Linux is critical software. I'm all for allowing people to fail until they learn to do better, but that should happen in spaces where it's safe to do so, like say in an internship program. IDK if...
Linux is critical software.
I'm all for allowing people to fail until they learn to do better, but that should happen in spaces where it's safe to do so, like say in an internship program. IDK if Linux has sth. similar, say like mentorship for new contributors, but that's where people can try and fail, especially when dealing with critical software, or anything else that's this important.
The said manifesto wants to do away with merit because with it the "privileged" has advantage over others. That may be the case, but then the correct approach is to educate those others and make sure that they have the same chances as the "privileged" to learn, improve and eventually merit the said positions.
Changes to Linux go through a tremendous amount of testing, code review, and static analysis before they get released to the world as a stable, mainline kernel. This mentorship already exists. It...
I'm all for allowing people to fail until they learn to do better, but that should happen in spaces where it's safe to do so, like say in an internship program. IDK if Linux has sth. similar, say like mentorship for new contributors, but that's where people can try and fail, especially when dealing with critical software, or anything else that's this important.
Changes to Linux go through a tremendous amount of testing, code review, and static analysis before they get released to the world as a stable, mainline kernel. This mentorship already exists.
The said manifesto wants to do away with merit
It doesn't want to do away with merit, it wants to do away with meritocracy - that is, rule by the people with the most "merit". And it explains the reason for this:
The idea of merit is in fact never clearly defined; rather, it seems to be a form of recognition, an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.”
"Merit" is a classic "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" thing. It's not meaningful to say we should have a "meritocracy" where the people with the most merit rise to the top if there isn't a clear, agreed-upon definition of what "merit" is, and an objective way to measure it.
Then the solution is to (re)define "merit", and hopefully define it to include humane decency too. The manifesto openly says that they "believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important...
Then the solution is to (re)define "merit", and hopefully define it to include humane decency too. The manifesto openly says that they "believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills", that "at least" is too much, and unacceptable.
I also don't think "merit" is not clearly defined. But that's another discussion.
For a good background read, separate from the "merit" and "meritocracy" semantics which seem to be a big part of the argument, I'd suggest reading about the phenomenon of the "brilliant jerk":...
For a good background read, separate from the "merit" and "meritocracy" semantics which seem to be a big part of the argument, I'd suggest reading about the phenomenon of the "brilliant jerk":
Linus Torvalds is one of the prime examples of the brilliant jerk. So his apology, and announcement he's taking time off was a big deal among people who saw his brilliant-jerkiness as part of the problem.
That post-meritocracy manifesto, to my eye, reads like an extended version of the "no brilliant jerks" rule:
We believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills.
The defense of the "meritocracy", in my mind, is about defending brilliant jerks - that your merit as a brilliant engineer outweighs any jerkishness.
Another important lens to look at this through, I think, is one of survivorship bias. I worked at Amazon for several years, which famously has a very high turnover rate. There was a pretty strong mentality among people who had lasted a long time at Amazon that they did so because Amazon is a meritocracy and they were the ones with merit. That ignored the people who left Amazon for various and sundry reasons, who might have also had a ton of merit as engineers, but no longer worked for the company so couldn't participate in internal discussions about what an amazing meritocracy it was.
Thanks! What does that have to do with under-representation of minorities, though? Does "brilliant jerk" implicitly mean "brilliant bigot"? (Sorry if this is clear in the content you linked, I'll...
Thanks! What does that have to do with under-representation of minorities, though? Does "brilliant jerk" implicitly mean "brilliant bigot"? (Sorry if this is clear in the content you linked, I'll try to read through it ASAP).
Not necessarily bigoted - for example, Linus is famous for his rants and attacking people he saw as having poor code quality, but as far as I'm aware he was never openly sexist or racist about it....
Not necessarily bigoted - for example, Linus is famous for his rants and attacking people he saw as having poor code quality, but as far as I'm aware he was never openly sexist or racist about it.
