Add to this that most companies don't like to take risks and will only hire an exec that has already be an exec somewhere else. To some level, once you make it through the exec glass ceiling, you are almost always guaranteed to always be an exec somewhere.

You see this all over the place by the way. I have seen the same thing for Directors, Principal engineers etc. Those people were not always that good at their job to justify their positions. But they for sure knew how to market themselves and interview well.

source?

large corporations harnessing and deploying massive resources have led to air travel, skyscrapers, cell phones, MRI machines, medicines, the green revolution, etc. all things that require undertaking risk, but of course effectively managing it. Your claim is that skills don't matter to claim leadership positions in such organizations, only self promotion. OK, let's say that's true: the system sure seems to be working. And of course, people who think they have a better way are free to pursue that avenue... maybe some of the most successful companies in the world have pursued just such avenues.

Becoming a large company CEO is highly correlated with who a person has spent time around. If it were a true meritocracy you would expect a roughly even distribution across regions and backgrounds, which is very much not the case.

If you ever work in a large corporation I can almost guarantee that you will encounter managers who are much better at networking and marketing themselves than they are at doing productive work.

In-group membership tends to be sticky. People can stay in a tribe even when their qualifications in someone outside of the tribe would be insufficient to let them in.

I imagine that's partially driven by a feeling that one's previous qualifications lend some predictive power that they will earn their place again in the future even if right now they're foundering. Also, I suspect a lot of it is that people don't want to be in groups where it's too easy to get kicked out because it makes themselves feel to tenuous. So the kinds of in-groups that stick around are the ones that are a little more generous to their members once they get in.

> Infactory has thus raised a pre-seed, though its founders declined to confirm the amount or investors. Seed funding will be a focus for the next “six to 18 months,” per Hartley Moy.

A pre-seed round with anonymous investors doesn't mean much. It can be as simple as friends or even themselves.