal who believes strongly in meritocracy. The problem starts with limitations of opportunity. I grew up poor, in a poorly educated family, and I appreciate just how difficult it is to grow out of circumstance. There are two separate problems here: What opportunities you have, and what you do with the opportunities you have. The latter is where merit comes in. The former is where the -isms live. Those who are fighting disadvantages must spend tremendous amounts of personal energy just getting to be on the level, merit-based ground. Now, I think the author is fundamentally wrong in a lot of ways. She's faulting Silicon Valley itself, but I think the problems are upstream, and she did basically no analysis on that. So white males are getting the majority of venture deals? What's the ratio of deals applied to deals received? White males are the ones looking for venture deals and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurial stuff. No one is stopping women, minorities, etc from doing the same thing, and I doubt there's a significant punishment for them compared to the other 99+% of companies that get rejected. And another thing she glossed over is the meritocracy of simply getting to that point. You don't get to waltz in and get showered with angel money just because you're white and male. You have to deliver. Those institutional biases to twenty-something Stanford CS dropouts reflect both the kind of people likely to succeed, and the kind of people likely to choose the path at all. So while the article itself is mostly a fail, there's some truth to it. Whining about how liberals hate merit, on the other hand, is just political nonsense.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  liberals don't believe in meritocracies. They value labor and the 'effort' put into something. i.e. someone who dug ditches all day should receive more compensation than someone who wrote code for 2 hours.
nawitus 13y ago
>Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”, “assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”, “competitive”, and “ambitious”. What a load of feminist rubbish on the front page.
Kurtz79 13y ago
I don't agree with many of the author's assumptions (do most people working at startups in SV really think that their web/mobile app will "change the world"? do everybody in SV think that tech entrepreneurship is a solution to everything ?). I would say that most people just want to work on something they like, having an alternative lifestyle to a 9-5 job and possibly taking the chance of making it big. I agree that there is a excessively romatic view in some circles, but is it the real representation of what people in SV think ? Or is it the most appealing view for the media ? Regardless, some points are valid. The fact that most (all?) entrepreneurs come from middle/upper class rings true, and the "white male" argument as well (although less so, imho). But to the credit of tech entrepreneurship, there ARE proyects that are helping to close the gap, offering education to everybody, I think about Khan's Academy, Coursera, Udacity... I think it's too convenient to classify tech entrepreneurs as a single group, with the same vision and ideals.
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pg 13y ago
The same arguments would prove that math isn't a meritocracy. Which it presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely. And if SV is only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good. Indeed, that's what the word means in ordinary usage.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  Way to miss the point and exemplify it in the same breath. The article is about how SV thinks it's more meritocratic than it actually is and how this false pride is a problem in and of it's own. P.S. P.G. When this thread started I was almost tempted to make a snide comment saying "3.. 2.. 1.. Flagged off the front page." It actually took a bit over an hour but it's now indeed been flagged off of the front page despite getting a significant number of upvotes while it was there. Is that not just another example of allowing a vocal minority (flag-wise) to silence a majority who are apparently interested in discussions like these?
  - SilasX 13y ago
    "SV thinks it's extremely meritocratic. It's only very meritocratic. This is a big problem."
    - 21echoes 13y ago
      I would in no way say that SV is even very meritocratic. Compare start-up demographics numbers to population-at-large numbers... The fact that commenters like you would read this article, hopefully think for half a second, and then still insist that SV is "very meritocratic" is exactly the problem.
      - hacker789 13y ago
        Yes, there are too many pesky east-Asians and Indians. There might be a Jewish problem as well.
        13y ago
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jraines 13y ago
