I totally agree. But take two programmers. 1 is good and has been there for 5 years. The other is GREAT and has been there for 6 months (and is 20 years old w/out a college degree). The second programmer gets a fat raise, placing him above the first in terms of pay. The first doesn't necessarily agre that the younger fella is clearly better: "Yeah, he cranks out code and he kisses the right asses. But a lot of it needs to be rewritten and he gets 'creative' with the spec," or somesuch. "Performance" is subjective. In the above scenario, you might have 5 disgruntled good programmers when you give you young star a fat raise.
I'm all for a meritocracy, but it's tricky with anything that's hard to measure (exception: sales).
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I totally agree. But take two programmers. 1 is good and has been there for 5 years. The other is GREAT and has been there for 6 months (and is 20 years old w/out a college degree). The second programmer gets a fat raise, placing him above the first in terms of pay. The first doesn't necessarily agre that the younger fella is clearly better: "Yeah, he cranks out code and he kisses the right asses. But a lot of it needs to be rewritten and he gets 'creative' with the spec," or somesuch. "Performance" is subjective. In the above scenario, you might have 5 disgruntled good programmers when you give you young star a fat raise.
I'm all for a meritocracy, but it's tricky with anything that's hard to measure (exception: sales).