Also alignment with upper executives is pretty critical. Pay careful attention to what they say at All-Hands and which teams they're spending their time with, and try to get on those teams. Try to be in the room when major decisions are made; understand the thought process that went into these decisions. If you can simulate your VP's thought process and predict what they're going to value next, you're at a huge advantage over most of your peers in the department, and you can also leverage that to help your management look good.

Try to be ahead of that - figure out what project they will care about next and be the leader of that one. Sometimes you need to risk a couple years on an unknown project before it breaks out to get the attention. Just be careful, it is a risk: if it works you are aren't just on it, you are the leader of it, but if it fails you are the leader of a project they never cared about.

An even better way to figure out what project is going to be important, sabotage it on a way that you can pull an 80 hour week at the last minute to rescue it. (I strongly encourage leaders to NEVER reward someone on a project for pulling long hours at the last minute - an outsider who steps in fine, but someone who was on the project should have prevented it in the first place. I've never seen a leader pay attention to this)

We praise the fireman, but hate/mock/are annoyed by the fire marshal.

Have a list of the projects you worked on with measurable benefits to the company.

Start by talking to your manager and then work your way up your reporting structure talking to the directors/cto/ceo's. If they don't know you you need to walk in an introduce yourself, don't drop all your accomplishments on them at once but something I have used many times in the past is just "Hi I am X I work/ed/ing in/on Y, loved helping get project Y over the line and am excited to see its impact on Z. What are your hopes/thoughts on where it will lead us"? Offer to take them out to lunch and get to know them better, you don't even have to talk about work with them, developing connections is personal not business!!

Outside of that when talking to stakeholders the key is to be invested in the business outcomes of what you are building and talk to leadership on their terms. They give zero sh*t's about your technology or methodologies, they care about impact on revenue and cost.

I could do all this regularly or send out resumes/answer recruiters every year or two? No wonder tenure is so low.

Everywhere I've worked, it's an order of magnitude easier to get a L+1 job at another company than it is to get promoted to L+1. Until and unless that's fixed, expect tenure to remain low. The fact that no company fixes this tells me this is employers' desired end state.

Yep. Even with the Great Resignation in full swing, companies don't seem to care about the losses other than whining about it.

As far as they are concerned, we are replaceable commodity cogs. So we should act like commodity sellers.

I transferred to a different position. Suddenly they discovered all the little things I did had value and wanted me back. (I didn't want to go back, but the reorg told me go back or find a new job...)