I got started with an unpaid internship in high school (every school should require that) and life grew out of that.
[edit] And my family was anything but "traditionally professional." I had no connections whatsoever through my family.
I got my first part-time tech support job during college via a connection. My aunt was a white collar professional, she ran the fundraising for a non-profit with an annual budget in the millions of dollars. Some software they used for managing donations was developed by a small local company, and she recommended I apply for work there because she was always in touch with their support and thought I could do the job. So I wrote a cover letter and name dropped my aunt's name, who they knew as a client. They interviewed me and hired me. I don't know how much my aunt helped but I can grant that this connection was a privilege many don't have.
After that, the rest of my jobs were without any connection. In the winter of my senior year at college I started applying to big companies through their websites. A big insurance company responded and flew me in for an interview. I was thrilled by this chance, I had never been treated so well. The recruiter told me to save receipts for food and taxis etc, I was so unused to this that I don't think u ever submitted them, I couldn't believe they'd pay for all that. Anyway they hired me.
After that my LinkedIn profile did most of the work. I responded to recruiter spam and got interviews.
One job-hop was driven by a semi-connection: I was moving cities and wanted to find a new job, so I went to a bunch of tech meetups. One was a python meetup, which has nothing to do with my tech stack and I know very little python. At the end, I approached one of the lecturers and told him that while I didn't understand anything he talked about, I got his joke and I thought they were funny. He said that he and some friends were going for drinks, would I like to join? "Sure." So we sat and talked, at the end he asked if I'm looking for a job, I said yes, he told me to send him my CV which I did. Then nothing... then a week later he responds telling me he posted on a forum for veterans of a particular military unit he was in, where he wrote that he thought I was a good candidate. Then suddenly my phone started ringing...I had interviewsin the new city and ultimately offers.
Bottom line: there are multiple ways to success. Good fortune is a common thread though, you do need luck and serendipity, and professional family connections certainly don't hurt.
Maybe an “affirmative action” type program for the socially disadvantaged is necessary, but I can’t see that gaining much support when addressing the more glaring disparities (racial, gender) is controversial enough.
But you can control who your friends are. And you can choose to surround yourself with motivated people.
>puts a bullet in the idea of meritocracy. I don't feel the same way, as this sits at the boundary of the workplace. My understanding of meritocracy is that, reward is based on performance inside the company. But until you have hired and had someone working for some time, you have no way of evaluating them.
We try to mitigate hiring bad employees with things like resumes, interviews and skill tests but those are not perfect. I, for example, suck at writing a resume. How many people have you seen on this site rage about "leet code tests"?
So, another "tool" companies use are personal connections. John, a great worker whom I trust, refers Frank. I still have to interview him but it give me another data point.
As a society, we have drifted away from the local community organizations (i.e. churches) that allowed people to build up good connections. We have tried to replace them, things like Linkedin but I am not sure how good of a job they do. Anything done on the internet gives me more of an ethereal feeling as opposed to the more permanent feeling of face to face personal connections.