The war on the word "meritocracy" is just weird. You can just watch it bubble up through twitter to large blogs, to wired. The weird thing about it is the people who hate the word are arguing not against the actual usage -- "people who demonstrate their merit get ahead" -- but against the illiberal definition they've assigned to it: "people who have inherent merit get ahead". Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the valley, and if there really are a bunch of young white males with the right "pedigree" who are getting money thrown at them without having demonstrated any real merit, then I withdraw my objection. However, if they're getting money for things that you don't think have merit, like the Nth photo sharing app, then I think it stands.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  > if there really are a bunch of young white males with the right "pedigree" who are getting money thrown at them without having demonstrated any real merit, then I withdraw my objection That's exactly what happens. You are much, much more likely to get funded if you're a young white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford than if you're a black woman studying at Berkeley. Now, you can hand-wave about connections, and entrepreneurial culture or what have you, but at some level, that just reinforces the point.
  - crusso 13y ago
    So where is your data showing that?
    - ForHackernews 13y ago
      http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capital-human-capital-report http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capit... According to that report, 87% of funded founders are white; 92% of funded founders are male.
      - yummyfajitas 13y ago
        You said: You are much, much more likely to get funded if you're a young white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford than if you're a black woman studying at Berkeley. Your data does not show this. You'd need the denominators as well, you have only the numerators.
dnautics 13y ago
here is the problem with the concept of "meritocracy". What constitutes "merit"? And if you have two orthogonal, meritorious qualities, which is more deserving of advancement, one who is 100%A, 0%B? Or another who is 0%A, 100%B? Who gets to decide?
johngalt 13y ago
Anyone writing an article like this should also write what would change their opinions and a plan to fix it. Imagine you've won me over completely and SV is an elitist boy's club. Now what do we do to change it? When is your standard met? Of course defining those views would be harder to defend. It's much easier to have arbitrary standards of fairness and point out how others don't live up to it.
kumarski 13y ago
I look at companies like Everpix with users, revenue, and growth and then companies like Albumatic. Albumatic raised 4.1 million dollars and pivoted 3 months later. Everpix was building a product that users loved and they had the trajectory to be great. One question we must ask is: "What do we define as merit in silicon valley?"
- kumarski 13y ago
  Additionally, while it is far from optimal, I do believe we(other than Israel) have the best systemic distribution of capital to companies.
crusso 13y ago
The myth is that anyone can come from anywhere and achieve great success in Silicon Valley if they are skilled. It holds that those who “make it” do so due to their excellent ideas and ability, because the tech scene is a meritocracy where what you do, not who you are, matters. Thus is the straw man constructed. The dismantling of that poor fellah is absolutely breathtaking to behold. He had it coming. Who actually makes absolute claims like those except for in a feel good, keep your glass half full if you want to succeed kind of a way?
elchief 13y ago
So I was editing OpenStreetMap the other day, because I wanted to fill in the shops in my neighbourhood. They have a feature where you can see all the editors that are near you. There were dozens of them, and they were all men. Why? What could possibly be preventing women from editing OpenStreetMap? Why are men at the vanguard of this project? This project is good for society, and I saw no women. I was actually surprised, after the Wikipedia-is-dominated-by-men articles from a few months ago. I expected that women would purposely be seeking out opportunities to contribute in other areas. In a few years when OpenStreetMap is larger, feminists will complain that there aren't enough women editors, and that men are preventing them. But men aren't preventing them. When there's nothing preventing your group from doing something, and your group is under-represented, it is your group's fault.
- beat 13y ago