But when the top of the "meritocracy" tends to be mostly young men who've grown up around computers, not just programming them but playing online games, hanging out on 4chan or reddit or wherever - some bigotry definitely creeps in. And the "sure he could be nicer but have you seen his code?" defense gets used.
And examples of it in the open-source community abound:
An older study by Emerson Murphy-Hill, based on GitHub’s 2016 data, proved women’s code was statistically rated better than men’s if female programmers disguised their gender with a unisex name.
Why is her signing it (two months ago, even) significant? She's 21 years old and in college, does she have some sort of influential position related to Linux or any other open-source project? Is...
Why is her signing it (two months ago, even) significant? She's 21 years old and in college, does she have some sort of influential position related to Linux or any other open-source project? Is there any indication that her signing it has any effect on Linux or Linus and isn't simply her own action as a female Computer Science student who happens to have a famous father?
Hell, is it even confirmed that it was actually her that signed it and not just someone that typed her name in on the Google Form?
Post-meritocracy, post-truth, wow. The up-coming world is post-good. I guess I move to OpenBSD before too long. Not impeding people for not being the "ideal human" of the olden times is one thing,...
Post-meritocracy, post-truth, wow. The up-coming world is post-good. I guess I move to OpenBSD before too long.
Not impeding people for not being the "ideal human" of the olden times is one thing, using "diversity" as a trampoline for the technically-inadequate is another.
It's not diversity when we force-push some people we deem "different" into some positions. Before anything, that's a dismissal of their intellectuality and by extension humanity, given they become an "object" "used" as a tool to create "diversity". Then, this reduces the credibility of these "different" persons, because other people will, naturally, doubt the technical skill of a person of some category X when they have already seen persons of the same category acquire undeserved positions through diversity programs. This is a big disservice to feminism, a big disservice to any movement that champions gender equality, and any idea that suggest that we transcend things like gender, sex, nationality, ethnicity, "race", religion, etc.
Hope we get past this... thing, before it's too late.
One thing I don’t understand is why people are treating meritocracy like it’s the problem. Paraphrasing but I understand their argument as, “meritocracy entrenches privilege associated with...
One thing I don’t understand is why people are treating meritocracy like it’s the problem. Paraphrasing but I understand their argument as, “meritocracy entrenches privilege associated with privileged groups because they have more access to education”, and I agree that it does that. But why fight against meritocracy and asking companies to play some cost benefit analysis of “how much merit does this person have vs how many diversity credits do we get for hiring them”, why not fight for rights to equal education? It seems like a much better use of effort imo.
The Linux kernel is not a government. In my opinion this statement only holds weight when the same body of meritocracy is also the one in control of education. Were the US government a meritocracy...
meritocracy entrenches privilege associated with privileged groups because they have more access to education
The Linux kernel is not a government. In my opinion this statement only holds weight when the same body of meritocracy is also the one in control of education. Were the US government a meritocracy it could be an injustice since those in power are better educated and they decide who gets that superior education.
It seems inappropriate to even bring up his daughter, as if implying she is at "fault" for Linus' recent change of heart. This strikes me as just another battlefield for the ever-unproductive...
It seems inappropriate to even bring up his daughter, as if implying she is at "fault" for Linus' recent change of heart. This strikes me as just another battlefield for the ever-unproductive "SJW/anti-SJW" drama people.
The debate of meritocracy might be more interesting if people weren't talking past each other, and could agree on some common language.
This is the first post on Tildes I'd downvote if I could.
I think people are discussing the manifesto and the issues around it here, not Linus' daughter. It'd be better if the manifesto itself was linked directly, though. Personally I don't care much...
I think people are discussing the manifesto and the issues around it here, not Linus' daughter. It'd be better if the manifesto itself was linked directly, though. Personally I don't care much about the linked stuff as long as it generates good discussion here.
