And I'm not just talking about the politically favored and protected groups. I'd say it applies even more so to groups that don't get that political support.
In my experience friendly or not, people tend to be quite honest when vouching or generally asked an opinion on someone.
Referring a bad candidate (or an incompetent one) will damage your reputation/credibility, and most people don't want that.
Even worse, it's quite possible for discrimination to become a disincentive to recommending someone, just like incompetence would be. Someone who won't be well-received for personal reasons is effectively a "bad candidate" with the potential to damage the recommender's reputation. The result is that even a person who overcomes barriers to find network connections won't necessarily be able to draw on them effectively.
(A past-tense example to cut down on politics: a Liar's Poker trader wouldn't recommend a friend who couldn't sell, but they also wouldn't recommend a skilled trader who wasn't a friend. And if they had recommended a skilled friend who wasn't a white guy, they could have expected at least as negative a reaction as if they'd recommended a bad trader.)
I think it's more correct to say that "the state of nature is incredibly unfair, and our society does not perfectly mitigate this."
Why would I choose someone I don't know and who I don't know if I can trust when I know someone else who can do the same task, I trust them and are required.
It's not just whether people would choose friendly incompetence over reserved hard work, but whether the reserved hard worker is going to be a name anyone mentions when it's time to find a candidate.
Getting married to one country's politically struggling groups or disenfranchisement issues is playing a totally different game, and is a total waste of time for this game.
I do this in a lot of markets. Almost country by country when necessary. Work with someone that looks like money in that market. Go to the places they are. Don't masquerade your pride of being the front person of your company as 'progress' that society let you get that far just to inspire 4 year olds, unless that is honestly the game you are trying to play.
Although my own background and success would probably inspire people "that look like me", alongside the general distribution of wealth and status seekers
What's the meaning of this? That a person should avoid unnecessary 'progress' PR?
An alternative is to find the lean rising power and make yourself valuable to them.
Then just be honest about your lack of chances and stop preaching that ill-positioned people have a chance at all. (Not literally 'you', just the industry and society)
There is an even distribution of entrepreneurship across all levels of society, the survivorship bias leans toward the already wealthy and well-connected because they get to retry. Other people have to earn their initial capital for 10+ years, try once, earn again for the next 10+ years and get caught up with supporting some other life changing situation.
Lots of advice new-ish engineers implies that just having a Github profile with OSS work will improve prospects, when in reality most people I've seen admit that they don't even check Github profiles for applicants.
As far as the act of contributing turning into discussions, connections, and jobs, that's far more plausible. But I think it's a mistake to imply that merely having that work will provide visibility and opportunities. When people are getting offers passively on the strength of their past OSS work, they're more likely people who wrote popular libraries or led projects than just names on a contributor list.
Even this works a bit too well, to be honest.
However, a group of peers provides the following benefits:
* support and camaraderie, as you are likely facing the same challenges at the same times
* a more natural connection and more conducive environment for meeting and regularly interacting
* a rising tide that raises the whole group, as you help each other gain more success
Finally, I would say that your idea comes dangerously close to the idea of "kissing up and kicking down," which I personally find to be an unfortunate and disingenuous style of network management that discourages me from working with that person.
I've gotten jobs through former co-workers who have moved on to new companies. Some of my peers have been promoted into management and having a good relationship with them prior has given me a leg up. It's so incredibly easy to network with your colleagues. Just work hard and be a decent person and the network will create itself. Acting so dismissive of colleagues is short-sighted and silly.
I was talking about actual business opportunities. Good luck getting anywhere by being friendly to the, quick frankly, annoyingly arrogant sysadmin. Sure, some of them are nice - although most of them aren't because of the nature of the job, but that's not the point. We all are "nice" people, that does not pay the bills.
What I ended up realising after looking back over my career was that I’ve been networking this whole time without even meaning to. By generally working hard and being friendly those who have come and gone over the years, I now have a pretty sizeable network of people who will vouch for me. If someone ever asks me for networking advice, it will be “find a job where other people are doing the same thing as you, and then become someone they enjoy working with”.