[throwaway42668]

> And people _love_ this sort of structure because it means that something other than actual competence can be the deciding factor.

It's different competence. Not incompetence. It's being competent at identifying marks to exploit, attention-seeking, etc.

I don't particularly care for it myself and feel pretty strongly that it's narrowing the gap between humans and apes, rather than widening it, but it's still some kind of skill.

[mattgreenrocks]

Good catch. It gets at technical competence, but it isn't constrained to that. It's more of "good at what the org ostensibly is about," vs "good at ensuring the org lives on."