I won't comment too much on this. I have just seen it, and I would like to put this information here for people to see it and discuss the direction in which the Linux community is going.
Meritocracy is a founding principle of the open source movement, and the ideal of meritocracy is perpetuated throughout our field in the way people are recruited, hired, retained, promoted, and valued.
But meritocracy has consistently shown itself to mainly benefit those with privilege, to the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology. The idea of merit is in fact never clearly defined; rather, it seems to be a form of recognition, an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.”
They also believe that,
Interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills [...] We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors.
I think you get the idea. Well, if you scroll down, you will see that one of the signers of this manifesto is Patricia Torvalds, Linus Torvalds' daughter.
I think this applies well to attracting and maintaining a talented and diverse mix of contributors: Safe spaces are important. I have seen the misogynistic and racist comments made in some open source communities, and subsequent dismissals when people point out the issues. I think that in maintaining a professional community there have to be strong standards on what constitutes harassment or inappropriate conduct.
These are her takes on meritocracy:
I also think that some community leaders just don't value diversity. It's really easy to argue that tech is a meritocracy, and the reason there are so few marginalized people in tech is just that they aren't interested, and that the problem comes from earlier on in the pipeline. They argue that if someone is good enough at their job, their gender or race or sexual orientation doesn't matter. That's the easy argument. But I was raised not to make excuses for mistakes. And I think the lack of diversity is a mistake, and that we should be taking responsibility for it and actively trying to make it better.
I think that the direction in which Linux -and possibly Linus- is heading is really clear: "Diversity" is more important than merit. And it's worrying, to say the least.
Linux is critical software.
I'm all for allowing people to fail until they learn to do better, but that should happen in spaces where it's safe to do so, like say in an internship program. IDK if Linux has sth. similar, say like mentorship for new contributors, but that's where people can try and fail, especially when dealing with critical software, or anything else that's this important.
The said manifesto wants to do away with merit because with it the "privileged" has advantage over others. That may be the case, but then the correct approach is to educate those others and make sure that they have the same chances as the "privileged" to learn, improve and eventually merit the said positions.
Changes to Linux go through a tremendous amount of testing, code review, and static analysis before they get released to the world as a stable, mainline kernel. This mentorship already exists.
It doesn't want to do away with merit, it wants to do away with meritocracy - that is, rule by the people with the most "merit". And it explains the reason for this:
"Merit" is a classic "I can't define it but I know it when I see it" thing. It's not meaningful to say we should have a "meritocracy" where the people with the most merit rise to the top if there isn't a clear, agreed-upon definition of what "merit" is, and an objective way to measure it.
Then the solution is to (re)define "merit", and hopefully define it to include humane decency too. The manifesto openly says that they "believe that interpersonal skills are at least as important as technical skills", that "at least" is too much, and unacceptable.
I also don't think "merit" is not clearly defined. But that's another discussion.
Can you or anyone else explain what the proposed change actually is?
For a good background read, separate from the "merit" and "meritocracy" semantics which seem to be a big part of the argument, I'd suggest reading about the phenomenon of the "brilliant jerk":
https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-11-13/brilliant-jerks.html
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/22/netflix_updates_culture_document/
http://firstround.com/review/why-firing-brilliant-assholes-is-required-to-build-a-great-engineering-culture/
Linus Torvalds is one of the prime examples of the brilliant jerk. So his apology, and announcement he's taking time off was a big deal among people who saw his brilliant-jerkiness as part of the problem.
That post-meritocracy manifesto, to my eye, reads like an extended version of the "no brilliant jerks" rule:
The defense of the "meritocracy", in my mind, is about defending brilliant jerks - that your merit as a brilliant engineer outweighs any jerkishness.
