I've read some reasonable pieces that point out what I think most people know, regardless of "meritocracy", promotions and hiring is often based on other intangible factors: personality, culture fit, etc. And it's good to keep that in mind.

Regardless, I find the attack on meritocracy bizarre, in large part because our feminists don't say what they want to replace it with.

When I was starting out in the early 80s, it was a big feminist victory really to move hiring, promotions, and even admittance to grad schools away from the old boys networks to something much more transparent and objective like meritocracy.

And I still see meritocracy as aspirational.

When meritocracy is criticized with no replacement offered, well, all I can think of is that what is really being said is they want quotas, affirmative action, set asides, etc.

It reminds me of the New Haven Firefighter's case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricci_v._DeStefano

Jerry, it reminds me of something David Horowitz once said to me when I asked him a related question: "We only wanted our rights so we could use them to take away everyone else's rights." When women were on the outside looking in, feminism wanted merit-based criteria (and rightly so). But now that feminism perceives that it has power, the last thing it wants is objective criteria.

Truth is, and this is the case with all of the 20th-century civil rights movements: In the minds of the most feverant supporters, there was never any philosophical basis for merit-based anything. It was always just a ruse to get the camel's nose into the tent. In their minds, raw power was always the one and only goal. The world is headed for a second Dark Age, in which the concepts of rule of law and civilized values will be widely mocked. And once the civilization that keeps so many alive starts to collapse, as billions of people are dying from starvation or disease or administration of high-velocity projectiles, every one of them will be saying, "No, no! This wasn't supposed to happen to me! I'm one of the special ones!"

Any one who rides the Google buses in SF can see that tech might be mainly male, it's not all that white. People go into tech because they majored in certain subjects that women avoid. So, yes, these people have had opportunities unavailable to women, because of those women's own choices.

Ever place I have been employed has claimed to be merit based. Some strong than others. The trouble seems to me to be evaluating that ... what constitutes merit? Much of it seems unrelated to what I would consider merit. Was your idea adopted because it was technical superior or because you are more persuasive with the decision maker? Your idea as chosen and worked, but maybe someone else's idea what was not chosen would have been better -- since only one idea was attempted you will never know.

Yes tech and engineering are mostly white male, Indian (60%m/40%F) or East Asian (Chinese or Japanese - probably around 70% male) from my experience in school and work.

see, if you put such a broad pledge, in huge bold letters, it doesn't allow for ambiguity...

and that is what people who don't have merit want.

If you have basic metrics to measure things, then there will be people who don't measure up. In our current environment, this leads to sadness, and that leads to pain. Rather than leading to striving, and competition. Leveling up as they say.

If you had such an emblem in your company logo, it would infuse the company, and it would be a goal worth persuing, EVEN KNOWING, that there would need to be some room for compromise.

I will never be management, I hate managing people. But there is ceiling in tech where you can't rise unless you go into management. The problem being that there are plenty o' people who make your operation run, who just aren't interested in that. So if you want your op to run, and even improve, you find a spot for them...

This is where meritocracy needs a bit of compromise.

But, finding spots for people because they are a certain gender, just indicates that they are not competitive, in what ever way... who is it up to, to fix that?

I think in this case, we know, they expect the company to fix it, be removing that merit based competition.

because then they can be more flexible.

If you can afford to "give someone shot" and are amenable, it's your money( hopefully) . However, if you need something done you hire the best person to do it, period.

Some folks want a "merit" based environment as long as their race and gender are consider "merit" worthy above others' race and gender.

This is the same as wanting net neutrality until you are in charge -- then when you are in charge it is inconvenient.

Same with the media. If you don't think the media is left leaning just hear them scream about talk radio.

The tech industry isn't still predominantly white and male because white men are better at their jobs than everyone else, it's because many white men have had more opportunities to succeed than their minority and female counterparts.

I recently watched Empire of the Sun again and I'm reminded of a quote early on when the boy says how lucky they are and the father answers, "It's funny how it seems the harder I work, the luckier we get."

It's really not that predominately white anymore anyway. My company hires so many from abroad (and tries pretty hard to get people from inside the US, the paperwork and clearances for foreigners sucks) that the latest building they're doing will have a field primarily for soccer or cricket. Yeah, white males is the main target there I'm sure.

My husband wants only daughters because he feels prospects are better for girls than for boys.

This situation is so much weirder than is being reported. In reality it has nothing to do with meritocracy, rather it's about a mobbing by a bunch of 'intersectionalist' feminists in SF who are trying to blackball GitHub's female employees from local women's organizations because they won't get on board the claim that all the men at GitHub are pigs.

The reason they won't is because the only people who may have behaved piggishly at GitHub are the founder and his bisexual wife, and their behavior was only directly selectively towards women they were attracted to. The other employees had nothing to do with it.

In other words a horny bisexual couple in a small company made awkward moves towards two women. But the feminists can't acknowledge that a woman may have behaved badly so they've tarred all of the men that work at the company. The females have defended their colleagues and so the feminists want them punished.

The end result is that GitHub has sacrificed their rug to appease a local hate group.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you read up on the controversy you'll see what I'm getting at.