Oh, we're in complete agreement about meritocracy. I call it a fairy tale engineers like to comfort themselves with [0,1]. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough about where I agreed with you. And rereading your original post, I might have misread it a bit, and I think we are very much in line.
And thanks for the story. Manager definitely sounds like a clueless / regulator type for worrying about such things. While at the same time, "Justin" hasn't done a very good job of making himself trustworthy.
>>> I'm not even sure what you mean by this. How would a promotion reflect poorly on someone?
For a real life example, I have a friend, let's call him Justin, who's an incredibly efficient engineer, and this is known. But he won't get promoted because of a few obnoxious traits (outed as a Trump supporter, got drunk at the office a few times, liked to place bets on video games at the office).
I don't think his manager will promote him, because he worries if he promotes Justin, then Justin gets fallover drunk and has to be fired, then somehow it'll look like a mistake to have promoted him in the first place... Super-political (i.e. concerned with appearance over reality)