> Once 50% of software engineers are women, and once women have exactly the same interests and values and beliefs as men,
I'm struggling to interpret that sentence in a charitable manner. Could you clarify what you meant? Are you saying that, when it comes to development, male values/interests (whatever that could possibly mean anyway) are the only ones worth having and that women need to conform to them?
No. He's just making fun of the idea that men and women should be identical and should be 50/50 on everything.
In actuality women and men do different things and have different interests. It's kind of crazy to pass up a better person just to get more women/men hired or to do something.
If you have to hire 10 people for a coding position and you have 100 applicants (10 male and 90 female) but the 10 male applicants are better (more qualified and better for the job) than the 90 female applicants then you should hire the 10 male applicant. There is no reason you should try to force it to 5 males and 5 females or even 9 females and 1 male. Just hire whoever is best regardless of gender.
Unfortunately, this kind of attitude (with which I wholly agree) is being criticized more and more.
Through contempt for the concept of meritocracy (even as an asymptotic ideal), and growth in identity politics, more and more people seem to view diversity and social engineering goals as more important than getting the best team in place for the job.
Maybe that's fine for a sclerotic bureaucracy, but for a startup in which everyone's effort counts, a single marginal hire is like a cancer - you simply can't afford it. Hiring needs to be focused on getting the best people for the job - diversity will arise as a consequence.
It's worth considering bias though. Do the people in charge of hiring fairly assess the skills of an applicant? I suspect that orchestras in the 1970's would have claimed to be meritocratic in their audition practices, but the success rate of female auditionees quintupled with the introduction of blind auditions. [1]
In the case where you've hired 10 males out of a pool of 90 females and 10 males, it's not unreasonable to suspect that maybe something is wrong with your hiring practices, is it? It definitely could be that everything truly was based on merit, however there could be biases in the hiring process of which you're not aware. Could this be what most of the people that you see as having "contempt for the concept of meritocracy" are actually thinking?
That said, there are good and bad ways of dealing with these sorts of issues. I generally dislike affirmative action like solutions, much for the same reason that Justice Clarence Thomas dislikes affirmative action. Solutions like blind auditions, that attempt to remove the biases, rather than negate them, are far better.
The example was a pretty extreme one (deliberately, I suspect). In that case, where group "A" outnumbered group "B" substantially in the candidate pool, and yet ALL the people hired were from group "B", it would be perfectly reasonable to suspect bias or various other factors than pure merit, unless a perfectly objective and fair process were used. Obviously few real world examples are that clear cut.
If the "anti-meritocracy" people simply want people and organizations to be less arrogant about believing they have a perfect selection process, I think that's a good thing. The biggest issue I have with the "anti-meritocracy" teams is this: the language that many people use seems calibrated to shame people for even using the word, or thinking of meritocracy as a ideal or target to aim for.
Anyone who's ever had to hire people for a startup is unlikely to feel terribly arrogant about their process, though - in my experience, people try to make it as systematic as possible and then improvise within that. Certainly, any adjustment to process that makes it less susceptible to prejudice or bigotry is a good step.
Obviously, "merit" is a function of a person's innate ability, education, effectiveness and fit in a particular role, and a million other factors. It's not an exact science. But it's a good thing for an organization to decide, at minimum, what does "merit" look like for this particular role or hire? (And, more broadly, what traits of "merit" are shared across the whole organization?)
The dictionary definition seems benign enough: "A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement". I'm sure people would agree this is better this than racism, sexism, or straight up politics.
I'm struggling to interpret that sentence in a charitable manner. Could you clarify what you meant? Are you saying that, when it comes to development, male values/interests (whatever that could possibly mean anyway) are the only ones worth having and that women need to conform to them?