  Alternately, when you assume there's nothing preventing someone from doing something, that doesn't mean there's nothing preventing it. First rule of debugging should be to not walk in with a bunch of assumptions and jump to conclusions based on them. Start following out the logic of your concluding sentence, and it leads to "groups of people are unsuccessful because they are lazy and/or stupid". Is that really a conclusion you expect to reach, or that sounds right to you? If not, then maybe your assumptions are flawed.
  - elchief 13y ago
    Two economists see a Ferrari. "I want one of those", says the first. "Obviously not", says the other.
brosco45 13y ago
It's who you know, not what you know.
katrinae 13y ago
I am so happy that this view is being shared - so happy, in fact, that I created a HN username just so I could comment on it. I am female and graduated from MIT several years ago. While I was there, tech entrepreneurship far and away the sexiest thing to be doing. It was at the point where you felt like a loser if you didn't have your own startup. Unfortunately, this fetishization of startups resulted in many ideas that were, to put it bluntly, stupid. I couldn't believe how many people - including investors, not just students - were obsessed with creating iPhone apps and social media networks. I had a telling encounter a year ago with a woman who ran an incubator; it was somewhat tech-focused, but also had a creative bent and was partially funded by state money for assisting small businesses. I wanted to invest my money locally (a la Slow Money - www.slowmoney.org ) and was looking for mentors and partners. We had a long conversation during which this woman said things like, "what a great idea, I've never heard of anything like that before". At the end of it, though, she asked: "so let me get this straight. Are you an innovator, or do you just want to fund innovators?". This kind of myopia about what constitutes innovation devalues the contributions of non-tech entrepreneurs (and many others, too); furthermore, it discourages young people from attacking important problems outside of technology. Interestingly, the Economist had an article recently about how public veneration of the tech elite may be ending: http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-bankers-and-oilmen-public-demonology-predicts-adrian-wooldridge-coming http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-.... Even though I'm part of this group, I'm glad this issue is being discussed.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  Sadly, this article has already been kicked off the HN frontpage by the "flamewar" filter, and the comments here (including from HN's illustrious founder, Paul Graham) illustrate just how resistant tech types are to the mere suggestion that factors beyond individual gumption play into their successes.
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memracom 13y ago
My take on this, and I have spent some time in SV working at a startup in Redwood City, is that SV does NOT attract the best and the brightest. Instead it attracts a gaggle of me-too-ers who apply cargo cultism to ape the successful companies. This actually has the effect of REDUCING innovation because the startup culture is afraid to try new things, afraid to build on something tried and tested in the MidWest or New York because they are worshiping at the temple of Sandhill Road. It is not just an issue with women (who the article quite rightly points out, have a great track record of starting successful businesses) but it is also an issue with age and with experience. SV often rejects people who are not young enought purely for ageist reasons but it also rejects those who are too experienced, too educated. The kind of people that built NASA are persona non grata in SV. There are still some smart people coming out of SV because of Stanford and UC Berkeley being there, but if those two schools moved away, the whole house of cards would collapse.
avifreedman 13y ago
Effort does not correlate exactly with results, but the chances of success are high if one tries and is capable. In both tech and hustle, it's easier with wealth, privilege, connections, luck, and/or friends. But large swaths of tech and hacking can be done on a $200 netbook or a lab of $100 used notebooks. The hustle part... That's easier if you have hustle. If you are a geek, make a tool that's needed and sell it to another geek. I've seen male, female, black, white, mongrel, rich, poor, and those with role models and without success at tech and business. It's harder without but still possible. And I think SV may indeed be the best place in the country to succeed in - in gambling terms, the result converges faster with the expected value given effort and application. Particularly (in my opinion) because past failures are discounted and companies, especially startups, are willing to give startups a try without as much suspicion.
benched 13y ago
Nothing that people do could possibly be a meritocracy, because people are fucks. In fact, every social problem is easily explained by the fact that people are fucks. Q.E.D.

