The key ingredients here appear to be audacity and persistence, with competence taking somewhat of a backseat.

This isn't intended to be overly critical. It aligns with the old adage, "If you want it, ask for it."

Depends on race with an exception (sometimes) for which college you went to

Mine is less about race or college.

It's often mismatch between how people sell themselves vs what they have done.

a director at google might oversell himself and land at a vp role at a public co what's much less smaller, than swing back at another faang as a vp.

It's hard to judge someone's skills/capabilities for a job role externally vs while on the job.

So you have "proxies".

How big of an org s/he managed is often an indicator of some sort of success, but it's a terrible one, for example.

I think you are being downvoted a bit unfairly, but you're also not fully right either.

I'm pretty sure that who you are friends with matters much more for failing upwards. Who you know is very overvalued in today's business climate unfortunately

Your post-secondary really only has influence because it somewhat influences who you wind up being connected to

DEI stuff like race and sex... Might matter sometimes. It shouldn't be controversial to say that companies in general take that into account more nowadays than in the past.

It's not a secret that if a company in 2025 has a very white male executive team, then a board of directors has some incentive to try and hire women and minorities into the executive team when they can to balance that out

My point was about the original DEI. All the diversity and inclusion and affirmative action sometimes helped minorities get a foot in the door, but they had to have all the credentials checked twice needed for the job.

But they could never tank the company, run unsuccessful or soon to fail projects and get a golden parachute or be promoted for it. They just got fired.