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How is that sustainable? Does the scheme lack a feedback loop of sorts or why doesn't he (or the stereotypical American people of similar attitude) realise that the overconfident-looking people aren't necessarily that competent? I mean, competence is a hard quality: you immediately know who's lacking it when you see someone who really, truly has competence. You can only fake it till so far.

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Honestly, most managers are not constantly evaluating their team. They have other work to do. I think employees tend to believe that the only thing on their managers mind is them when in reality it's the furthest thing from their mind.

unless you collect data points over a relatively long period of time, it's hard to assess the competence of a developer. you might have one person on a team who works on bugs in ascending order of difficulty and closes many tickets every day. you might have another who works on high-priority difficult bugs, but takes several days on each one.

either person could be a valuable member of the team, but how do you say which one is more competent in a quick glance?

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