117 points by droz 13y ago

jpeg_hero 13y ago

Pretty vapid. Author doesn't seem to be that knowledgable on the valley.

ritchiea 13y ago
I'm really interested in this kind of sentiment. Why do you feel so certain SV is a meritocracy?
- sanskritabelt 13y ago
  People in SV who have some success want it to be a meritocracy so they can feel that they succeeded on their own internal merit.

mathattack 13y ago

I think it's fair to start with, "No industries or geographies are pure meritocracies." Then it's worth asking, "Where does Silicon Valley fit in the spectrum?" Is it more or less meritocratic than teaching? Being an actuary? A politician? A banker? A lawyer? Advertising? Writing? I don't know all of the answers, but my impression is the market forces on startups (Can you get funding? Can you get customers?) at least pushes them towards being meritocratic. Software also is more binary than fields like writing. The program does have to compile and work. But is it a pure meritocracy? I doubt it.

arethuza 13y ago
It's worth noting that the term "meritocracy" was defined to be something quite different, and rather more interesting, than it's current usage: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
- subsystem 13y ago
  Somewhat similar to the "American Dream". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Truslow_Adams#American_Dream http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Truslow_Adams#American_Dr...
jnovek 13y ago
The thing the author is challenging here is not whether Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, but whether it is as much of a meritocracy as its participants believe. It doesn't matter much how it compares to other industries. In my (limited) experience, among successful founders and investors -- the "trend setters" of startup culture -- there is a widely held notion that anyone with a computer, a good brain, a decent idea, a little bit of luck and the gumption to do some hard work can build a billion dollar company. The author is suggesting that this is not true.
- MAGZine 13y ago
  I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal that is truly worth 1B, you have know-how to get it off the ground, and have exceptional presentation skills (its all about the sell, at this point) a VC wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. VCs are their to make money, and they see white male harvard dropouts with no social life to be a safe bet. Convince them that you have a plan to net a return, that is, convince them based on your MERIT, and you'll be successful. Meritocracy is based on merit, not "giving everyone a fair chance," even if that's what the author would prefer. Though, that's not to say that a bias doesn't exist.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    It says enough that when thinking of what would overcome the obstacles of being black, female and gay you come up with a "sure-thing 1 billion dollar deal."
  - untog 13y ago
    I'd tend to believe that if you have a badass business deal [...] a VC wouldn't say no because a person is black, female, gay, or all 3. But what data causes you to 'tend to believe'? That assumption is kind of at the heart of the article - not that SV is a pure meritocracy (I doubt many places in the world really are) but that people's perception is that it is a lot more meritocratic than it is - and no-one ever checks to see if their perception is backed up by fact.
    - 13y ago
mcguire 13y ago
"Can you get funding?" I believe that was actually part of the argument: the necessity of looking the same for the venture capitalists pushes them away from meritocracy. And software doesn't care whether or not you dropped out of Stanford or Harvard.

kazagistar 13y ago

Not sure when it became ok to call something a myth without emperical evidence.

jes5199 13y ago
The definition of a myth is that there's no evidence!
Crito 13y ago
Well... yes it is. You don't need empirical evidence to call unicorns a myth, it is sufficient to point out the lack of empirical evidence supporting the existence of unicorns.

beachstartup 13y ago

> But if the tech scene is really a meritocracy, why are so many of its key players, from Mark Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs, white men? a jewish guy and a half arab guy aren't exactly the best examples of the point this guy's trying to make. there's also no shortage of asian and indian "key players" so ... i think this guy is trying to make one point, but accidentally making another point altogether, and then failing at it.

mrcactu5 13y ago
She might be referring to the 36M African-Americans & 50M Hispanich-Americans in this country. So American still has a White majority at around 60% of the population. In the year 2010, only 36 million African-Americans in the US, is that right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race_and_ethnicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat... Anyway, these groups are under-represented in the Technology field. I heard one response that maybe these groups "don't value education" - I don't know how to respond to that one actually.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  >I heard one response that maybe these groups "don't value education" - I don't know how to respond to that one actually. I'm not sure about Hispanics, but this is definitely a problem in many African-American communities. It's considered 'white' or essentially bending over for the system if you go to school and actually try.
  - mrcactu5 13y ago
    I think that's the general idea. Going to school - rather than getting a job right away - is considered a waste of resources, or elitist and therefore a rejection of one's community. For some reason, education does not carry the stigma of sports or the arts or business in these communities. It is trendy to talk about Women in technology, but we need to think about Race and technology. Everyone notices it nobody wants to talk about it.
  - michaelfdeberry 13y ago

known 13y ago

I think it's https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

yummyfajitas 13y ago

The article, like most following this formula, assume that because rewards are not distributed among a sufficiently racially/sexually diverse group, meritocracy must therefore be absent. They fail to account for the possibility that merit might not be distributed in the manner that they think.

kazagistar 13y ago
Agreed. However, an uneven distribution of merit might still be a social problem; it might be indicative of vast inequality of opportunity for developing said merit. However, in this case, the problem is not one specific to silicon valley in any sense.
pasquinelli 13y ago
honestly, which explanation seems more likely?
freefrancisco 13y ago
In fact, a true meritocracy in a very competitive field is more likely to exacerbate the differences that already exist in society and result in an extremely uneven distribution. In a non-merit based industry uncle Bob can get a top job for his 3 children, and his friend's children regardless of gender, race, and any other characteristics. He can also appease reporters that criticize the distribution of his company and hire more people in the less represented populations to correct the problem. In a purely meritocratic field uncle Bob has no influence, no control, and each of the kids has to fight his or her way in. All uncle Bob can do is pay for the best education and the best opportunities for his children to compete in the meritocracy. To the extent that there are small inequalities among the population, those with the most resources will prepare their kids best to compete, and those kids will be over represented in the most competitive fields. The fact that the tech industry is dominated by white males only indicates that it is very competitive, and that white males historically have had a leg up in American society. A leg up that the meritocracy is quickly erasing.

