If you think the old system was based on merit, you haven't been paying attention. Successful products that will work for diverse people need diverse engineers

If you think the old system was based on merit, you haven't been paying attention. Successful products that will work for diverse people need diverse engineers to build them. Hiring only "the best" leads to hiring mostly only people from the largest majority group, because that's how statistics work. And that leads to ridiculous product fails like facial recognition that doesn't recognize non-white faces.