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Comment by egjerlow | Hacker News Reader

In a merit-based system, though, that reputation actually does translate into a "resource" that you can leverage at some point, so even though it's money-less work, it does pay off.

And, of course, if you're having fun and noone is forcing you to do it, I'm not sure it can be classified as 'work' anyway (depends on whose viewpoint you're taking, of course).

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Stack Exchange itself appears unable to monetize the reps of users, and while there are exceptions, I would argue that on average user's contributions if are done for financial gain are not beneficial; clearly, learning, sharing, etc. are important regardless, though long-term Stack Exchanges future is concerning to me given what little I know of its financials.

But is a system truly merit based if having enough time to do work for free is a necessary component of demonstrating merit?

It's still merit based, though it might not yield the world's best candidates, since they might not have the time. And that's going to be a problem, of course, but other things you might do to demonstrate merit except for actual paid work (open source projects etc) also take time. The exception being technical interviews, which for various reasons are undesirable or at least seen as suboptimal by many.

I suppose a system like stockfighter can try to take into account the fact that not everyone has time to optimize their solution, but also, at the end of the day, how you prioritize your time I suppose is a factor in the whole merit-equation - the more driven you are the more 'passion' you are seen as having.

Stack overflow is different in this respect, though, I will admit that - although some answers are really high quality it is probably the people spending the most time there that end up with most reputation. And I guess that's fine as well, if some recruiters want to use SO points as a basis for recruitment they know (or should know) what kind of people this process singles out.

I hope to see many projects like stockfighter in the future, each focusing on their own aspects of work in software so that employers can look for their candidates in the appropriate 'pool'.

"How you prioritize your time" reflect passion if all else is equal, but someone raising a family or commuting two hours each way is just plain not going to have as much time to spend playing a programming game as someone with no responsibilities other than themselves and a 15-minute walk to work -- no matter how "passionate" the former person is. And yet the former person may make a far better employee.

I just really think that measures like this severely distort the employment market and are a terrible measure of actual merit. Which becomes even worse when people talk about those with "merit" being more "deserving" of whatever we consider to be "success".

Intrinsic valuations do not require giving away work for free, though in practice it's uncommon to have access to information required to do this.

For example, say a developer worked on an open source project and was paid market rate for their work. At the very least, the code they've contributed is public.

Isn't that question like asking if a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it?

Unless you have a magical telepathic helmet that can access merit

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