I think meritocracy is the wrong phrasing for all of that though. Basically it boils down to there being slightly different standards around formal education th

I think meritocracy is the wrong phrasing for all of that though. Basically it boils down to there being slightly different standards around formal education than might be expected in some other career paths. I also think a lot of that is a perceived difference in standards and I've not seen any actual evidence that software engineering as a career field is genuinely more accessible to people without formal qualifications. Even though I believe that to be the case as well. There of course are still standards and lots of disagreement on whether they are merit based (e.g. whiteboarding interviews) and evidence that women and other minorities are systematically excluded in the whole, which is clearly not merit based. Further whilst I think many of us could define what merit means for any particular job or find consensus in a group making that decision. I still expect there would be large differences between definitions and methods of selection.