There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.

Scale should be permitted to offer jobs to whoever they wish, but I don't think it's a a mistake to believe that merit (i.e. ability to contribute value to Scale) and diversity are somewhat in tension.

No age group has a monopoly on excellence, but would not be surprising if almost all of the Scale workforce is drawn from the 20-39 year old age bracket, which makes up 30% of the population.

If Scale hires solely on merit, staff will show some variety in various demographic dimensions, but it won't be a strictly population-balanced representation.