How Bullshitters Not Just Survive But Thrive (2016)

There is a third possibility, or maybe an explanation for #2:

I've been in a situation many times where I couldn't figure out what value a CB was adding, but those who worked with him/her spoke glowingly of them or thought highly of them. So, since they were held in such high regard by others, I assumed that I must have been mistaken in my initial assessment of the person -- all these people can't be wrong, can they?

What the CB is doing is taking advantage of the fact that people more distant from you in the org chart form their impression of you based on very small pieces of information. But, the perception of those distant (e.g. higher) than you can have a greater impact on your trajectory than the perception of those around you.

Bullshitters are responding rationally to a set of incentives which rewards pleasing people far removed from one's actual performance, versus pleasing those who directly depend on your performance.

The things done by people described in the article is not the same as what the work of managers is. These are not managers, and as the article says, these can be more junior people who will "boss around" senior developers too. And besides that their self-promotion can be seen as unfair, i have seen some actual damages materialize as consequences:

As they are focusing on perception, effective real work done becomes less. If the client once chooses to evaluate real progress and the paper-pushing becomes evident, the project might be cancelled.

The bullshitter can transform the project itself. Instead of pursuing the original goal of delivering, they will invent new goals, and unnecessary work items. They will shape what the project does, so that they can deliver. If the project were to go in its original direction, they could not contribute anything useful. So now they invent administrative tasks or superfluous technical tasks, where they can deliver.

Their toxic behavior can become accepted even by the management. This is when the real project manager accepts that its more profitable to bullshit, than to actually deliver. The project will fail at some point, but its easier for the whole team to bullshit until that time, than to deliver.

I disagree with you.. the article is 100% relevant and it happens

Adderral and/or Modafinil plus a sense of shame.

In my experience the S-W/CB are very rare, rarer than the W+S type. I've worked with one or two over the course of ten years, but they tend to gravitate into project management or BA positions in a short amount of time.

The most common type of developer is the fourth category, missing from the article: the -S-W type. Not really all that good, and with little to no political acumen. They fill most roles at medium-to-large IT companies.

And having known many (a lot of them are nice people otherwise), I can tell you that each and everyone of them thinks they personally are a W-S type. They think their uninspiring, slow, painful expertise (if its hard for them its because it must be a hard problem, right?) makes them top of their field, and that when other developers are the 'superstars' its just because they are better at politics.

The biggest truth, the most important truth that the article seems biased against, is that unless you live in a cave working on software with two other like-minded hardcore devs, 50% of your job is communication! Not being good at communication makes you a bad developer, regardless of your technical abilities.