While it's a useful skill for your personal life, it's not really working in a company.

1. Constantly complaining. This is like a high-visible fake proxy for "high quality".

2. Highly opinionated. In order to get your 3rd rate projects through you need to fight tooth and nail for whatever arbitrary set of things you are pushing.

Engineering prowess and the properties from the article are nowhere on the list. The vast majority of principal+ engineers and essentially all upper management I have worked with have these two traits. When you run into an exception it's a blast of fresh air and a wonder they got past senior engineering roles. As a disclaimer my sample size is 2 companies.

I chose to believe we're all doing our best.

Evidence tends to bear this out. People aren't walking around with gobs of unused ability; they're usually performing about where they're able.

As far as improvement goes, the easy improvements are done. The ones that are left are either in progress or folks don't know how to proceed.

So where do shortcomings fit into this? I believe faults happen when someone has no significant impediment to better behavior - but they refuse anyway.

I see this happen when negative conditioning has effected someone; imaginary harms are so elevated that actual good/harm is less recognizable.

My experience has been the opposite. I think most people are underperforming to their potential, mostly because they lack social connections or knowledge to capitalize on it, or even begin to take the first steps to capitalizing on it. The number of intelligent people stuck in pointless jobs is endless.

The tech startup world is a good example. There are so many intelligent people which simply haven’t even considered the possibility of building a tech company, mostly because they aren’t exposed to it, don’t have any friends or family members doing it, etc. It’s an unknown-unknown that has nothing to do with ability.

It’s more likely that those who are already successful like to rationalize that “everyone is exactly where they should be” as a way to justify their own positions.

> I think most people are underperforming to their potential, mostly because [conditions]

It sounds like your experience is identical. You've identified obstacles between what folks could do and what they're doing now. Today, folks are doing what they can with what they have.

Potential is always a measure of things that can't be done now.

> It’s more likely that those who are already successful like to rationalize that “everyone is exactly where they should be” as a way to justify their own positions.

I think this is something that gets imagined about other people. Reading minds isn't a thing and there is a human tendency to fill blanks.

>My experience has been the opposite. I think most people are underperforming to their potential, mostly because

> they lack social connections or

> [they lack] knowledge to capitalize on it, or

> [they lack knowledge to] even begin to take the first steps to capitalizing on it.

You make reasonable points about the things they lack today. Without them, people are doing what they can.

Upon accumulation (of those things), different options would then be within their reach.

That said, I suspect what you're trying to address here isn't ability but improvement.

Conversely, I have found complaining to be a symptom of under-utilization of natural troubleshooting skills. Redirecting them toward solving problems takes 2 issues off the board.

I have also found complainers who were detail-oriented in a way that they reliably handled the kind of maintenance tasks that were often ignored.

Mostly I'm talking about complaints that come from a place of powerlessness. I often find those folks are broadcasting clues about where the they can be useful.