[throwaway999888]

> When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability.

Ahh, but natural ability is just as much of a privilege as having a fortunate upbringing! Both are essentially unchosen, born-with things; you can't choose your inborn talents, and you can't choose your parent's resources.

Really, what you're scoffing at is learned skill and saying that born-with skill is better, for whatever reason.

But meritocracy[1] just means "only results matter". It doesn't matter if you worked your ass off for 30 years in acquiring skills that bring results, against all odds (whether genetic or externally imposed). Or if you were just born with it and hardly had to put in any effort.

[1] Whether that is a reality or not; doesn't matter for the sake of the argument.

[nickbauman]

Not really. Learned skill and natural ability are not mutually exclusive. Being a great developer still means you have to learn a lot of things. Consider someone with a mere 1% better "natural" ability to write code but never had the chance to develop it into a viable "learned" ability versus someone who was merely "average" but had the wealth to develop the skill, the latter will get the job in a "meritocracy". So you're selecting for wealth mostly.