> “ The best summer intern that I ever hired”

What's the sample size?

> supports that the CTO was a better judge of the candidate.

No, it doesn't, because the hiring manager's choice never got a chance to show what they could do. Besides, the fact that the nepotistic hire worked out could have been just dumb luck. After all, hiring is a crapshoot, especially hiring interns.

Regardless, this was clearly nepotism, and the question isn't whether the CTO could judge the candidate, the question is whether favoritism was shown toward a family friend, which is indisputably the case.

That is a factor in why nepotism is so endemic - people are much better judges of the character of people in their family. This is a clear-cut case of nepotism, although personally I don't see a problem here. Nepotism isn't a bad thing in small doses. This instance is a good example of why not.