[jpttsn]

Right. Managers would have to be not just more observant across the board, but especially good at noticing those who don't promote themselves, to compensate for those who do.

This becomes a high bar for managers. They must effectively cancel the effects of self promotion, so that rational employees move away from it. Then, assuming managers are at least ideally rational, something would have to motivate them to behave this way in turn.

If we were serious about removing this flaw in the system, we'd have to change a lot of other things to make room for it. It's easy to evaluate any one aspect of a system, but be careful not to abandon deeper analysis once the flaws have been found.