IMO Computer engineering is the only field I know where you'd thrive absolutely just based on your merit. If you've got skills and can show them, people would hire you period.

That’s true for any specialized profession, not just CS. 🙂

You are forgetting about the most important part. Showcasing your skill. Unless your work is known, your skills exist only on your resume.

you'd thrive absolutely just based on your merit

Oh the optimism of youngsters. I wish I shared this. Sadly, this is not true of any profession in the world. Merit is a farce. Don't @ me, I don't have the energy to explain why.

I sort of agree with Swanand here as well, if you have right skills, you’d get much far without any real talent or merits too. If one has stayed in corporate world long enough, they’d definitely have experienced it. 😂

Yeah, privilege and awareness plays such a huge game as well.

Wait till you find out that most of the highly "successful" social media tech influencers have 0 skills and got their jobs solely due to the social media hype itself. Recruiters have taken on this absurd and extremely stupid trend of expecting people to have written blogs and what not. And therefore people spend more energy on generating content without any deep understanding of it. Its a circlejerk!

Just a fyi. Developer Advocacy is a different skillset.