I read the article last week when it was doing the rounds, and I must admit I find it confusing. It appears to state that because we haven't yet achieved equity, we shouldn't bother striving for it. This seems false and harmful.
I'm not aware of anybody (ok, fine, I am aware of one person) that thinks that Apache has arrived at meritocratic ideals. Rather, we strive towards them. If it's the *word* that's objectionable, sure, fine. But abandoning the *ideal* doesn't seem like a desired outcome. I acknowledge that I am the recipient of enormous luck and privilege. I certainly don't believe that I have arrived where I am in the world purely by hard work. And frankly, citing Stuart Varney as representative of ... well, anything or anyone, is, itself, kind of comic. He's a pompous blow-hard with a lengthy history of arrogant remarks about unsavory poor people who are not as wonderful as himself. I understand that these people exist, but citing them as representative seems weird. I would, however, ask what it is, specifically, that you're suggesting. On 3/20/19 5:49 AM, Naomi Slater wrote: > this article crossed my news feed today: > > https://www.fastcompany.com/40510522/meritocracy-doesnt-exist-and-believing-it-does-is-bad-for-you > > here's a key takeaway: > >> [...] in companies that explicitly held meritocracy as a core value, > managers assigned greater rewards to male employees over female employees > with identical performance evaluations. This preference disappeared where > meritocracy was not explicitly adopted as a value. > > many aspects of this piece mirror something I wrote for Model View Culture > a few years ago: > https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-open-source-identity-crisis > > namely, that "the meritocracy" is a status quo supporting, hierarchy > legitimizing myth used to justify people's existing social status and > treatment > > I'll say what I've said before: it's long since time for us to critically > examine the way we use the concept of "meritocracy" at Apache (this is > especially true in 2019 given what we know about the lack of diversity at > the ASF) > > when I was writing about this in 2014, I was already a few years behind the > curve re discourse about culture and tech diversity. it's now 2019 and even > FastCompany is writing about it > -- Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com http://rcbowen.com/ @rbowen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org
