In my long computer career, I've only had a couple of times where someone got ahead of me by lying or misrepresenting their skills. When working with such people, it's pretty obvious to most that they don't know what they're doing. While I have also been a very helpful person, I have a rule: I refuse to help someone who has misrepresented their skills. This type of person has no problem lying to get ahead then expecting everyone to help them out when they get in trouble. And that occurs frequently of course, because they are in over their head.
First example was when I was the tech lead on a huge Ford project. I was only 20, doing great, Ford loved me, but the computer company I worked for (Prime) was uneasy about relying so much on a 20 y/o in his 2nd year of college for this huge project. So they hired a new guy, a Pakistani with a degree who wore a suit everyday and had a glowing resume (apparently). First, the guy was nearly impossible to understand. Second, he didn't know shit. Third, instead of spending his time reading through manuals to figure things out, he'd just ask me since his cube was next to mine. My standard answer was "I don't know". He could have asked me what color grass is and that would have been my answer. They kept him a few months, fired him when it became obvious he couldn't do shit on his own, and put me back on the account.
The other time was when a contract project manager at IBM decided he wanted to work on a project that was supposed to be for me. I was still busy with a previous IBM project (he was my project manager on that) and couldn't start for a couple of months, and since IBM was in a hurry, the project manager told them he could do it. He was a great project manager, but not even a good programmer. His previous technical experience was more with hardware. After a few months, I got called in to review his work because he kept saying he would be done in a week. I met with him, found out he didn't even have this thing compiling without errors (it was a platform conversion of a large CAD program), and he asked me if I'd help him. I said no, even though it was very hard for me to do that. I met with IBM, they asked me if I could take it over and finish it. I told them I could do it but would not be able to use any of his work, especially since he hadn't made much progress. They fired him, gave me the contract, and it was finished in a couple of months.
So if you run into people who have cheated to get where they are, don't help them, no matter how nice you are or how bad it might make you feel. They don't deserve your help and will have to qualms about taking a promotion over you, even though they couldn't have done it without your help.
I agree with you, and I believe in the same. People that help cheaters don't realize that these people put up a sweet face and good behavior just so they can stab you in the back and take all that they can because they view you as a sucker. Helping them doesn't benefit anyone.
Heck, I'd even go as far as to say that large corporations that generate a lot of money depend on just a few individuals of extraordinary merit who are (by naivete or (social) design) incentivized to spread the attribution of work done. This sort of distribution is never equal by design; if the genius (proper definition https://geniusfamine.blogspot.com/) is a 100x-er then there'll be a thousand leeches vying for bragging rights to the work that they aren't responsible for. This is often called "prestige", and is something the west inherited from the third world, where people routinely make shit up and even though everyone knows in their bones that it's made up, they play along. In time, people get too stupid to even know that. If you can induce "prestige" in random people, that's brand loyalty. Someone that can do all of this, capture a bright sucker and put a thousand leeches on him is called a really great ""innovator"", like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and who knows how many more. These guys never did much, were handed things on a silver platter and managed to be the luckiest (not in the ironic / "hardwork" manner) guys. Modern large-scale society rewards these people handily because all the extortion and gaslighting of the competent is abstracted away into the "public good" and "shareholder and company value". I don't believe everyone gets a leech or two, because not everyone is able to contribute. Most people can't read above a fifth grade level. Heck, most of finance is based around the upper management servicing their friends at the expense of everyone else. Everything is downstream of that, and most white-collar work is now a scramble just to determine where the most competent people work, and exploiting them (this is done not just the people at the top, but also by their "fellow colleagues"!).
Family is supposed to be exempt from these things. Societies that consider this a given often flourish into first world economies, and remain so as long as they keep the real leeches at bay. Societies that don't never rise from the muck.
It's in the leech's interest to help out others like him.
This also explains the absolute seethe that libertarian viewpoints generate. Reading someone like Ayn Rand actually scares these people because she advocates for people to stop being taken advantage of when there's nothing in it for them. Same for a lot of authors like Rothbard and Mises, they're all "overturned" on their idealism but all the critique of the daylight robbery is quietly squashed (aka never addressed) by the opposition.
Imagine being called a "sucker" by the leeches. Gaslighting at its finest.
First example was when I was the tech lead on a huge Ford project. I was only 20, doing great, Ford loved me, but the computer company I worked for (Prime) was uneasy about relying so much on a 20 y/o in his 2nd year of college for this huge project. So they hired a new guy, a Pakistani with a degree who wore a suit everyday and had a glowing resume (apparently). First, the guy was nearly impossible to understand. Second, he didn't know shit. Third, instead of spending his time reading through manuals to figure things out, he'd just ask me since his cube was next to mine. My standard answer was "I don't know". He could have asked me what color grass is and that would have been my answer. They kept him a few months, fired him when it became obvious he couldn't do shit on his own, and put me back on the account.
The other time was when a contract project manager at IBM decided he wanted to work on a project that was supposed to be for me. I was still busy with a previous IBM project (he was my project manager on that) and couldn't start for a couple of months, and since IBM was in a hurry, the project manager told them he could do it. He was a great project manager, but not even a good programmer. His previous technical experience was more with hardware. After a few months, I got called in to review his work because he kept saying he would be done in a week. I met with him, found out he didn't even have this thing compiling without errors (it was a platform conversion of a large CAD program), and he asked me if I'd help him. I said no, even though it was very hard for me to do that. I met with IBM, they asked me if I could take it over and finish it. I told them I could do it but would not be able to use any of his work, especially since he hadn't made much progress. They fired him, gave me the contract, and it was finished in a couple of months.
So if you run into people who have cheated to get where they are, don't help them, no matter how nice you are or how bad it might make you feel. They don't deserve your help and will have to qualms about taking a promotion over you, even though they couldn't have done it without your help.