The industry professed to be a meritocracy but placed a premium on recruiting people from a handful of top schools or, better yet, hired those referred by current employees. In the dot-com boom of the 1990s, Sun Microsystems filled 60% of its jobs through referral; Netscape hung a sign in its headquarters asking, “Who is the best person you’ve ever worked with? How can we hire him/her?” While the rest of corporate America diversified, tech’s culture become more homogeneous. Yet the considerable financial upside — not to mention the genuine satisfaction gained from working on world-transforming products — curbed employee dissent.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 02, 2019 11:03 UTC