You cut off the best bits of Letwin's rant: "...although their top guys may be smart, they aren't techically savvy. And their low level guys are often neithe

You cut off the best bits of Letwin's rant: "...although their top guys may be smart, they aren't techically savvy. And their low level guys are often neither. IBM doesn't promote on the basis of your skills and ability; they promote on the basis of seniority and other secondary factors. So the guy who makes these decisions often doesn't know what he's doing. And he doesn't know that he doesn't know, because his peers are equally butt-ignorant too. So these guys can never figure out how other folks, including but not limited to Microsoft, keep doing better! Must be dumb luck, they think. I always agreed that it was dumb luck. If you catch my drift... :-) "