I'm surrounded by idiots.

Yet they keep getting promoted.

It seems being competent and skilled at your current role means absolute dog shit.

they think they're idiots because they're being passive aggressive until they get promoted, probably

i've always wondered about the phenomena. I don't think I landed on the right answer though

Sorry, not sorry...

Yup, being competent and skilled has nothing to do with being promoted.

It‘s very hard to measure the correlation between competence and success/results.
Most don‘t even bother and just measure the results, without looking for how or who made the results.

In the politics when you fail, you get promoted into a position where you can do less harm as before with your incompetence.

In the corporate world people get promoted when other people do a good job at mitigating the mistakes of the former ones.

You have to flex, let people know you're awesome. Flex like a retoor

I'm starting to realize that I'm way better at talking to higher ups than I am at my actual job. I'm not a bad developer, but I'm not motivated unless the project is either in a really good shape or my task is to improve DX, whereas talking to people hypes me up so it's very easy for me to present motivation that doesn't convert to productivity.