I find it astounding how otherwise intelligent people fall for such obvious theatre. One really does need a particular mindset to filter this out, and that is almost entirely absent from typical management. As usual, if you don't have an actual reliable signal, or acquiring that signal takes too long - you'll fall back to relying on cheap proxy signals. Confidence over competence, etc. And those that are best at self-promotion and politics win.

I've got recent experience in exactly this - someone who is completely out of their depth, mis-representing their actual capabilities. Their reliance on AI is so strong because of this lack of depth - to such a degree that they never learn anything. Lately they've been creating drama and endless discussions about dumb things to a) try to appear like they have strong opinions, and b) to filabust the time so they don't have to talk about important things related to their work output.

> He ended up promoted to management.

I bet, with such qualities he is VP by now.

Agreed. I mean, to me, it seems that the management tier level of people like what you described, are the people funding and marketing AI to the world.

They want to maintain their status and position in the world, while lowering the value of the actual experts in the world and like this article says, feel confident in their impersonations of them.