[wavemode]

I do think it's a bad thing, but not for the reason you think.

Promotion is an inherently political process. "Impact" is really short for "impact on the business leaders' opinion of me".

I think it's a bad thing when a promotion process that is political, pretends to not be political by dressing itself up with flowery language. What it leads to is engineers burning themselves out trying to deliver real value, then getting passed up because they didn't make the right appeals to the shadow council.

If we all know the process is political then we should at least work toward transparency, so that people know that it's not enough to work hard and deliver results, you also have to advertise and network yourself.