I recently read this piece on meritocracy - rung quite true to me from personal experience. I work with a guy of similar ability to me, but I think I would beat him on most technical and simple people skills. However, he still gets ahead from being more ambitious and upfront than I am, and while he's a bit more qualified on paper it's used to far better effect. (No bitterness, he's still a good guy to work with and I know it's up to me to be better. Also I'm in kind of mid-level finance rather than coding.)
I think that article is a bit bitter. It probably applies to some organizations, but I think most places at least manage to consider competence as a substantial part of the mix in promotion decisions.
Which is not to say signaling ambition isn't valuable (I absolutely believe it is). Just that the article is bitter.
You know the drill - If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.