[defen]

I think there's a kernel of usefulness here, as long as you keep in mind that the labels don't inhere in the person, but rather refer to behavior and are relative to their current role. Developers love to systematize so it's easy to forget that people don't really fall into neatly labelled categories like this.

A "downtrodden" QA person could become uptrodden on a different team. Having a "patent author" PM is probably a good thing if you're working on life-critical software. Even an "incompetent" developer can learn to become better, or might be better suited to some other project. I'm decent at embedded development but if you put me on a deep learning task I'd be incompetent initially.