The idea of a “meritocracy” ignores that many other factors influence who gets what inside a corporation. For example, tall men and pretty women have an inside track that’s purely genetic and has nothing whatsoever to do with their actual contributions.
Similarly, many employees enter a company with pre-existing connections, both through colleagues and family members. A son with minimal talent takes over his father’s job. An executive comes in at the top and pulls a bunch of his cronies in with him. Somebody has an affair with the CFO and then becomes the chief auditor. (This actually happened to somebody I know). Deals are cut between drinking buddies. Talent has little or nothing to do with it.
Beyond that, the corporate world is full of toadies and lickspittles whose sole ability to survive and thrive is based upon an unerring sense of who in the corporate structure needs periodic sphincter osculations.
Even if those factors were absent from the corporate milieu (which they’re decidedly not), the Peter Principle still remains valid. As anyone who looks at any business carefully can tell you, people are FREQUENTLY promoted to their level of incompetence, where they remain for years.
The reason that this belief is so toxic? People who are lucky, connected, or oily use the “meritocracy” belief to justify the fact that they’ve gotten ahead. It makes them feel that they “deserve” their success, and therefore owe nothing to anybody else.
Back in the day when belonging to an aristocracy meant automatic advantages, they had a concept called noblesse oblige. Aristocrats knew that they didn’t really deserve their privileges, so they felt obligated to treat the hoi polloi with a modicum of kindness and restraint.
Not so the meritocrats. Once they get ahead, they rapidly become insufferable snobs who complain about government regulation and quote Ayn Rand.
How vomitable.
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