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I worked with a guy who had gone through the Kennedy School at Harvard. He was a nice guy, and we got along really well, but he was constantly asking me for help on the most basic stuff. A lot of it had to do with internal processes, and when he was new I didn’t mind helping because everyone is lost in the bureaucracy at first, but he never tried to learn anything beyond that. I think, like nearly every hyper-ambitious person I’ve known, he was only focused on the interpersonal relationships (“schmoozing”) that he thought would get him up the ladder, and really didn’t care to learn any of the nuts and bolts of the job. For those things, these people are experts at leeching off other people, who frankly are far more knowledgeable overall than they are. They’re a lot like the star quarterback in high school, who while he is basking in the glory and getting all the girls, is making the “nerds” do his homework so he doesn’t get kicked off the team.

I retired recently, and from what I’ve observed over a long career it is the rare exception when a C-level executive actually got to where they are based on true merit. Some of the most mediocre people are running companies today, and it’s even worse now because the price of entry to the C-suite today is your demonstrated level of “wokeness.” Corporate governance has become nothing but an exclusive club of morons with used car salesman personalities, all parroting the required woke jargon.

As I am in the twilight of my career, everything you said rings true. Mediocrity is rewarded then promoted. Peter principle still exists. I’ve worked with Ivy grads; I never saw any special talent - ham and eggers w/ “street experience” were the people one could always depend.

Wish we could flush these Ivy people from our judiciary. Their intellectual inbreeding has done great harm to this nation. We need real diversity.

Like promotes like.

There was an article in one of the business magazines nearly 30 years ago now, I still have it somewhere. It was at the time of the first great purge, that time of casting off what was left of the Greatest and Silent Generations as well as a legion of increasingly expensive and experienced 40 somethings. Downsizing, right sizing and so forth all promoted by the likes of McKinsey etc.

Anyway, the article said that American business would be changed, not for the better, for at least the next 40 years as the Koolaid drinkers of that time, the ones who bought in to stay in and get ahead, promoted like minded people.

Sure enough.

I survived them, maybe even beat them having become a hired gun myself instead of a wage slave or corporate droid. I worked and earned for my skill, knowledge and experience to create, build and fix things. I could not be one of them or live in the same house with them though. I reveled in excusing myself from any kind of wokeness or social training that did not suit me. I had more important work to do. Neither went unnoticed but what could they do? I had made myself necessary. The keys to the projects were usually between my ears or those of my own colleagues in the firm that I proudly owned. :)