[baazaa]

It doesn't with me, because it only made sense back when firms hired lots of young people and promoted the most competent. This isn't how most firms work nowadays.

I've never even worked at a place that does promotions. Sure if your boss leaves you can apply for their job but it'll be offered to externals as well and then you'll be compared to them as an external applicant, i.e. with resume + interview. Job performance doesn't matter, HR makes no effort to even measure performance beyond PIPing people who don't show up.

Weirdly when I mention this to colleagues, who know for a fact that's how things work here, they're surprised because they never noticed. Like everyone has a mental model of 'good workers get promoted' which is seemingly impervious to direct experience.

[supportengineer]

This matches my experience. I've been working 30 years, I've very rarely ever seen anyone get promoted. Also, I have never been promoted. But, 99% of this wasn't in FAANG companies. There is a "Promo culture" now that didn't exist before.

[SoftTalker]

For the converse, work at someplace like a university. Open positions are advertised (because legally they have to be) but the vast majority are given to insiders. Qualifications are almost entirely who you know and who they know. I would guess many government organizations are similar.

[baazaa]

I have seen this, but it's still never competence based.

I really don't see anything preventing someone who's been catastrophically incompetent at every job they've ever held becoming CEO or heading a department. This might explain why cognitive ability correlates much less with earnings judging by NLSY etc. than in the past.

Anyway it's very far removed from the Peter Principle.

[plorkyeran]

As a counterexample, all of my bosses for the last ~10 years have been existing coworkers who accepted a promotion to Lead, and some of them moved further up the management ladder after that. Every external hire has been at least two levels above me.

[UncleOxidant]

> Sure if your boss leaves you can apply for their job

I've never considered a move to management to be a promotion.