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Abstract

to see tech as anything but a meritocracy because the system rewarded them, and so that must have been on merit, right? You will find that <a href="http://money.cnn.com/video/magazines/fortune/2014/03/03/gm-ceo-mary-barra-career.cnnmoney/">female CEOs</a> hold exactly the same beliefs, though we’d never be so crass as to call them sexist for it.It’s one reason why tech has such a hard time confronting its diversity problem, because the lack of women and minorities in an industry that ostensibly rewards good work independent of race or gender, lends itself to two unspeakable explanations.One theory, usually associated with Lawrence Summers, is that women and minorities are simply less talented. (In fact, Lawrence Summers’ perspective was considerably more nuanced — he was pilloried for it anyway.) This belief is considerably more pervasive than the public shaming of Summers might lead you to expect. To be quite honest, I harbored this belief throughout college and for several years thereafter. If you, too, secretly wonder if women are just less talented at math and science, and don’t want to be shamed by the political correctness police for saying so out loud, this post won’t help you. Try <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-numbers-of-women-in-cs-hint-it-doesnt">this one</a>.Lack of scientific support aside, many otherwise perfectly reasonable people cling to this fantasy of sex difference because the alternative is too awful to contemplate: that tech is truly not a meritocracy.So what a relief to focus on an alternative explanation: the pipeline! Women and minorities are under-represented because upstream of the actual tech reward system, they are discouraged by society, by media, by the education system. It happens to be true, and a real problem that requires solving.It also lets us sail, narrowly, between the Scylla of overt bigotry and the Charybdis of confronting the falsehood at the core of the tech industry’s identity. But we have to confront that falsehood, because fixing the pipeline is necessary but not sufficient. We must not just recruit women and minorities into our industry, they must be treated fairly once they are here.Meritocracy is a myth. And our belief in it is holding back the tech industry from getting better.The intent to be meritocratic is not a myth, but we know what road is paved with good inte

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ntions. In practice, merit and impact in software engineering are impossible to measure objectively. And so we fall back on subjective evaluation of merit. And when we are measuring subjectively, we are prone to cognitive error stemming from stereotypes and other unconscious beliefs. We have <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/">unimpeachable research</a> that when you ask any of us, male or female, to evaluate the work of women mathematicians, engineers, and scientists, we evaluate identical work to be less meritorious than a man’s.Even if every manager was almost perfect, and recognized and rewarded women’s impact (same job, same work) 99% as much as a man’s, that 1% compounds and compounds over the course of a woman’s career. She is second best instead of best in the team, gets a little smaller project than her peer the next time, learns a little less from it, and that smaller scope of responsibility leads to later chances to lead a project (or no chance at all in a slow growth company), which adds up to slower learning and development as an engineer, and slower progress up the career ladder. It’s not just less pay for the same work, the real injury is that over time, the woman or under-represented ethnic minority gets less career development and less actual attainment when she started with the same innate potential as her peer and put in the same hard work.When the data disagrees with our heartfelt beliefs about ourself and our own lived experiences, we may profess understanding of the data, but internally still believe that we — our own judgment, our own company, our own industry — are not described by the data. This is all that Satya Nadella is guilty of.Well, it’s time to apply our heartfelt belief that as engineers we are rational, and rationally accept what the data is telling us: it isn’t a meritocracy. We are all biased, and that means that the laws of physics that are supposed to operate can’t be trusted, and our own observations in support of those laws of physics can’t be trusted.Engineers love to be skeptics — it’s time to bring our skepticism to the concept of meritocracy. If we can be skeptical enough about our own ability to detect merit, and balance it with more objective measurement or outright mitigatory adjustments — we’ll come closer to resembling an actual meritocracy.</article></body>

Tech’s Meritocracy Problem

Yesterday, speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made the humiliating gaffe of advising women not to negotiate their salary, suggesting instead that they put their trust in the system to make it right in the end. (Full video here, the question occurs at 1:33:53.)

This was followed by prompt back-pedaling on twitter, and before the end of the day, a letter fully retracting his remarks and declaring the value of the learning experience.

On Facebook, Twitter, and in my email, I saw a bunch of hand-wringing along the lines of “How awful! How sexist! Who would possibly tell women not to negotiate their salaries in this day and age!”

But gentlemen (and ladies) of the tech industry, I’m here to tell you that you live in a glass house, and you’d better look hard at your own beliefs before you get ready to throw stones.

