cutting off their nose

Posted Oct 28, 2025 17:19 UTC (Tue) by excors (subscriber, #95769)
In reply to: cutting off their nose by AntiISO
Parent article: Python Software Foundation withdraws security-related grant proposal

> The person who authored the most adopted code of conduct in software projects, including the linux kernel itself, that very same person also authored a document that is literally titled "The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto". That second book's cover should give you a better idea about the previous book's content.

I don't see why you're implying we should be surprised or outraged about that. It's saying we can't objectively measure "merit", because it's such a vaguely defined term that in practice it's usually twisted (intentionally or unintentionally) to mean "people like me". And even if we could measure it, we shouldn't judge people on that measurement, because open source communities are social groups of humans, and groups benefit from having a range of skills and viewpoints, and humans have value beyond their ability to write code, so we should embrace that value rather than dismissing anyone who doesn't fit our narrow objective criteria.

That seems entirely consistent with the Contributor Covenant: it says communities should be welcoming and respectful to all. It doesn't say this only applies to the objectively best C hackers. The kernel's CoC explicitly calls out "levels of experience", which will be a big part of any attempt to measure merit - inexperienced programmers will write poorer code, but the kernel says they should still be welcomed and respected. That lets them contribute to the project now, and gain experience and contribute even more later, which is pretty obviously a good thing for the group.

(Incidentally, the term "meritocracy" was coined in a satirical, dystopian novel, so it seems weird to hold it up as an ideal that cannot be criticised or improved upon. It has benefits over some other models, but it has always been an imperfect concept.)

In any case, I think Post-Meritocracy is a significantly different thing to corporate DEI and you shouldn't conflate them. Companies can't welcome everyone equally: a job opening will have dozens of applicants and they have to make binary judgments on who to accept, so there's an unavoidable exclusivity. The best they can do is refine their criteria to reflect what's actually good for the group (avoiding the simple, selfish criteria of "people like me"), and identify and minimise their biases when evaluating those criteria, and support the successful applicants to work as effectively as possible based on their individual needs, which are the processes that will be called DEI (and that the government gets upset about).

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cutting off their nose

Posted Oct 29, 2025 0:10 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

A crucial point is that the value of any member is relative to the needs of their organization. A good team needs people with a wide range of skills. If you focus exclusively on one skill set as the most valuable, you'll wind up with a team that can only do one kind of thing. If instead you try to get a well rounded group with a wide range of skills, you can do more kinds of things. It's not that, say, a technical writer is more "meritorious" than a programmer, but a team with only programmers might benefit more by adding someone to bring their documentation up to date than they would by adding another programmer. A rock band consisting of four lead guitar players might benefit from trading one for a drummer, even if the drummer isn't quite as good a musician.

cutting off their nose

Posted Oct 29, 2025 12:17 UTC (Wed) by AntiISO (guest, #179626) [Link]

This sounds like a variation of "a solution in search of a problem". Except here, it sounds like a rationalizing attempt at retrofitting a "solution" into an imaginary unsolved problem.

When the task is technical writing, a technical writer very much has more merit than a programmer who is not good at it, although technical writing still requires at least a minimal level of topic/field expertise obviously. If there is a problem finding the right people for that job description, then that's what needs to be improved, measuring the "merit" of technical writers.

But neither did humanity at large somehow had a comprehensive problem groking such banality until a decade or two ago (i.e. recognizing the importance of job descriptions and different skill sets). Nor is nuking the concept of "merit" needed, or presents an actual workable solution in any way, to solve this supposedly existing problem.