Another important lens to look at this through, I think, is one of survivorship bias. I worked at Amazon for several years, which famously has a very high turnover rate. There was a pretty strong mentality among people who had lasted a long time at Amazon that they did so because Amazon is a meritocracy and they were the ones with merit. That ignored the people who left Amazon for various and sundry reasons, who might have also had a ton of merit as engineers, but no longer worked for the company so couldn't participate in internal discussions about what an amazing meritocracy it was.
Thanks! What does that have to do with under-representation of minorities, though? Does "brilliant jerk" implicitly mean "brilliant bigot"? (Sorry if this is clear in the content you linked, I'll try to read through it ASAP).
Not necessarily bigoted - for example, Linus is famous for his rants and attacking people he saw as having poor code quality, but as far as I'm aware he was never openly sexist or racist about it.
But when the top of the "meritocracy" tends to be mostly young men who've grown up around computers, not just programming them but playing online games, hanging out on 4chan or reddit or wherever - some bigotry definitely creeps in. And the "sure he could be nicer but have you seen his code?" defense gets used.
And examples of it in the open-source community abound:
https://jezebel.com/5705980/women-fed-up-with-open-source-community-creeps
https://mic.com/articles/181968/women-engineers-get-real-about-the-worst-sexism-theyve-experienced-at-work#.46eSgLQ6D
https://www.ibtimes.com/diversity-tech-open-source-networks-have-sexism-problem-2547192
And casual racism too:
https://www.dailydot.com/society/github-code-search-racism-sexism-bigotry/
Why is her signing it (two months ago, even) significant? She's 21 years old and in college, does she have some sort of influential position related to Linux or any other open-source project? Is there any indication that her signing it has any effect on Linux or Linus and isn't simply her own action as a female Computer Science student who happens to have a famous father?
Hell, is it even confirmed that it was actually her that signed it and not just someone that typed her name in on the Google Form?
It’s mostly her relationship to Linus, though I’m not to well versed in the topic
Post-meritocracy, post-truth, wow. The up-coming world is post-good. I guess I move to OpenBSD before too long.
Not impeding people for not being the "ideal human" of the olden times is one thing, using "diversity" as a trampoline for the technically-inadequate is another.
It's not diversity when we force-push some people we deem "different" into some positions. Before anything, that's a dismissal of their intellectuality and by extension humanity, given they become an "object" "used" as a tool to create "diversity". Then, this reduces the credibility of these "different" persons, because other people will, naturally, doubt the technical skill of a person of some category X when they have already seen persons of the same category acquire undeserved positions through diversity programs. This is a big disservice to feminism, a big disservice to any movement that champions gender equality, and any idea that suggest that we transcend things like gender, sex, nationality, ethnicity, "race", religion, etc.
Hope we get past this... thing, before it's too late.
One thing I don’t understand is why people are treating meritocracy like it’s the problem. Paraphrasing but I understand their argument as, “meritocracy entrenches privilege associated with privileged groups because they have more access to education”, and I agree that it does that. But why fight against meritocracy and asking companies to play some cost benefit analysis of “how much merit does this person have vs how many diversity credits do we get for hiring them”, why not fight for rights to equal education? It seems like a much better use of effort imo.
The Linux kernel is not a government. In my opinion this statement only holds weight when the same body of meritocracy is also the one in control of education. Were the US government a meritocracy it could be an injustice since those in power are better educated and they decide who gets that superior education.
It seems inappropriate to even bring up his daughter, as if implying she is at "fault" for Linus' recent change of heart. This strikes me as just another battlefield for the ever-unproductive "SJW/anti-SJW" drama people.
The debate of meritocracy might be more interesting if people weren't talking past each other, and could agree on some common language.
This is the first post on Tildes I'd downvote if I could.
I'm heavily debating removing it, because as far as I can tell it's just outrage about something that's completely unsubstantiated and meaningless.
I think people are discussing the manifesto and the issues around it here, not Linus' daughter. It'd be better if the manifesto itself was linked directly, though. Personally I don't care much about the linked stuff as long as it generates good discussion here.
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