I can speak from the perspective of someone who happens to belong to the "not so good" group, with 20 years in IT. I have a rather specific specialization, and I consciously avoid taking on programming because I know that the quality of my code would be, at best, average. If I do program, it's purely as a hobby, while professionally, I only work on scripts and automation, which I really enjoy.
If you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to change the room. There is absolutely no way for someone average in grasping complex concepts to suddenly become smarter. The problem seems to be that someone at your company hired these people and assigned them to roles they don't fit. You should consider moving to a better company — one that has higher standards and employs better specialists. There's no other solution to this.
I've found there are a couple biases that people have, and scripting is viewed as not-real-programming. I thought maybe because there's no binaries, no compiling, but python seems to get a pass.
I recall another bias from the past regarding windows administration. People looked down on windows administration as a real job, I believe because it was gui-based and "anyone can use a gui".
On the other hand, I have also seen a lot of people hamstring themselves.
One friend I knew was exceptional at math and actually quite a proficient fortran programmer. He had a lot of experience, but he was just missing a few key concepts. For example, some function with tricky arguments, he would just call it a bunch of times in a row instead of figuring out how to use a loop.
Or people who hunt and peck, have been doing it for decades, know exactly where all the keys are, but only want to use their index fingers to type.
I think there are some people who are SO CLOSE, but lack a few bridges to fluency or independence or something similar. Sort of frustrating to see from the outside.
What? Competent Windows admins are probably the best/most hardworking sysadmins in the world. Not because they're inherently better, but windows is so complex and dumb, you have to be great to be good at this.
I remember my first internship, we tried to install IIS and 2 different PHP version (along with their crypt lib, that's what caused difficulties), it took us 3 weeks. Using two PHP version on any unix, even for people who have no idea how to, is extremely straightforward. Mad respect for windows sysadmins.
I work on all of them, if you have skyscraper of a project, which I worked on a quite a few, you can't run them without having the supporting "scripts" to define infrastructure, test, deploy, run canaries, gather metric putting them into dashboard, setting up alarms etc. etc.
You'd be surprised at how much engineering effort is NOT going into that skyscraper despite everything being built around it.
This also leads to an interesting conclusion. If we assume that, generally speaking, the most competent individuals tend to get promoted, then those who have stopped being promoted are likely the least incompetent among all possible options :D
No. The Peter Principle states that in a hierarchical organization, everyone gets promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. This means we could conclude that if someone has stopped being promoted, they are incompetent in their current position.
However, if we assume that promotions are generally given to the most competent individuals within a group, then ultimately, while such a person may be incompetent, they will still be the least incompetent option compared to others.
Interestingly the way this is phrased could be interpreted a couple ways. Sure one interpretation is you should leave the room and find another.
Another might be you should change the room itself. Instead of leaving figure out how to modify the room (presumably to help the growth of others). Possibly until one surpasses you.
If you feel like you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to change the room. There is absolutely no way for someone average in grasping complex concepts to suddenly become smarter. The problem seems to be that someone at your company hired these people and assigned them to roles they don't fit. You should consider moving to a better company — one that has higher standards and employs better specialists. There's no other solution to this.