I hate to diagnose over the internet, but it is possible you have engineer’s blindness. This usually only happens to technically excellent developers.

When an developer lacks some productivity, political, or teamwork skill, they sometimes simply don’t know that they are missing that skill (or they think it is a worthless skill), and can’t understand why someone else gets promoted over them.

In this case, you could ask the other dev, because if he has a skill that you are lacking, he should be able to recognise your lack of that skill. This sounds a bit Dunning-Kruger but it usually isn’t. The issue is more about deliberate blindness (e.g. considering technical skills are king and politics as valueless), and usually a wilful disdain for recognising the hidden skills of others (“how did that idiot get that promotion” - maybe that idiot has some skill you struggle to recognise?)

If you think you might have engineers blindness, and are in a big enough organisation then:

1. try to look at “successful” idiot/wanker/useless engineers and see what things they are good at. Try to look at those you might disdain (sales/marketing/exec) and try to see where their value comes from. If someone can get their mind to be non-judgemental about others and be interested in the unobvious skills of others, they learn a lot (in my experience).

2. Look at what holds back other engineers, and look within yourself to see if you have any similar pattern.

Disclaimer: I would definitely call myself an engineer type. The above took me decades for me to recognise, and I still can’t do politics (but I now recognise the value, and I am learning to see when someone is good at it). And it is quite possible none of this applies to you: I am likely to be misreading you completely.

Well, it could be. However, a family member who had years earlier excelled in a (non software) technical field before jumping to management positions then founder had given advise. Become excellent at $skills then move up. Good advise. Advise i'd pass on with the caveat that talking tech is so f*kin easy at 10,000 feet, be prepared to see less able people jump upwards before they're anywhere near ready.

edit: this was ~10 years ago at this stage. I've stayed hands-on technical by choice(in various roles) while the other jumped to "pseudo-leadership (incl. Thought Leadership©").

edit edit: By no means was he an idiot. Just cavalier.

Sorry, I didn’t intend for my comment to advise moving “up” into management.

It is about maintaining an open mind. How can you tell the difference between someone who has valuable 3_048 metre advice versus someone who has highly negative value at 3km?

I have remained in a developers rôle for my working life so far.

I wish I could find the anecdote where this guy recognised that this one woman was always on successful projects within a business. He didn’t know what she did, but he recognised that if she was involved then somehow the project was successful (I think surprising him because many software projects fail). I wonder why he didn’t ask her what her secret was? At least he was open minded enough to see she had some magic, even if he couldn’t directly learn her presumed skill.

Thanks for reply - I’m still working on my own blindnesses - I can say trying to be non-judgemental and looking for hidden skills in others has really helped me.

Here it is, from peopleware:

> I was teaching an in-house design course some years ago, when one of the upper managers buttonholed me to request that I assess some of the people in the course (his project staff). He was particularly curious about one woman. It was obvious he had his doubts about her: “I don’t quite see what she adds to a project; she’s not a great developer or tester or much of anything.” With a little investi- gation, I turned up this intriguing fact: During her 12 years at the company, the woman in question had never worked on a project that had been anything other than a huge success. It wasn’t obvious what she was adding, but projects always succeeded when she was around. After watching her in class for a week and talk- ing to some of her co-workers, I came to the conclusion that she was a superb catalyst. Teams naturally jelled better when she was there. She helped people communicate with each other and get along. Projects were more fun when she was part of them. When I tried to explain this idea to the manager, I struck out. He just didn’t recognize the role of catalyst as essential to a project.

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I don't think engineers blindness is the cause in the majority of cases, and that woman would be put on a PIP.

To get ahead things like unethical behavior, lying and corruption matter far more than competence, teamwork and making real contributions. A lot of people simply can't stand to admit this.

> To get ahead things like unethical behavior, lying and corruption matter far more than competence, teamwork and making real contributions. A lot of people simply can't stand to admit this.

I am a cofounder of a successful small bootstrapped business where competence, teamwork and making real contributions absolutely matter. I suspect those positive traits matter for ycombinator startups too.

I must admit I have never worked for a large corporation, where perhaps unethical behavior, lying and corruption are effective. However I have seen many founders fail trying to use those negative traits.

Thank you for recalling the Peopleware reference: great book!

Yes, once the corporation gets large enough it becomes almost purely political.

I wonder if you know how he fared at Bezos company afterwards; presumably “the people above you in non-tech companies generally know less than shit” doesn’t apply there

Still there and I wouldn't be so sure. Fake it until you're high enough in an org then jump sideways to another gig(which is what he did).

At amazon a lot of the "engineering" managers are so incompetent they can't write for loops.