[vechagup]

Agreed. I work in the PP's PA and was promoted on my first try for doing unsexy but worthwhile maintenance work on an important tool. It can happen. In my estimation the best thing to do if you want to get promoted is 0) have a positive relationship with your manager 1) read the SWE ladder for the next level 2) give your manager a document that describes your work using the language of the ladder as closely as possible. Said ladder does not say you need to deliver a shiny new thing, despite what is commonly assumed in this forum.

[reissbaker]

It's good to know the system I'm talking about is mostly dead; the committee of unknown engineers always felt bonkers to me. That being said, a ratio of 1:5 or 1:6 of bad incentives at promo committees still sounds pretty suboptimal to me — when I was on calibration committees at FB, it was super rare for me to come away with the feeling that the wrong thing was being incentivized or rewarded at an engineering level (oh boy was product management a different story, but that's a different post). There were a couple times where I disagreed with an outcome, but that was like 1:150 or better.