freefrancisco 13y ago

' Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”, “assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”, “competitive”, and “ambitious”.' I don't see anything male about any of these words, I know many women who can be accurately described by these words, as well as many men who cannot. Why is the author conflating being male with these descriptions? I find the assertion that those words are indeed "male-gendered" very disturbing.

woah 13y ago
There's a very deep rabbit-hole of feminist studies...
newnewnew 13y ago
Regardless of your sex, you're going to have a tough time as a startup founder if you can't embody those qualities. As of yet, there is no affirmative action in startups, so it's put up or get an easier job.
- jacalata 13y ago
  That's the point, no? "male or female, you will only succeed if you can act in these typically male ways, regardless of how good your idea and execution are." Therefore, the tech scene is clearly not judging you solely on your idea and execution as they believe they are.
  - newnewnew 13y ago
    Those qualities are what's needed to build something out of nothing. It has never been easy. If you don't think females can do it, well that sounds sexist to me. Nobody has a magic wand they can wave to give startup success to timid, easily defeated people. If it is your nature to make excuses, I suggest you go get a government job. No amount of feminist cultural revolution is going to convince VCs to throw away their money in order to be politically correct.

FD3SA 13y ago

I agree with most of what this article is saying, but the existence of YC is a perfect counter-argument. Although I've disagreed with PG regarding his opinions on "Zuckerberg-likeness" being important in founders, I know that YC selects for merit above all else. How do I know this? Because PG has stated many times that he is excited about founders from the University of Waterloo in Canada, which used to be unknown on the international level. Clearly, after having met some incredibly talented founders, the YC team has calibrated its "prestige" ranking to match their observations based upon UW founder success. To me, this is as close as one can get to a merit based system. Hire based on reputation, but adjust your reputation based upon the data you collect in real time. And most importantly, give everyone a fair chance. Never disqualify anyone preemptively without viewing their application. Furthermore, as far as VCs are involved, there can be no better stamp on your resume than having gone through a program like YC. Now, the counterpoint to all this is that, ideally, you should be able to crowd source/bootstrap this whole thing as a solo founder because you have merit. I think we are definitely moving in that direction, but some ventures will always be more capital intensive in terms of burn rate. As such, incubators and VCs will still be the "safe" path for fast growing and/or very ambitious companies.

walshemj 13y ago
You do know waterloo is where some of the builders/inventors of colossus ended up post ww2 and has along history in computing.
untog 13y ago
I'd disagree with that one data point proving too much. For a start, I don't think it contradicts the "Zuckerberg-ness" issue- graduates from Waterloo are also very likely to be hoodie-wearing white men, I don't think that being Canadian counts as particularly 'diverse'. Sure, PG is open to graduates that aren't from Ivy League universities. That's one factor. There are a lot of others.
alanctgardner2 13y ago
Waterloo has been prestigious for at least 5 years (when I was applying it was among the hardest Canadian universities to get into, and it was already globally recognized). The only thing that has changed is more VC money, and more startup incubators, drawing the interest of progressively larger institutions. I think the whole "meritocratic" argument is stupid. But it's worth pointing out that Waterloo is a self-fulfilling prophecy: a lot of startups are being founded because a lot of support and infrastructure is being thrown at the students. Whether the students are more suitable than others is anyone's guess, but they're in the right place at the right time (and they can afford the tuition).

steven2012 13y ago

This article is largely garbage. Sure, Silicon Valley isn't a "perfect" meritocracy, but it is the most meritocratic of any other place in the world, at least that I've been in. In Japan, and presumably other places in Asia, women are still supposed to include a photograph with their resume, and employers are reluctant to hire married women past a certain age because they feel they will get pregnant and stop working as hard. I had a friend who moved to Japan, and despite the fact that his wife was native Japanese, because she was 31 and married, she was practically unemployable. And the best he could do was get a job at coffee shop speaking English to customers. After 10 months, they moved back to the US. He hates Japan because there is no meritocracy whatsoever. Everything is based on age. There may not be a lot of women who are CEOs of startups, but it's getting better every day, and the corporate ladder is very rewarding to smart women and minorities, at least in Silicon Valley and probably other places like NYC, LA, etc. My wife, who is in finance, went from Senior Manager to Senior Director is 3 years because she's very, very smart and the CFO recognized this and rewarded her aptly. Her bonus was >$100,000 for the 3rd year in a row, and I'm willing to bet she's made more money from her bonuses than 90% of the aspirational startup founders on HN. Her peers in finance are >60% women, and they are all extremely smart and well compensated as well. If she were living in any other country in the world, who knows if she would have been given as lucrative of an opportunity. So sure, it's not perfect, but it's a pretty good meritocracy here, and as I said, getting better every year.

