&gt; The philosophic burden of proof is on you as you&#x27;re making a statement counter to user &quot;audessuscest&quot;&#x27;s claim that meritocracy is important and the ideal is to make solely skill-based hires.<p>Let&#x27;s just... ignore the larger societal angle of harassment, denigration, fear and uncertainty that plagues women and some minorities in STEM fields or finance, okay? Let&#x27;s say, &quot;It exists but let&#x27;s not discuss it here.&quot;<p>I really don&#x27;t wanna do this conversation AGAIN but the contention is that right now &quot;whiteness&quot; and &quot;maleness&quot; are implicitly part of the meritocratic process as positive traits. That happens in 2 ways:<p>1. Young, single, white (and Asian!) men are targeted by recruiters because of a perception of a &quot;work ethic&quot;. This ethic is &quot;I expect people to prop up my life so I can work 80+ hours a week, which is not sustainable if you have ANY responsibilities at all outside of basic sustenance&quot;. Historically, they has been a safe bet.<p>2. Subsequent &quot;pattern matching&quot; be it implicit or explicit, kind or cruel, expects that kind of commitment and education and ethos. That this wasn&#x27;t ever reasonable is lost because people are just trying to recognize someone who can likely work in the same way they&#x27;re expecting or have worked.<p>You can argue that people should work that hard and that it&#x27;s fair, if you want. But what actually happens is that people find that there is a specific profile of people most likely to be willing and able to commit to that kind of lifestyle and then they optimize for selecting that. Therefore, Meritocracy is not a hedge against racism or sexism. Indeed, Meritocracy may be selecting &quot;merit&quot; based on attributes which explicitly reinforce sexism or racism.<p>So when you say, &quot;skill-based hires&quot; I can&#x27;t help but hear, &quot;people like me&quot; every time. Because if anyone actually gave a shit about skill based hires they&#x27;d be blinding their recruiting efforts, doing pre-filter tests and desperately trying to remove every drop of bias from the industry to identify them.