There's a guy in my company who rose to upper-middle management faster that anyone I've ever seen. The key to his success was constantly running around, getting

There's a guy in my company who rose to upper-middle management faster that anyone I've ever seen. The key to his success was constantly running around, getting social exposure by talking to everybody (about inane bullshit most of the time) and trying to make himself look important. In the meantime, we lost a really good engineer who was thought to be a slacker because he was a quiet guy and wouldn't expose himself too much. This sociopathic and pathologic behavior is very common in companies run by "business people with ideas" instead of engineers. It's all based on chest beating, who you know and how much of a smooth talker you are. It's like being in high school all over again. Meritocracy is nowhere to be found.