the economy and could no longer afford to be picky about gender. Highly competitive and dynamic industries like tech might be other examples. &gt; Merit is a hard standard to reach. It's not easy to assess, people naturally try to subvert it for their own gain There's a double whammy here. Not only do people of low merit pretend to be of high merit, but people of high merit are often self questioning and self-deprecating. One of the ways to become of high merit is to focus on "what went wrong?" and "what can I learn from this?" even when things go well. Another is to share credit and glory for the benefit of the team - "we succeed" rather than "I succeeded". Both of these improve the performance of whoever practices them, in the long run, but make it harder for others to assess their merit in the short term. Oh, thought of a good counter-example. Back in the 90s, PayPal was an organisation staffed by very smart, dynamic people. For example, one young intern accidentally hit "reply all" when sending a scathing criticism of the top management's new strategy. Instead of getting in trouble, he actually got a pat on the back from the top execs when they realised he was right. No doubt when that intern was given a job offer, it was for a position with increased responsibility and compensation. Then PayPal got bought by eBay, who integrated them into their existing, more traditional, more beuracratic,