mtrimpe 13y ago
The point of the article was that we're pretending it's an almost pure meritocracy though; which itself is hampering efforts to improve on the current situation. More than anything else it's about the tech industry being in denial about this.
Anechoic 13y ago
but it is the most meritocratic of any other place in the world Really? I think most pro sports leagues would give SV a run for it's money in terms of meritocracy.
- parsnips 13y ago

nawitus 13y ago

Things are nuanced rather than binary.

altoz 13y ago

tl;dr silicon valley isn't the liberal utopia and therefore not a meritocracy.

delinka 13y ago
That presumes liberals are redefining 'merit' such that it's meaningless. While I would not be surprised in the least if that's the case, I have yet to see indications from any liberal thinkers that they'd ever want to base anything on merit. Even a redefined "merit."
- beat 13y ago
  I'm a liberal who believes strongly in meritocracy. The problem starts with limitations of opportunity. I grew up poor, in a poorly educated family, and I appreciate just how difficult it is to grow out of circumstance. There are two separate problems here: What opportunities you have, and what you do with the opportunities you have. The latter is where merit comes in. The former is where the -isms live. Those who are fighting disadvantages must spend tremendous amounts of personal energy just getting to be on the level, merit-based ground. Now, I think the author is fundamentally wrong in a lot of ways. She's faulting Silicon Valley itself, but I think the problems are upstream, and she did basically no analysis on that. So white males are getting the majority of venture deals? What's the ratio of deals applied to deals received? White males are the ones looking for venture deals and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurial stuff. No one is stopping women, minorities, etc from doing the same thing, and I doubt there's a significant punishment for them compared to the other 99+% of companies that get rejected. And another thing she glossed over is the meritocracy of simply getting to that point. You don't get to waltz in and get showered with angel money just because you're white and male. You have to deliver. Those institutional biases to twenty-something Stanford CS dropouts reflect both the kind of people likely to succeed, and the kind of people likely to choose the path at all. So while the article itself is mostly a fail, there's some truth to it. Whining about how liberals hate merit, on the other hand, is just political nonsense.
ars_technician 13y ago
liberals don't believe in meritocracies. They value labor and the 'effort' put into something. i.e. someone who dug ditches all day should receive more compensation than someone who wrote code for 2 hours.

nawitus 13y ago

>Helene Ahl found that in business discourse 70 percent of words used to describe entrepreneurs were male-gendered — these included “self-reliant”, “assertive”, “forceful”, “risk-taking”, “self-sufficient”, “leader”, “competitive”, and “ambitious”. What a load of feminist rubbish on the front page.

Kurtz79 13y ago

I don't agree with many of the author's assumptions (do most people working at startups in SV really think that their web/mobile app will "change the world"? do everybody in SV think that tech entrepreneurship is a solution to everything ?). I would say that most people just want to work on something they like, having an alternative lifestyle to a 9-5 job and possibly taking the chance of making it big. I agree that there is a excessively romatic view in some circles, but is it the real representation of what people in SV think ? Or is it the most appealing view for the media ? Regardless, some points are valid. The fact that most (all?) entrepreneurs come from middle/upper class rings true, and the "white male" argument as well (although less so, imho). But to the credit of tech entrepreneurship, there ARE proyects that are helping to close the gap, offering education to everybody, I think about Khan's Academy, Coursera, Udacity... I think it's too convenient to classify tech entrepreneurs as a single group, with the same vision and ideals.

