MERITOCRACY

 The Free Press

17 June 2024

→ Meritocracy now! DEI is on the way out, and not a day too soon. But what should replace it? When it comes to recruitment, the short answer is surely: hire the best person for the job. One person sticking to this once uncontroversial, now edgy proposition is Alexandr Wang, the 27-year-old who became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire after he dropped out of MIT to co-found AI firm Scale in 2016. In a memo announcing the company’s new hiring policy, Wang writes “Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one.” The guiding principle, he notes, is “MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.” He continues:  

That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart.

We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual. 

We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character—and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic.

There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.

Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do.