If he really wanted to count himself “smart” he wouldn’t see the accumulation of “below par” programmers as just some mysterious osmosis of stupidity into his ivory tower. If he were truly wise, he’d understand the complete inadequacy of most hiring practices to be able to distinguish between the 90% of mediocre-to-poor programmers and the 10% that are worth their weight in gold. This is not an easy problem to address, and it’s hard for managers who’ve never heard of Brooks to understand that throwing more bodies at a project doesn’t necessarily help. Has he ever tried to remedy it? I doubt it. Perhaps he thinks of it as “nonintellectual” work that might make him more “stupid”.

It seems clear to me that Nilotpal is just bitter that he isn’t being promoted into the positions where he is entrusted with design. The fact that he can’t figure out how the “below par” people are being promoted before the “smart people” is proof to me that he’s not as smart as he thinks he is.

BTW, “smart people” do not always hate “non-intellectual” work. Many advances in science and technology would not have resulted were it not for truly smart people doggedly working on truly mundane issues. Well, mundane for programmers stuck in dead-end jobs, perhaps.