I'm not sure where I said that good engineers don't get promoted. Of course they do. They either worked for a good management team, aggressively self-promoted, or were in a visible project.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of good engineers don't get promoted, despite doing important work on vital systems, because they don't aggressively self-promote and optimize their careers around the promotion path.

There are also companies that are good at recognizing good yet normally-under-appreciated work, and there are companies that are bad at it. FAANG is bad at it, in my experience, and the experience of people I've worked with. It's an anecdote and not data.

And in my experience, FAANG are not bad at it, so my point is: These generalizations don't work.

I even stated that I don't doubt this may have been true for you. But if every large company were really so bad in general as is portrayed here, the people who make good stuff, and who need to work with each other a great deal to achieve that, would leave.

I feel like there are a lot more promotions to go around in bigger companies though! I've worked in smaller orgs and promotions are harder to come by, if there is even a career ladder at all that is.

You're still putting words into people's mouths. No one said none of the good engineers get promoted, they said that being a good engineer is not sufficient to be promoted. A good engineer who is also good at playing promotion games would presumably do very well.

PragmaticPulp specifically said the engineers his team hired were actually rather good, just had bad habits:

> The strange thing was that many of them were actually good programmers when it came down to it.

I said: "I never played any game to be promoted, I simply never consciously sought the goal of promotion, and I was promoted anyway just because of the real, substantial job I did."

And I did see other peers who did not play any games that I could see be promoted for merit.

So maybe generalizations over large companies just don't work well.

Now we're back to where I started: I don't disbelieve your experience, but given that you're the only one here who shares that experience I asked you to tell me why I should believe that your experience is more representative than the half dozen other people who have shared theirs? To me it seems more likely that you had a particularly good corner of the organization.

FWIW, my experience is not substantially different from the other poster.

I think that this largely depends on how good or bad one's immediate management is. Good managers hold the line to insulate their teams away from this kind of corporate culture to the extent possible. And the proportion of such managers varies from company to company, and even between different units in the same company.

We're moving in circles, but again, I don't believe a company can bring out good products for very long if my experience is the exception. And as so often the case, the "half dozen" other people might be venting for their experience.

If there is no somewhat healthy reward culture, the multiple passionate people in the many different levels needed would leave.

> I am not sure it is realistic to expect that all the good engineers never get promoted and that there would still be something good coming out over time.

I have heard lots of stories about how the only real way to get promotion/real raise was to change company you work for. Because getting raise is harder compared to hiring someone of the street with hefty premium on top.

     I have heard lots of stories about how the 
     only real way to get promotion/real raise 
     was to change company you work for.

That's definitely the best way. Here's my take. I am ignoring promotions/raises given to junior/intern type employees who become regular engineers.

80% of engineering promotions/raises come from switching companies

10% of engineering promotions/raises come from doing greenfield work. If you can find a way to do greenfield work you will look great (because you can move fast) and multiple other people will be dependent on the mess you left behind and they will look bad because they are moving at a fraction of your speed.

10% of engineering promotions/raises come from engineers who show obvious managerial talent and are interested in a managerial role

0% of engineering promotions/raises come from maintaining somebody else's system