I think the OP was making the point that it isn't meritocratic, at least that is how it read to me: they thought people where not meaningfully different in skill level (the people at the exclusive company being comparable to everywhere else) and that where you worked was the new way to find the 'in' people, rather than what university you graduated from (saying they had job offers based purely on getting the job at the exclusive company).

You could argue that getting a job at X or Y company by itself conveys some level of skill - but if we are honest, that is just version of saying you went to Harvard.

There's lots of cliques everywhere in life, and various ways to show status, SV is definitely not immune to that.

meritocratic means "judgement on merit (aka skill)"

and the story told is "no judgement on skill, only on being in-group. It's just the in-group is caused by previous employment and not birth-right/nationality/etc"