[kamaal]

>>We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.

This is possible in companies growing rapidly or bringing in lots of money.

In 1990s, It was very common in Indian IT services firms to openly talk about salaries and promotions, as getting the best of both was easy for every one. Enter 2000s and all of this came to an abrupt end, stack ranking emerged out of nothing as people competing for limited resources compared themselves with each other.

Its not that hard to pay and promote when things are going well. Its only when the scarcity kicks when the real issues start.

[storgendibal]

This is spot on! The same goes for so many other companies. When the pie is growing, everyone gets a bigger piece, there is lots of whitespace to move into, mid-level folks can stretch into more senior roles, faster and more effectively than it takes the company to hire external senior people, and so on.