Company: "We're no longer going to focus on merit as a virtue."

Company slowly becomes worse and worse.

Me: "That starting gun surely signaled the start of the decline."

You: "That was a long time ago. Couldn't have been that."

What are second-order consequences?

You're ignoring that the company grew 10x since then and was colonized, the CEO you're angry about was replaced, so insofar you're claiming this culture change happened 10 years ago which precipitated problems until today, you're conveniently ignoring a much larger culture change which more easily explains what's happened. For your explanation to work you'd have to explain how the change survived the Microsoft acquisition and that culture actually persisted.