Meritocracy:
1. government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability.
2. a ruling or influential class of educated or skilled people.

"skills" or "ability" don't just mean "technical skills," or "technical ability."

Personally, I find that in many tiny companies you actually see the opposite of "social skills" -- they become so deeply, desperately, dependent on the particular technical genius of one or two people that those people can basically do everything and anything they want to do, because the company doesn't think it could survive without them. I've worked in small startups where one of the three principal engineers was allowed to sexually harass an ex-girlfriend; in the same place, another principal engineer was such an asshole people basically routed around him. And the third one? He was a a perfectly pleasant guy I loved working with.

Getting things done, in most environments, includes working with other people. I'm a big fan of the "no brilliant jerks" rule. See "The No Asshole Rule" book for more discussion of this.

Speaking as a supporter of the ERA, I think if it had been passed in the 80's our society would be very different today, and I'd accept this minor cost pretty happily.

Netflix. We're hiring :)

But it can happen.

I'm 43, and managing a group of software engineers at a streaming company; my peers range from early 30s to early 50s, but there are other managers and directors here who are (at least somewhat) older than that.

More importantly, though, there are engineers here who are older than me, and who you could argue are as senior as I am, or more senior (in either the "more people listen to them" sense or the "they get paid more than I do" sense). This company also has a strong belief that you shouldn't go into management because you want a promotion or more money, so people who enjoy being engineers are encouraged to continue being engineers. There's no salary cap on being an engineer, and for pretty much as long as I've been a manager here, I've had engineers reporting to me who made more money (sometimes, significantly more money) than I do.

Having demonstrated pretty decent Individual Contributor (IC) skills, my last two bosses have always said that if I ever got tired of management and wanted to do the IC thing again for a while, they'd be delighted to find a slot for me.

But that's us. And we aren't representative of the business, I suspect. We're not QUITE the outlier -- high tech company, Silicon Valley, ~16 years in operation -- but we're definitely not your 20-person SOMA startup running on Red Bull and testosterone.

I'll tell you one life lesson my parents taught me, though, that has served me well: Figure out what you love doing, and do that. You'll occasionally be buffeted off-course. That's OK -- get back on-course.

I've been married for about 7 years now; early in our relationship, when I was an IC in another company, making a lot less money, my wife argued I should be thinking about maximizing my family's income and financial stability and go into management just because of that; she persuaded me, and I went into management at that company, and was profoundly unhappy. Finally, luckily, got laid off in 2009. We both learned our lesson, and these days my wife's only rule is "pick a job that will make you happy; if we need more money I'll go out and make it." Works well.

This. I won't buy, nor install software from, software developers who won't get their software right the first time, every time. If you need to release updates, clearly you've released your product before it was ready.

That's why I don't use any operating system, made by anyone, ever.

They could totally pay me to use or carry that monstrosity. The rest is just negotiations ...

What's your problem with shopping on Black Friday? Do you draw a distinction between shopping on-line vs in-store?

(Me, I'm usually grateful to have a grocery store open the morning of Thanksgiving (for last-minute stuff I forgot) and Black Friday (to replenish whatever I ran out of); I could give up the latter without too much pain. I do bargain-shop on Black Friday, but only on-line, which feels like a reasonable way to minimize impact on retail-type people)

News for nerds, remember? Ten is simply the base-2 representation of the same number that two represents in base-10. It's exactly the same statement.

"I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces." -- Henry Ford.

These words might have been written into the Constitution. Good luck to you nihilists who are trying to suplant them.

This is a profoundly incorrect assertion. Maybe, sure, techgeeks and other people who are allergic to this kind of stuff would use it, but everyone else? No way. And would you really use a browser that blocked gmail? Do you really think everyone else would?

You raise a really good point that gets ignored often.

As a startup, you're fighting not just for money and customers, but also talent. Speaking as your typical tech person in the bay area, I'll say that the place is lousy with startups doing interesting tech work where I could solve interesting problems, and it's full with a plethora of places that will pay me well. One thing that I consider in companies is their moral and ethical profile. I work where I work because, irrespective of the crazy wages and the problems, I feel like it leads the way in ethical and humane management of high-performance engineers, and its approach to its customers is transparent and ethical. I wouldn't work for a company I considered evil, or whose execs I had serious ethical problems with -- and Uber falls into that category.

Summary: Not appearing like you're ethical will noticeably impact your ability to compete for talent.