Given your descriptions, the bottom line is over the last few years across many corporate environments many people were put into roles in which they will either

Given your descriptions, the bottom line is over the last few years across many corporate environments many people were put into roles in which they will either sink or swim. Let them sink and do your best work despite this in the meantime. Upper management and execs made this decision for cost cutting reasons. Many of the senior and more competent people you'd expect in these roles either voluntarily left or were nudged into retirement. Don't let anyone pull the wool over your eyes on this. You're not the only one asking this question lately. Also don't buy into the gaslighting answers being given here that smart people should put up with this crap and just learn to "communicate better". You can't fix stupid. It's not your fault. Every time they pull this one out it's just blame shifting. It's true nobody will ever have the same strengths, but I know what you're talking about in your question, and these gaps are massive lately. Anyway, I think the answer to this really depends on what your relationship to the incompetent coworker is. What has worked for me is to not lose cool and document everything you're asked to do so you're always ready to shut down the blame game. Show evidence you're doing these tasks according to requirements with detailed commit messages that link back to your assigned tasks. When asked why higher level outcomes aren't being met you can rattle off as many details as you need until they're tired of hearing about it. Assuming your own branch of management is still competent and hasn't been entirely hollowed out they should be able to go to bat for you. If not, yeah sorry life isn't always fair and you probably want to find another job. This is a huge growth moment for people currently working and I have faith overall this too shall pass and we'll all be better at our jobs at the end of this. Not everyone will make the cut and good riddance. I'm sure you'll be fine since you're smart enough to ask this, but at least know that we're all stressed out and you're not alone.