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Comment by glesica | Hacker News Reader

  > A meritocracy based on raw intelligence and skill (measured by standardized testing) is not exactly what people mean today when they discuss "promoting diversity".

Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. [1] Aside from that, what exactly is a "meritocracy"? What does that mean? You have to define it pretty carefully. HN is full of posts about making social connections to get what you want, so is it a sign of merit if someone has lots of social connections and can therefore get jobs/funding? I mean, is it common for startups to actually administer intelligence/IQ tests to their prospective hires before interviewing them? Be careful when making claims about "merit" because it can be defined in many different ways, and most of them are pretty unappealing once they are spelled out.

[1] https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=standardized%20t...

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Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities.

IQ tests - which are pretty well normed across cultures if you use the right ones - tend to turn up the same patterns over and over.

IQ tests (or their proxies) are useful ways of testing general cognitive fitness and ability and anticipating on-the-job performance and learning (see, e.g., http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatter... )

Some minorities seem to score higher than the mean (in some cases, up to one standard deviation higher) and some minorities tend to score lower. This is less about bias and more about measured genetic differences. (see, e.g., http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx )

And further, it seems as though women are no slouches in the IQ game: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173808/Women-overta...

So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy? You actually made my overall point stronger, because you demonstrated that this community clearly doesn't define "merit" to be "raw intelligence". It is a much, much more nuanced concept and it includes, I suspect, a large number of characteristics that are heavily influenced by gender, culture, and class. When we say "merit" we do not simply mean "how smart are you?", if we did, then according to your evidence, more companies would use IQ tests for screening potential employees.

> So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy?

In the US, doing that is a decent way to get sued.

'tokenadult has a standard comment (he's made it many times with various revisions/updates) on this topic that you should read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6584957

Unless I plan to teach someone how to code, I also need to know if a person can code. In the era lkrubner was describing (the IBM/mainframe era), no one could code due to the small number of people with a mainframe in their basement.

Nowadays we hire people who already know how to code - I don't have time to teach someone to code. That's why I'm a big fan of github-as-resume. I want you to write code to make my company money so show me your code. But since women choose not to write open source, this form of work-sample test is criticized as discriminatory as well.

Also note that certain large meritocratic institutions (trading desks, some tech firms) do hire more or less on IQ. They can't actually give an IQ test themselves due to Griggs vs Duke Power so they outsource it to elite colleges instead. That's basically what is happening when they say "must come from a top school".

In companies I worked for in the past, I definitely had to do IQ-ish tests such as puzzles and brain teasers. Many people in the tech industry have encountered this.

The cultural mythology of Google (and earlier, Microsoft, when they were the ascendant, 800-lb gorilla) was about their puzzle based interviews, and how they didn't care about your specific skill set but only raw intelligence. (We can debate about whether that was the best way to select and hire people, but I don't think there's much dispute that this was something these companies did.)

It's probably worth noting that the companies that used the brain teasers and IQ-proxy tests also did a "cultural fit interview" - basically, trying to answer honestly the question "would I be cool with spending 8 hours a day working with this person, or would I be seeking ways to kill myself?"

The problem is that those tests probably DO have cultural or gender biases. GP was pretty specific about the fact that only SOME intelligence tests have been shown to be effective and free of cultural and gender bias. So then we're back to my original comment.

I agree that an a in-house puzzle, brainteaser, and math test would probably be shown have some biases if it were analyzed according to the same processes that are used to analyze IQ tests and other psychometric tests.

So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy?

That specifically is illegal in the United States.

Corporations are forced to use proxies instead, such as SAT or ACT scores, or things keyed to that, like college admissions.

The few links provided by your google search do not back up your claim of bias - they repeat the same vague assertion as you but provide no evidence. If you have evidence of this claim please be more specific about presenting it.

I also didn't claim any startups use IQ tests.

The point I was making is that what lkrubner described as "very liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place" (namely, assessing ability via objective, quantitative means rather than subjective interviews) is now criticized by folks like yourself as anti-diversity. The legal precedent set by Griggs vs Duke Power and related legal cases makes it legally problematic.

Merit, BTW, is defined as "whatever will make my company the most money". In some roles it does involve social connections.

If "objective" and "merit" are defined as "upper-middle class white men" then don't talk about IQ tests, just say what you mean.

My point is that you can couch what goes on in whatever language you like, but if you don't care about social justice, then just say so and stop pretending that what you are doing is actually the "real" social justice or is somehow "natural" (for some weird, pseudo-genetic definition of "natural").

This is the same complaint I have about a lot of "capitalists". They like to talk about how the market will yield these socially optimal outcomes, but to listen to them tell the story, the market ALWAYS yields whatever is PC at the time. The truth is that the market is devoid of morality or values, and maybe that's fine, but don't lie about it. If the system you support has property X, but not property Y, don't pretend it has property Y just because property Y is easier to advocate for, be proud and stand up for your belief in property X!

Hiring is biased toward white men for a variety of reasons. If you are OK with that, then fine, say so. You didn't cause the historical problems women and minorities have had, so there's a reasonable argument to be made that you shouldn't have to pay for them. I, personally, would rather make less money but help equalize historical inequities, but that's just me. I also buy single-fly toilet paper because I think it is less wasteful, but I don't go around yelling at people who buy two-ply, that's their business. But don't pretend that by some weird contortion of logic and the rules of the universe hiring white men is "right". It's just more profitable because of the historical oppression of people who weren't white men. So say so. End of story.

"Objective" means "different people applying the procedure will get the same answer". This is a property held by standardized tests and carefully defined interview processes. "Merit" is defined as "what will make me the most money".

I don't know why you believe I'm pretending to do "social justice". I'm not. I'm trying to make money, just like IBM in the mainframe era. Hiring based on coding ability is profitable because a software business is about turning code into money, it has nothing to do with "historical oppression".

Incidentally, I'm opposed to "social justice". Social justice is based on the premise that certain subsets of humanity [1] deserve special rights (mostly statistical equality), but the other 2^{6 billion} subsets of humanity do not.

If that's a moral axiom I don't share it. If it's derived from some other moral principle, I have not heard a coherent derivation [2].

(To fully grasp the philosophical issue I have, explain why you care about "women and minorities", but not "children of murder victims and people who's SSN ends with 3847".)

[1] Typically women, lgbt, blacks, hispanics, but not asians.

[2] The closest I've ever heard is basically "everybody cares about race/gender/lgbt so we do too".

>Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities

I can't tell whether or not you are being sarcastic.

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