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pg 13y ago

The same arguments would prove that math isn't a meritocracy. Which it presumably isn't, entirely, but only because nothing is entirely. And if SV is only as much of a meritocracy as math, that's pretty good. Indeed, that's what the word means in ordinary usage.

mtrimpe 13y ago
Way to miss the point and exemplify it in the same breath. The article is about how SV thinks it's more meritocratic than it actually is and how this false pride is a problem in and of it's own. P.S. P.G. When this thread started I was almost tempted to make a snide comment saying "3.. 2.. 1.. Flagged off the front page." It actually took a bit over an hour but it's now indeed been flagged off of the front page despite getting a significant number of upvotes while it was there. Is that not just another example of allowing a vocal minority (flag-wise) to silence a majority who are apparently interested in discussions like these?
- SilasX 13y ago
  "SV thinks it's extremely meritocratic. It's only very meritocratic. This is a big problem."
  - 21echoes 13y ago
    I would in no way say that SV is even very meritocratic. Compare start-up demographics numbers to population-at-large numbers... The fact that commenters like you would read this article, hopefully think for half a second, and then still insist that SV is "very meritocratic" is exactly the problem.
    - hacker789 13y ago
      Yes, there are too many pesky east-Asians and Indians. There might be a Jewish problem as well.
      - 13y ago

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jraines 13y ago

The war on the word "meritocracy" is just weird. You can just watch it bubble up through twitter to large blogs, to wired. The weird thing about it is the people who hate the word are arguing not against the actual usage -- "people who demonstrate their merit get ahead" -- but against the illiberal definition they've assigned to it: "people who have inherent merit get ahead". Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the valley, and if there really are a bunch of young white males with the right "pedigree" who are getting money thrown at them without having demonstrated any real merit, then I withdraw my objection. However, if they're getting money for things that you don't think have merit, like the Nth photo sharing app, then I think it stands.

ForHackernews 13y ago
> if there really are a bunch of young white males with the right "pedigree" who are getting money thrown at them without having demonstrated any real merit, then I withdraw my objection That's exactly what happens. You are much, much more likely to get funded if you're a young white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford than if you're a black woman studying at Berkeley. Now, you can hand-wave about connections, and entrepreneurial culture or what have you, but at some level, that just reinforces the point.
- crusso 13y ago
  So where is your data showing that?
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capital-human-capital-report http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capit... According to that report, 87% of funded founders are white; 92% of funded founders are male.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      You said: You are much, much more likely to get funded if you're a young white (or perhaps asian) guy doing an undergrad at Stanford than if you're a black woman studying at Berkeley. Your data does not show this. You'd need the denominators as well, you have only the numerators.

dnautics 13y ago

here is the problem with the concept of "meritocracy". What constitutes "merit"? And if you have two orthogonal, meritorious qualities, which is more deserving of advancement, one who is 100%A, 0%B? Or another who is 0%A, 100%B? Who gets to decide?

johngalt 13y ago

Anyone writing an article like this should also write what would change their opinions and a plan to fix it. Imagine you've won me over completely and SV is an elitist boy's club. Now what do we do to change it? When is your standard met? Of course defining those views would be harder to defend. It's much easier to have arbitrary standards of fairness and point out how others don't live up to it.

kumarski 13y ago

I look at companies like Everpix with users, revenue, and growth and then companies like Albumatic. Albumatic raised 4.1 million dollars and pivoted 3 months later. Everpix was building a product that users loved and they had the trajectory to be great. One question we must ask is: "What do we define as merit in silicon valley?"

kumarski 13y ago
Additionally, while it is far from optimal, I do believe we(other than Israel) have the best systemic distribution of capital to companies.

crusso 13y ago

The myth is that anyone can come from anywhere and achieve great success in Silicon Valley if they are skilled. It holds that those who “make it” do so due to their excellent ideas and ability, because the tech scene is a meritocracy where what you do, not who you are, matters. Thus is the straw man constructed. The dismantling of that poor fellah is absolutely breathtaking to behold. He had it coming. Who actually makes absolute claims like those except for in a feel good, keep your glass half full if you want to succeed kind of a way?

elchief 13y ago

So I was editing OpenStreetMap the other day, because I wanted to fill in the shops in my neighbourhood. They have a feature where you can see all the editors that are near you. There were dozens of them, and they were all men. Why? What could possibly be preventing women from editing OpenStreetMap? Why are men at the vanguard of this project? This project is good for society, and I saw no women. I was actually surprised, after the Wikipedia-is-dominated-by-men articles from a few months ago. I expected that women would purposely be seeking out opportunities to contribute in other areas. In a few years when OpenStreetMap is larger, feminists will complain that there aren't enough women editors, and that men are preventing them. But men aren't preventing them. When there's nothing preventing your group from doing something, and your group is under-represented, it is your group's fault.

