>Keep this story in mind when someone tells you that tech is a meritocracy.<p>I will. But there is nothing new here if you're paying attention. There is also fair competition, an open market and equal opportunities for all. That sentence strikes me as false when your competitors can literally bleed millions for years all the while killing any form of competition. Examples abound, from WeWork to Tesla and all these Uber-like startups [1].<p>What is a poor, hard-working, honest guy to do in this extremely out of balance scenarios if he's not on the "have-tons-of-money-to-burn-through" side of the equation?!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cusp-next-dot-com-bubble/600232/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/are-we-cus...</a>
How about sticking to merits? A startup needs speed? Sure,but that does not mean unjust discrimination is the way but it also does not mean hiring should be driven by diversity. And screw the whole "culture fit" b.s.,this is why EEOC is needed badly,you offer services to the public so your "culture" is the public culture,you don't get to define a "culture" and gatekeep who works there or who you provide services to based on that criteria. Use merits for hiring and be fair to employees and customers alike. A public business and a private club are two different types of organizations.
I'm the founder of a startup, and I hire people I trust and people I have worked with in the past. It just so happens that most of these people have made it to the CS/ECE/Math departments at my university (otherwise I wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with them). If I measure merit by how qualified I think they are, then I'm more inclined to hire people I already know, and this is just knock on effects of gender/race composition by major[1] and university enrollment in general. Any hiring/enrolling system that puts diversity above merit has to bare the opportunity cost of not having more qualified people, and for most companies/organizations this isn't a reasonable compromise.<p>[1]: <a href="http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-UIUC/" rel="nofollow">http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-UIU...</a>