Alternatively, a top company will hire someone straight out of undergrad with a CS degree from a top engineering school, but they won't hire the guy who created Homebrew because he doesn't have the algo for reversing a binary search tree memorized.

The problem with meritocracy is that it implicitly depends upon a heuristic, and heuristics can always be gamed or inadvertently biased, no matter the industry.

I think this was part of what the author was trying to say, but I agree with you, it's a poorly written and wishy-washy op-ed.