Does meritocracy exist in your workplace?

[kxingstar]

While having a chat with a close colleague a while ago, we basically agreed how our current office is probably the most meritocratic one we've both worked in. 

It seems like anyone—no matter your education background, race, or nationality, is able to get promoted or raises as long as you do your job very well. I think it helps that it's a small company so the boss has good personal oversight on everyone's performance. Unfortunately, it's a small company (less than 15 people) so there aren't a lot of high positions or salaries to go around.

But even then, I feel like this is better than some of the much bigger companies I worked at before because working life seems more fair. At the same time, I should also mention that I'm a mom now and my combined salaries with my husband's feel enough for us to give our kids a decent upbringing. So I will understand if some readers prefer bigger companies with a higher wage ceiling.

At one of my ex-companies (300 people in Singapore office), there's a lot more talk from senior management about how good work will be rewarded but that didn't seem like the case. There were quite a number of high-performing colleagues who were somehow stuck in junior to middle positions. 

And there were a couple of people who didn't really seem like the best performers, to put it politely, but were promoted every year or so. Through the grapevine, I learned that they were really well connected. Like, born into rich and powerful families kind of well connected.

What about your experiences? I think it's important to share because like what the description of this forum says, we should make ourselves smarter employees.

[vince95]

While having a chat with a close colleague a while ago, we basically agreed how our current office is probably the most meritocratic one we've both worked in. 

It seems like anyone—no matter your education background, race, or nationality, is able to get promoted or raises as long as you do your job very well. I think it helps that it's a small company so the boss has good personal oversight on everyone's performance. Unfortunately, it's a small company (less than 15 people) so there aren't a lot of high positions or salaries to go around.

But even then, I feel like this is better than some of the much bigger companies I worked at before because working life seems more fair. At the same time, I should also mention that I'm a mom now and my combined salaries with my husband's feel enough for us to give our kids a decent upbringing. So I will understand if some readers prefer bigger companies with a higher wage ceiling.

At one of my ex-companies (300 people in Singapore office), there's a lot more talk from senior management about how good work will be rewarded but that didn't seem like the case. There were quite a number of high-performing colleagues who were somehow stuck in junior to middle positions. 

And there were a couple of people who didn't really seem like the best performers, to put it politely, but were promoted every year or so. Through the grapevine, I learned that they were really well connected. Like, born into rich and powerful families kind of well connected.

What about your experiences? I think it's important to share because like what the description of this forum says, we should make ourselves smarter employees.

i think your experience with the 300 headcount ex-company is pretty standard...there's some meritocracy but some are entitled to more meritocracy than others 

[arthur]

Nice idea for a thread because this is an interesting and important topic.

I have a slightly controversial take on this. That is, all promotion and raise decisions are perfectly meritocratic...from the management's perspective.

For example, let's take kxingstar's example of well-connected colleagues being promoted faster than others. That makes sense because the management sees merit in promoting a well-connected employee, i.e. they can curry favour and gain some kind of social capital from the rich and powerful connections that employee has. 

Of course, there's always a chance that they're essentially promoting someone who'll underperform in his/her new role or cause adverse effects that'll ripple throughout the rest of the company. But that's the price to pay for whatever benefits the management feels can be gained from their decision. So whether or not this cost/benefit analysis is a net positive or negative is another issue; more related to managerial decision-making than whether or not meritocracy exists.

But is it fair to the other employees? Probably not, especially if that well-connected employee was born into his/her connections. 

Perhaps some younger or more naive employees (I was one of them ) will feel most unfairly treated when they see something like this happening because maybe they thought or were taught that good work is all it takes to succeed in an organisational environment. Well, unfortunately meritocracy has never been about fairness even though it sounds fair. It's always good to remember that the "meritocracy" was invented or at least popularised by an English writer who used it as a satirical term.

Anyway, I'm probably stretching this thread too far for now. Will be interested to read about other people's experiences.

[berry_good]

I used to work for the gov. As anyone who has done so will tell you, indeed some individuals benefit from meritocracy more than others.

Most obvious variable is the kind of paper qualifications you hold, even if it doesn't always translate to performance. 

So I used to ask myself if the gov was truly rewarding merit or credentials.

I'm now in the private sector where this phenomenon still exists, of course, but my experience is that it's more prevalent in public sector.

[NewtonsAdamsApple]

While having a chat with a close colleague a while ago, we basically agreed how our current office is probably the most meritocratic one we've both worked in. 

