My personal experience shows to the contrary, the super talented engineers do well, and get promoted much more easily.

And I’ve seen many cases of “run-of-the-mill engineers” change cultural aspects of the office and the company.

This is all based on mostly one employer, but a very big one. I suspect smaller companies make fast promotions for talented engineers and cultural changes even easier.

(I do agree that sometimes people that look in no way special at first glance turn out to be fantastic founders)