[Iftheshoefits]

I've not seen any evidence that this industry is more or less meritocratic (in the positive sense meant here, that is, based on ability to perform programming tasks) than any other--including academia (whence I come, but from a science background, not CS/math).

On the other hand I've seen plenty of evidence that in certain geographic regions there is a particularly heavy (and, in my opinion, amusingly misplaced) emphasis on categorical errors, equivocation, and conflation of purely academic CS knowledge with practical ability (as you yourself allude to). These are all the CS-world equivalent of the supposedly very un-meritocratic things many who've never been outside of CS (professionally) assume occur in, oh, "banking, consulting, and [the] business world" as a matter of daily routine.

[duaneb]

The difference with academia is that what qualifies as 'meritorious' is far less pragmatic. Many people get PhDs based on work that will never see engineering use. In this sense, they're very qualified at producing interesting, useless observations. The tech industry is less inclined towards this.

However, we are more inclined towards hype investing, leading to useless companies (snapchat) getting insane valuations, and people utterly without merit becoming rich overnight.