Jun 24, 2010
Meritocracy
Do you know what meritocracy is?
Think about it for a second. Then, think again.
We usually assume that meritocracy means being able to earn money, respect, responsibilities, by merit only.
The opposite of meritocracy is nepotism: you are assigned that important role in the company because your uncle is the owner.
Or, there are many “opposites” to meritocracy, where rewards are based on:
- possession of wealth (plutocracy);
- origin (aristocracy);
- family connections (nepotism);
- property;
- friendship (cronyism);
- technical expertise (technocracy);
- seniority (gerontocracy);
- popularity (representative democracy);
or other historical determinants of social position and political power.
Wow, quite a long list here.
Why do we assume that merit is fair?
(typical anglo-saxon point of view)
You take two candidates for a job, interview them, and determine that candidate A would do a better job than candidate B.
In a meritocratic system, you would hire A.
However, why A is better than B? Why A has more merits than B?
I’ll give you another, more personal example:
I grew up in a small country town in Italy, called Assisi; I studied there most of my life. I went to University in nearby Perugia, started with Electronic Engineering, but then moved to Computer Science in 1999. In 2001 I founded my little consulting company, Wedoit, together with my Brother Marco. I worked there for few years, doing other things at the same time (teaching at the University, working as a CTO in another University), until I finally landed my job at Amazon.com in 2008.
In 1998, Sergey Brin founded Google.
Sergey:
- Had a father who was a Mathematics professor, and gave him extra education;
- Studied at a Montessori School;
- Studied at Stanford University;
- Lived in the highest density Venture Capital place in the world, California.
If you were to bet your money on Sergey (A) or Simone (B), or to decide which one you’d like to hire, you would certainly choose Sergey.
Why? Because of merit. Sergey Brin has huge merits, no doubts. I am, for sure, not as smart or as entrepreneurial as he is.
I am NOT suggesting that I would be able to create Google, and that I should be a successful billionaire. I am, in fact, suggesting that Sergey has many more merits than I do, and that he would always win over me at job interviews. (I know, he doesn’t need to interview anymore).
So, here’s merit at work.
Right?
Is that merit?
Really?
Merit is when we start at the same level, and you work harder than I do, and you become more competent, more skilled for that job. And you win that job.
That’s real merit. Or, else, call it workhardocracy, the place where you reward hard work.
I didn’t start at the same level at which Sergey did.
The more I meet people around the world, and the more successful they are, the more I think:
Well, I never had the chance to study at Stanford. Or to study classes with Nobel Laureates. Or to spend time with other very smart guys, with a lot of resources to study. Or to found my company with Venture Capital all over the place. Or to use the latest and most innovative technologies, and learn from them.
In fact, when I was student representative, in 2001, I started a protest (which led me to a national radio program and more than 6,000 visits to the website on that day!) because we had FEW computers for HUNDREDS of students. That was the COMPUTER SCIENCE department. Can you believe it? How could we learn Computer Science without touching computers for most of the time?
In that same University, when I went back there to teach, in 2004, I was the FIRST professor to introduce: Creative Commons material; mailing list for students; and other things.
Can you believe this?
Yes, that was a very bad University to study.
No, I didn’t have the same opportunities as many others.
And yet, I feel grateful for what I was able to accomplish in life, despite it’s a much smaller thing than founding Google.
From this point of view, it means that there’s little meritocracy in the world. Yes, very little.
And the next time you hear: “Oh, that’s merit!”, think again.
That’s not merit at all.
That’s something else.
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Have you some idea about how to call such “something else”?
Someone would call it “creating value” (not in the strict, materialistic sense).
That something else is best known such as “Luck” or “Destiny”.
It is difficult to define what merit itself is. It is a word with little information content. It conveys a vague idea, it could be a myth. Merit is not something you own, it is something you receive. I mostly agree with you, but I believe that starting at the same level is not enough to realize a true meritocracy. Merit is a relationship between you and a (often very small) community. The community acknowledges you are working hard. “Welldone” is not an intrinsic property of jobs. People outside the community acknowledge your merits because the community did. It is a sort of vicious circle. I do not want to say life is unfair and successful people do not deserve their merits. Bye
Great post! Thanks for sharing your thoughts… Personally I lived (more or less) same experiences within University environment, so I can’t agree more with you.
