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Notes -
The claim that professional promotion requires concrete accomplishments in a role is wrong or vacuous.
Plenty of people get promoted for "bad" reasons. Often they're just in the right place at the right time. Or they market themselves and their mediocre achievements effectively. Sometimes they sequester special knowledge, which makes them seem useful, even if they're not useful in any kind of wins above replacement sense. Sometimes they get credit for others' achievements, either because they take credit unethically, or because they're just kinda near an achievement and it falls on them by osmosis. Sometimes they've been in a role for a long time, and they're butting-up against the top of the compensation window for that level, so it's easier to promote them than not. Sometimes the panel making the promotion decision is sympathetic to them for various reasons. And on and on.
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