Sure, it is hard to earn more than you earn now. But you are still earning way more than most, and all that required was to pass a few tests. How can you call that not rewarding performance?
Also we're not on the same page about reward/excellency. Having a high salary after graduation doesn't mean you're doing good / excellent work. You can, and I've heard a lot of people saying it, coast along being paid for not a lot.
Every company I worked at had terrible software, there was no excellency in them (which backfires toward all society). Another proof to me that the system is not optimizing excellency. It's short term gain spread over a wide network of ignorance (your customer can never assess of your work quality, he has no clue about the domain).
The "luck/unfair" argument is exactly what I was talking about. You shouldn't need luck to get hired in a system after 7+ years of hard work.
Add to that that I've seen a lot of incompetent people (both in skills, dedication or even diligence) in the field. This renders the excellence argument moot.
The system is filled with low efficiency bits at every scale, HR only call you if they match a tag or a fancy school, the tech interviewer might very well be a young dude knowing moot but not willing to annoy his superior with bad hires. It's mostly tribalism and politics driving the machine. Not objective qualities.