Great post Simone… It is a very good question, and sometimes I wonder about it. But I’m sure that you have done more than some other people that started in a better position then your. So that, in a job interview, you wouldn’t beat Sergey, but you can win the most of them because you deserve it.
By the way, it is an X Factor… Destiny, lucky, creating value… It doesn’t matter but in my opinion, even if you have a better starting position you have to work hard to reach the goal, probably the goal will be bigger than the goal of a guy that started from another position, but you have to work hard.
Dear Simone,
you recognise that the word “merit” is quite hard to define precisely.
One can say that also creating a network of human connections, that eventually leads to some job position, is “merit”.
In my experience (that is mostly in big enterprises and institutions), hard working and competence is just ONE among the factors: I have personally seen many competent and hardworking people creating more damage and problems than value.
However, I fully agree when you say that the level we reach in the world depends mostly on where we start. But I have a good news for you: happyness doesn’t generally depend on the absolute level we reach, but on the difference between where we start and where we arrive.
Nobody can deny that we (you and me) are among the most successfull Italians – lifestyle, happyness and mostly future perspectives.
A final consideration: you, with your work and intelligence, are increasing the starting level of your future children. You cited mr. Brin: he could start in a great environment probably because his relatives made good choices in the past.
See you soon, my good friend
Hi Simone,
it is a long time without getting in touch with news, I promise to write you further.
About your post, we could talk about “relative meritocracy”: I think both, Sergey and you, have taken profits by meritocracy, just on different scale range. More, it is easy and comforting take a Gates or a Brin as touchstone: what about the young and inspired hardworking burkinabé and his achievements? I think it would complain as you, rightly, about the number of computers… but not only.
Finally, and in spite of this, I largely agree with you. But another Assisi citizen had his personal Mr Brin, long time before you; and his Mr. Brin said that it is not useful to search power, richness and treasure on this Earth. So, why would you like to find meritocracy? It si not necessary to believe to this “other” Mr. Brin, but it would be useful to integrate this concept in the reflection.
Fascinating discussion.
I spent a long time in the public service and saw the value and the limitations of meritocracy: some awful dunderheads rose inexorably through the system while their smarter peers got impatient and went where they could achieve something and not lose their souls.
I used to think nepotism was a Bad Thing. Then once I mentioned to a colleague who owned an advertising agency that I had a niece who was looking for a job. Tell her to get in touch, he said. Then he said, smiling and not lowering his voice even though (because?) we were in a public place and both well known there “I *believe* in nepotism. Who wants to work with people they don’t know?”. There is a sub-thread there: if he hired her and it did not work out, I would – as the Chinese say – lose face, so my niece would have extra motivation to do well, which would be good for his business etc etc.
May I suggest there is a third thing, somewhere between meritocracy and nepotism/cronyism – which if I had to I might call something like reputocracy?
That’s about what goes on all over the world, hiring someone or opening a business discussion with someone because someone you know says “the man/woman you need to meet is…”
It’s a lot about what LinkedIn provides. Reputation. Simone thinks this woman is the right person to make my team work, and I trust Simone’s judgement and know he has great experience so I’d be mad not to interview her.
Hi Simone
after quite a long you wrote this post I found this interesting article on NYT which actually support your thesis in a different way:
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-trouble-with-meritocracy/
I like when the author says:
It’s not enough to simply take the smartest kids and make them smarter. What’s just as important is teaching these young people to seek out strangers, to resist the tug of self-similarity and homogenization.
Enjoy
:)
Simone, very nice post indeed. It makes you think.
But difficult to understand for those who had to remain in Italy for that ‘something else’.
Because here in Italy when you get your degree with full marks, you get your MBA, you’re brilliant, you’re are a hardworker etc. etc. you must consider yourself lucky when such things are seen as components of your “merit”, rather than as a “side dish” of your being son (or friend) of a powerful Mr Somebody.
But you already know it, I assume.
Ah! and I believe that you COULD found a new Google, if you wanted!
;-)