Your story is the "meritocracy myth" in action. You demonstrating your merit to people who then vouched for you. It'd be nice if we were good at judging people

Your story is the "meritocracy myth" in action. You demonstrating your merit to people who then vouched for you. It'd be nice if we were good at judging people objectively without knowing them for very long, but we're not, especially in very important aspects like trustworthiness.