If the system were fully meritocratic, you'd expect a lot more females in the industry, for one. Unless you suppose that females of all races are objectively le

If the system were fully meritocratic, you'd expect a lot more females in the industry, for one. Unless you suppose that females of all races are objectively less capable in some way. But then you'd have to explain why there are so many females being successful in other hard sciences like biology. The fact is that many people aren't given early access and encouragement to technology, and the ones that do experience constant pressure and put-downs. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not. I've done hundreds of interviews and dozens of interview trainings, and have personally observed lots of silly behavior, from treating women more harshly than men, to dismissing a candidate because their family name implied a background of poverty. A "safe" example to think about: it's very common to rubbish people who went to this university or that one instead of yours, which is obviously the best. You can write that off as good-natured play, but consider that I've had to build a career in tech without a degree. It's only by the slimmest chain of coincidences that I was able to even get the opportunity to be seen and evaluated. The "meritocratic" system simply doesn't believe that anyone without the nous to afford college is worth even noticing. The hiring manager at the end of that food chain is often unaware of all that. He (and it's usually a "he") passes over resumes and chuckles at their university choices, then picks "the good ones" to jump through hoops and from there picks "the best". To him, that's meritocracy.