People get upset because companies boast about being a meritocracy and then take the (pragmatic?) road of hiring people they already know, and promoting those people they enjoy hanging out with.
The game being somewhat rigged would be a lot easier to accept if you haven’t been told all your life that if you work hard and be a good person everything will automatically fall into place.
The logic of being upset that somebody who got worse grades in school now has a better career and how unfair that feels is the same logic as being mad that somebody with a criminal record who has no house or car can get dates easily but the “nice boy who played by the rules” cannot.
Exactly.
There are 'kind' and 'un-kind' readings of this situation.
For many years I swallowed the story that companies are a 'meritocracy', and got very upset when they were not (nepotism, hiring people that under-perform).
But then realized, maybe sometimes it is 'pragmatic'. It is more like 'moneyball', they are not hiring the 'best', but maybe they are hiring the 'known quantity'.
Sure, there is some cases where you can be mad at nepotism. But I tend to think people are generally good and trying to do the right thing. Sometimes the story goes "I don't know much about programming, but I'm going to hire my nephew because he seems smart", is innocent.
The game being somewhat rigged would be a lot easier to accept if you haven’t been told all your life that if you work hard and be a good person everything will automatically fall into place.
The logic of being upset that somebody who got worse grades in school now has a better career and how unfair that feels is the same logic as being mad that somebody with a criminal record who has no house or car can get dates easily but the “nice boy who played by the rules” cannot.