Unquestionably it was foolish for a CEO to stray from his script and speak from the heart, and a more polished CEO wouldn’t have made that mistake. But I like Satya the better for it, and I think it reflects his comfort with an interviewer he trusted and an audience that had been warmly receptive to him for the previous 90 minutes.

And what he said, unreflectingly, not thinking about the wage gap or other data he’s been shown, or his official talking points, was what he really believed: that tech is a meritocracy, that in the long term, merit and hard work are rewarded by the system.

The irony is that for all my friends and colleagues who are rushing to judge Satya Nadella, a large majority of them probably also believe, in their hearts, that tech is a meritocracy.

And, you know, it’s hard to blame them for thinking that. Unlike many other industries, tech certainly intends to be a meritocracy. We are supposed to reward merit and impact, not politics or who-you-know. I’m not saying nepotism doesn’t happen, but it is against the rules in a way it might not be in other industries.

It’s particularly hard for powerful people like CEOs to see tech as anything but a meritocracy because the system rewarded them, and so that must have been on merit, right? You will find that female CEOs hold exactly the same beliefs, though we’d never be so crass as to call them sexist for it.

It’s one reason why tech has such a hard time confronting its diversity problem, because the lack of women and minorities in an industry that ostensibly rewards good work independent of race or gender, lends itself to two unspeakable explanations.

One theory, usually associated with Lawrence Summers, is that women and minorities are simply less talented. (In fact, Lawrence Summers’ perspective was considerably more nuanced — he was pilloried for it anyway.) This belief is considerably more pervasive than the public shaming of Summers might lead you to expect. To be quite honest, I harbored this belief throughout college and for several years thereafter. If you, too, secretly wonder if women are just less talented at math and science, and don’t want to be shamed by the political correctness police for saying so out loud, this post won’t help you. Try this one.

Lack of scientific support aside, many otherwise perfectly reasonable people cling to this fantasy of sex difference because the alternative is too awful to contemplate: that tech is truly not a meritocracy.

So what a relief to focus on an alternative explanation: the pipeline! Women and minorities are under-represented because upstream of the actual tech reward system, they are discouraged by society, by media, by the education system. It happens to be true, and a real problem that requires solving.

It also lets us sail, narrowly, between the Scylla of overt bigotry and the Charybdis of confronting the falsehood at the core of the tech industry’s identity. But we have to confront that falsehood, because fixing the pipeline is necessary but not sufficient. We must not just recruit women and minorities into our industry, they must be treated fairly once they are here.

Meritocracy is a myth. And our belief in it is holding back the tech industry from getting better.

The intent to be meritocratic is not a myth, but we know what road is paved with good intentions. In practice, merit and impact in software engineering are impossible to measure objectively. And so we fall back on subjective evaluation of merit. And when we are measuring subjectively, we are prone to cognitive error stemming from stereotypes and other unconscious beliefs. We have unimpeachable research that when you ask any of us, male or female, to evaluate the work of women mathematicians, engineers, and scientists, we evaluate identical work to be less meritorious than a man’s.

Even if every manager was almost perfect, and recognized and rewarded women’s impact (same job, same work) 99% as much as a man’s, that 1% compounds and compounds over the course of a woman’s career. She is second best instead of best in the team, gets a little smaller project than her peer the next time, learns a little less from it, and that smaller scope of responsibility leads to later chances to lead a project (or no chance at all in a slow growth company), which adds up to slower learning and development as an engineer, and slower progress up the career ladder. It’s not just less pay for the same work, the real injury is that over time, the woman or under-represented ethnic minority gets less career development and less actual attainment when she started with the same innate potential as her peer and put in the same hard work.

When the data disagrees with our heartfelt beliefs about ourself and our own lived experiences, we may profess understanding of the data, but internally still believe that we — our own judgment, our own company, our own industry — are not described by the data. This is all that Satya Nadella is guilty of.

Well, it’s time to apply our heartfelt belief that as engineers we are rational, and rationally accept what the data is telling us: it isn’t a meritocracy. We are all biased, and that means that the laws of physics that are supposed to operate can’t be trusted, and our own observations in support of those laws of physics can’t be trusted.

Engineers love to be skeptics — it’s time to bring our skepticism to the concept of meritocracy. If we can be skeptical enough about our own ability to detect merit, and balance it with more objective measurement or outright mitigatory adjustments — we’ll come closer to resembling an actual meritocracy.