beat 13y ago
Alternately, when you assume there's nothing preventing someone from doing something, that doesn't mean there's nothing preventing it. First rule of debugging should be to not walk in with a bunch of assumptions and jump to conclusions based on them. Start following out the logic of your concluding sentence, and it leads to "groups of people are unsuccessful because they are lazy and/or stupid". Is that really a conclusion you expect to reach, or that sounds right to you? If not, then maybe your assumptions are flawed.
- elchief 13y ago
  Two economists see a Ferrari. "I want one of those", says the first. "Obviously not", says the other.

brosco45 13y ago

It's who you know, not what you know.

katrinae 13y ago

I am so happy that this view is being shared - so happy, in fact, that I created a HN username just so I could comment on it. I am female and graduated from MIT several years ago. While I was there, tech entrepreneurship far and away the sexiest thing to be doing. It was at the point where you felt like a loser if you didn't have your own startup. Unfortunately, this fetishization of startups resulted in many ideas that were, to put it bluntly, stupid. I couldn't believe how many people - including investors, not just students - were obsessed with creating iPhone apps and social media networks. I had a telling encounter a year ago with a woman who ran an incubator; it was somewhat tech-focused, but also had a creative bent and was partially funded by state money for assisting small businesses. I wanted to invest my money locally (a la Slow Money - www.slowmoney.org ) and was looking for mentors and partners. We had a long conversation during which this woman said things like, "what a great idea, I've never heard of anything like that before". At the end of it, though, she asked: "so let me get this straight. Are you an innovator, or do you just want to fund innovators?". This kind of myopia about what constitutes innovation devalues the contributions of non-tech entrepreneurs (and many others, too); furthermore, it discourages young people from attacking important problems outside of technology. Interestingly, the Economist had an article recently about how public veneration of the tech elite may be ending: http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-bankers-and-oilmen-public-demonology-predicts-adrian-wooldridge-coming http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-.... Even though I'm part of this group, I'm glad this issue is being discussed.

ForHackernews 13y ago
Sadly, this article has already been kicked off the HN frontpage by the "flamewar" filter, and the comments here (including from HN's illustrious founder, Paul Graham) illustrate just how resistant tech types are to the mere suggestion that factors beyond individual gumption play into their successes.

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memracom 13y ago

My take on this, and I have spent some time in SV working at a startup in Redwood City, is that SV does NOT attract the best and the brightest. Instead it attracts a gaggle of me-too-ers who apply cargo cultism to ape the successful companies. This actually has the effect of REDUCING innovation because the startup culture is afraid to try new things, afraid to build on something tried and tested in the MidWest or New York because they are worshiping at the temple of Sandhill Road. It is not just an issue with women (who the article quite rightly points out, have a great track record of starting successful businesses) but it is also an issue with age and with experience. SV often rejects people who are not young enought purely for ageist reasons but it also rejects those who are too experienced, too educated. The kind of people that built NASA are persona non grata in SV. There are still some smart people coming out of SV because of Stanford and UC Berkeley being there, but if those two schools moved away, the whole house of cards would collapse.

avifreedman 13y ago

Effort does not correlate exactly with results, but the chances of success are high if one tries and is capable. In both tech and hustle, it's easier with wealth, privilege, connections, luck, and/or friends. But large swaths of tech and hacking can be done on a $200 netbook or a lab of $100 used notebooks. The hustle part... That's easier if you have hustle. If you are a geek, make a tool that's needed and sell it to another geek. I've seen male, female, black, white, mongrel, rich, poor, and those with role models and without success at tech and business. It's harder without but still possible. And I think SV may indeed be the best place in the country to succeed in - in gambling terms, the result converges faster with the expected value given effort and application. Particularly (in my opinion) because past failures are discounted and companies, especially startups, are willing to give startups a try without as much suspicion.

benched 13y ago

Nothing that people do could possibly be a meritocracy, because people are fucks. In fact, every social problem is easily explained by the fact that people are fucks. Q.E.D.