The tech industry lately seems to be mired in this either-or thinking about meritocracy. How about we admit it's a bit of both?
Being connected and having the same hobbies and coming from the same IIT as the hiring manager will help, not hurt you. Is anyone denying this? That's why all the career advice boards remind merit-focused new college grads that "it matters who you know, then it matters what you know".
On the other hand, there isn't a lot of room in organizations for people who don't get it done at all. Merit - or at least the appearance of merit - matters a great deal. Maybe in larger, more mature organizations and industries people can hide out and network with the right people to stay in their no-show jobs.
However, bootstrapped startups don't really have a lot of sinecures for random "VP, Business Development" slots to go around.
It is true that no system in the world has or could ever have a perfectly accurate merit assessment system... but has any one noticed that improvements in merit assignment and lower barriers to entry lead to less representation of women at the top, not more? In highly structured environments with statistical ranking systems, the portion of women at the top is miniscule. For example, women make up about about 55% of registered players in the American Scrabble Associations raking system, but on some occasions there are no women in the top 50 ranked (the most there has ever been was just a few) [1]. The only places where women are highly represented at the top are places with strong diversity programs. For example, Rwanda leads the world in terms of women's representation in parliament, but that is because a very large number of seats are reserved exclusive for female candidates, while the rest are open to anyone [2].
Interesting point. That Rwanda situation is interesting because it enforces a baseline of 30%. I am sure it's easier to get from 30% -> 50+% than it is from a much smaller number to 30%.
Chess, Go, Math Olympiads, and other such pursuits are other examples of situations where female representation is miniscule.
However, we can't assume this is anything biological because that would be sexist, so we need to assume that there is extreme misogyny at play, which increases as the level of competition gets higher and higher.
Philip Greenspun explores this in his article from a few years ago, in the arena of academic science:
Being connected and having the same hobbies and coming from the same IIT as the hiring manager will help, not hurt you. Is anyone denying this? That's why all the career advice boards remind merit-focused new college grads that "it matters who you know, then it matters what you know".
On the other hand, there isn't a lot of room in organizations for people who don't get it done at all. Merit - or at least the appearance of merit - matters a great deal. Maybe in larger, more mature organizations and industries people can hide out and network with the right people to stay in their no-show jobs.
However, bootstrapped startups don't really have a lot of sinecures for random "VP, Business Development" slots to go around.