@tux0r
, my personal opinion is that meritocracy is a fallible concept that wouldn't even work in your idea of a "perfect world".
By saying:
In a perfect world, nobody would care about genders, pronouns, ethnicities and your physical and mental health anymore.
You're also saying that people should just be assimilated to a monoculture where anything that sets them apart is rendered non important despite them being... people.
It's like advocating for an eternal code switching: when you're at home you can be gendered, have an ethnicity, have physical or mental disabilities but when you're at work nope, you need to leave all of that out of the work place but be this awesome "bro" or "gal" (because you still haven't figured out that gender is a spectrum) and high five your way to retirement.
What I find appalling of this world view is that people are people, they are people when they are at home, they are people when they are at work. It's what is different between them that enriches society, otherwise every kind of product (not just software) would be catered to everyone. Why market diapers to babies when you can market them to 25year old too. Why have different shades of colors as "nude makeup" when you can market one single shade to 7 billion people and call it a day? Naomi Campbell is sure going to look amazing on those magazines if she uses Drew Barrymore shades of makeup. Who cares, in this perfect world everyone is one and the same. I'm sure you would find this super dumb, so why the idea of erasing people's identities 8-10 hours a day should be any less dumb?
Let's suppose the current system is indeed meritocratic (which isn't, not even in your world sense): what do we do with privileged individuals that are occupying space because of wealth and not because of skill? Why hasn't this marvelous meritocracy got rid of them?
One thing that I never understand about people in tech who refuse to hear the DEI argument is that they are supposed to be part of the upper echelon of cognitive intelligence (also utterly uninterested in any other type of intelligence, but that's for another day). Able to discern how a complex machine works, able to hunt a bug for weeks and then solve it, able to decide what's the most cost effective solution by evaluating countless factors but as soon as someone says "maybe the status quo isn't perfect" logic and innate curiosity is thrown out of a window faster than I can say "minority". I haven't even started talking about bias. People graduating from MIT that can send people to Mars but can't see that at the end of the day they are human too and not robots, people with bias like you and me and everyone else.
The DEI argument is way bigger than "Google has an abysimal number of black programmers" but this is yet another thing that's ignored by advocates of "meritocracy above all else".
Italy has a law (still valid) from the fascist period that forbids ANY and ALL non citizens to drive any form of public transportation. Are you telling me that no refugee has the skill to drive a bus and use that to provide from themselves and/or their family? No, it's just the system barring them to assimilate. I can link you examples of black and brown first responders that have been berated by callers because "I don't want to be cured by a black doctor". I don't justify these people racism but if you never see anyone that looks like you two things can happen: you don't try (hence you don't become a doctor) and they think you're less than (because some people unfortunately by never having had any contact with anyone outside their own culture, default to skepticism if not racism when presented with a "novelty").
So, if tech is full of habits and customs barring possibly qualified candidates from entering, why are you not willing to change it?
And even if you think that these habits and customs are not real, why aren't you willing to experiment with the status quo? After all, what have you got to lose?
I'll conclude by saying that just this morning I saw the following video on kottke.org:
At some point they say how when men in the 40s discovered there was creativity to be had in film editing, so they started kicking women out of the profession (despite them being the majority in the first few decades of cinema). Rings a bell?
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@tux0r , my personal opinion is that meritocracy is a fallible concept that wouldn't even work in your idea of a "perfect world".
By saying:
You're also saying that people should just be assimilated to a monoculture where anything that sets them apart is rendered non important despite them being... people.
It's like advocating for an eternal code switching: when you're at home you can be gendered, have an ethnicity, have physical or mental disabilities but when you're at work nope, you need to leave all of that out of the work place but be this awesome "bro" or "gal" (because you still haven't figured out that gender is a spectrum) and high five your way to retirement.
What I find appalling of this world view is that people are people, they are people when they are at home, they are people when they are at work. It's what is different between them that enriches society, otherwise every kind of product (not just software) would be catered to everyone. Why market diapers to babies when you can market them to 25year old too. Why have different shades of colors as "nude makeup" when you can market one single shade to 7 billion people and call it a day? Naomi Campbell is sure going to look amazing on those magazines if she uses Drew Barrymore shades of makeup. Who cares, in this perfect world everyone is one and the same. I'm sure you would find this super dumb, so why the idea of erasing people's identities 8-10 hours a day should be any less dumb?
Let's suppose the current system is indeed meritocratic (which isn't, not even in your world sense): what do we do with privileged individuals that are occupying space because of wealth and not because of skill? Why hasn't this marvelous meritocracy got rid of them?
One thing that I never understand about people in tech who refuse to hear the DEI argument is that they are supposed to be part of the upper echelon of cognitive intelligence (also utterly uninterested in any other type of intelligence, but that's for another day). Able to discern how a complex machine works, able to hunt a bug for weeks and then solve it, able to decide what's the most cost effective solution by evaluating countless factors but as soon as someone says "maybe the status quo isn't perfect" logic and innate curiosity is thrown out of a window faster than I can say "minority". I haven't even started talking about bias. People graduating from MIT that can send people to Mars but can't see that at the end of the day they are human too and not robots, people with bias like you and me and everyone else.
The DEI argument is way bigger than "Google has an abysimal number of black programmers" but this is yet another thing that's ignored by advocates of "meritocracy above all else".
Italy has a law (still valid) from the fascist period that forbids ANY and ALL non citizens to drive any form of public transportation. Are you telling me that no refugee has the skill to drive a bus and use that to provide from themselves and/or their family? No, it's just the system barring them to assimilate. I can link you examples of black and brown first responders that have been berated by callers because "I don't want to be cured by a black doctor". I don't justify these people racism but if you never see anyone that looks like you two things can happen: you don't try (hence you don't become a doctor) and they think you're less than (because some people unfortunately by never having had any contact with anyone outside their own culture, default to skepticism if not racism when presented with a "novelty").
So, if tech is full of habits and customs barring possibly qualified candidates from entering, why are you not willing to change it?
And even if you think that these habits and customs are not real, why aren't you willing to experiment with the status quo? After all, what have you got to lose?
I'll conclude by saying that just this morning I saw the following video on kottke.org:
At some point they say how when men in the 40s discovered there was creativity to be had in film editing, so they started kicking women out of the profession (despite them being the majority in the first few decades of cinema). Rings a bell?