It seems like anyone—no matter your education background, race, or nationality, is able to get promoted or raises as long as you do your job very well. I think it helps that it's a small company so the boss has good personal oversight on everyone's performance. Unfortunately, it's a small company (less than 15 people) so there aren't a lot of high positions or salaries to go around.

But even then, I feel like this is better than some of the much bigger companies I worked at before because working life seems more fair. At the same time, I should also mention that I'm a mom now and my combined salaries with my husband's feel enough for us to give our kids a decent upbringing. So I will understand if some readers prefer bigger companies with a higher wage ceiling.

At one of my ex-companies (300 people in Singapore office), there's a lot more talk from senior management about how good work will be rewarded but that didn't seem like the case. There were quite a number of high-performing colleagues who were somehow stuck in junior to middle positions. 

And there were a couple of people who didn't really seem like the best performers, to put it politely, but were promoted every year or so. Through the grapevine, I learned that they were really well connected. Like, born into rich and powerful families kind of well connected.

What about your experiences? I think it's important to share because like what the description of this forum says, we should make ourselves smarter employees.

i think your experience with the 300 headcount ex-company is pretty standard...there's some meritocracy but some are entitled to more meritocracy than others 

Yeah I think this sums up my opinions too. 

To be fair, it's still very difficult for someone from, say, a rich family to achieve career success but it's likely even more difficult for someone from a working class background to do so.

[ScornfulScone]

I think it's quite obvious after working for a few years that pure meritocracy doesn't really exist in the workplace.
But our bosses have to reinforce this myth for obvious reasons.
And we have to pretend to believe it so we're not marked as having a negative attitude towards work.

[canary1990]

i once worked at a large MNC (200-300 headcount in the local office) and there was a young european man who was working at a pretty low-level position. you could tell he was having a hard time because the office was mostly Singaporean or Asian and his first language wasn't English. 

more recently, I decided to see how he was doing and turns out he's now the MD of one of the major European offices of the MNC.

so I think what happened is that he was pretty much handpicked or at least shortlisted to be in senior management from the start but he was also made to go through a "trial of fire" by working in a very junior position in a foreign country. 

in a way, i guess there's no pure meritocracy but like what NewtonsAdamsApple wrote, it's still not easy for the "selected" people to achieve success.

[Icicle]

i once worked at a large MNC (200-300 headcount in the local office) and there was a young european man who was working at a pretty low-level position. you could tell he was having a hard time because the office was mostly Singaporean or Asian and his first language wasn't English. 

more recently, I decided to see how he was doing and turns out he's now the MD of one of the major European offices of the MNC.

so I think what happened is that he was pretty much handpicked or at least shortlisted to be in senior management from the start but he was also made to go through a "trial of fire" by working in a very junior position in a foreign country. 

in a way, i guess there's no pure meritocracy but like what NewtonsAdamsApple wrote, it's still not easy for the "selected" people to achieve success.

Well I guess it's good that upper management didn't promote the young guy immediately and instead made him work from the bottom-up...but he was still shortlisted for leadership. Seems like as long as he didn't mess up too badly, he'd reach the top immediately. It's a lot less certain for regular employees like the rest of us.

[DennisTheMenace]

i once worked at a large MNC (200-300 headcount in the local office) and there was a young european man who was working at a pretty low-level position. you could tell he was having a hard time because the office was mostly Singaporean or Asian and his first language wasn't English. 

more recently, I decided to see how he was doing and turns out he's now the MD of one of the major European offices of the MNC.

so I think what happened is that he was pretty much handpicked or at least shortlisted to be in senior management from the start but he was also made to go through a "trial of fire" by working in a very junior position in a foreign country. 

in a way, i guess there's no pure meritocracy but like what NewtonsAdamsApple wrote, it's still not easy for the "selected" people to achieve success.

That's an interesting story. It's probably also worth noting that they promoted him to MD when he was out of the Singapore branch so it's not so obvious that he was a chosen one.

[totoro08]

I used to work for the gov. As anyone who has done so will tell you, indeed some individuals benefit from meritocracy more than others.

Most obvious variable is the kind of paper qualifications you hold, even if it doesn't always translate to performance. 

So I used to ask myself if the gov was truly rewarding merit or credentials.

I'm now in the private sector where this phenomenon still exists, of course, but my experience is that it's more prevalent in public sector.

I've also spent time in both public and private sectors. In my experience, they're both similar in terms of how meritocratic things really are.