This is the reasoning of a young child. How do you even define merit? Nobody, except maybe high level athletes are hired on what can be considered merit alone. To do so, you would have to remove people from the process altogether. Those who hire new talent have to evaluate more than pure results. Maybe they have to chose between two people, one is a rockstar with the results to show for it, but not a team player and puts themself first. the other is solid and dependable, better at mentoring, but with more modest results. Its not a given who will be hired in this case.