[sdoering]

A lot of orgs don't control their promotion cycle.

Imagine a local unit with the budget given for promotions from global is announced after the yearly promotion discussions of all team leaders happened.

So they had to come up with some form of ranking so that the cut off can be made based on the available budget.

So even if 15 people had done all that their team leads said would be necessary for a promotion the decision hinges on some internal ranking as well as a globally decided budget.

[kqr]

This sounds like a good example of the "lamentably poor leadership and management culture" we are talking about.