Thanks for sharing this, I've not been (and never will be) a SV employee, so it's interesting to see such a different perspective.
The big question that I didn't quite get from the post, is why did promotion matter so much to you? Everything seemed to hinge on that, but you didn't quite explain why it was so important, other than "what a great title - people would be so impressed". It sounds like when you were happy with your title, you were happy with your work - you "lovingly" fixed the old pipeline, wrote documentation, helped colleagues etc. Were there particular benefits to being promoted that would have increased your daily happiness?
It was mostly just the status. I think having the title of Senior Software Engineer has a lot of value in itself because it brings better job offers and more credibility if I go off on my own.
Also, people tended to be assigned more interesting projects the higher their level.
I'd enjoy the extra compensation, but that wasn't as strong a factor.
The big question that I didn't quite get from the post, is why did promotion matter so much to you? Everything seemed to hinge on that, but you didn't quite explain why it was so important, other than "what a great title - people would be so impressed". It sounds like when you were happy with your title, you were happy with your work - you "lovingly" fixed the old pipeline, wrote documentation, helped colleagues etc. Were there particular benefits to being promoted that would have increased your daily happiness?