Usually it's competence at climbing the ladder rather than doing the work. I've seen people shoot up here who do super dishonest things like throw out all the e

Usually it's competence at climbing the ladder rather than doing the work. I've seen people shoot up here who do super dishonest things like throw out all the engineers' estimates, make their top estimate down based on when they want to ship and would look best to senior management, then they just throw whatever engineer wasn't their friend under the bus when of course the deadline wasn't met. Meanwhile for their friends they'll move mountains to avoid including any negative feedback in their reviews, etc.. So rising in management here is all about optics and alliances. That guy keeps getting bigger and bigger departments put under him, and even acquisitions made to give him more heads, and he's super dishonest and terrible at the actual tech job stuff of doing things like making accurate estimates.