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Why do you think it’s worse than in other industries though? I don’t think anyone was comparing tech to cybercrime when you claimed it was one of the least meritocratic places.
Is it less meritocratic than law firms? Newspapers? Hospitals? Academia?
My personal experience has genuinely been that the best people on people on my team tend to have the highest level (software engineer at Google). I would loathe to assume that my experience generalizes across the company (let alone the whole industry), but the mere fact that tech has interviews that are at least sensible proxies for ability automatically puts it way ahead of the curve compared to most industries.
I think you may have misread my previous comment... The original statement was simply about tech, so that's the context I was replying to.
My point about cybercrime is that if somebody wants to segment and break down tech into it's various sectors, I think you'll be hard pressed find a subsection of it that's more meritocratic than the criminal element. Ransomware gangs don't care one bit about arbitrary qualifications or making you jump through hoops. If the axis of a meritocracy are that people are rewarded in proportion to their value, then that's certainly true. Cyber criminals earn their just desserts. All they care about is your talent, performance and reputation as a black hat. If you can deliver, you go to the front of the line. All other considerations are secondary.
When you deviate away from tech and look at the catalog of other industries, you could argue that in other industries a meritocracy is less the exception and more the rule. I could be wrong, but all I can draw from are my own experiences and observations. Perhaps someone else can offer up a different view.
I think interviews are a lousy barometer for evaluating merit, personally. And that's a rule I apply across the board. I don't think they're entirely useless per se, but I'm guarded about over relying on their utility.
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