Agreed - this is a very hard problem. "Out" works well as incompetence/slow progresss is very obvious. But as OP suggests "up" is more tricky due to its less ob

Agreed - this is a very hard problem. "Out" works well as incompetence/slow progresss is very obvious. But as OP suggests "up" is more tricky due to its less objective nature. And worse, if you try to make it objective by quantifying achievements, at the management level this leads to horrible short term decision-making. The promotion cycle is generally a year or half year, so that's how long you have to show results. This method probably works very well for large scale, non-technical corporates because the aptitude to practice politics successfully would logically have strong correlations with other useful soft work skills (sales, negotiation, social skills). However in a highly technical company this might not be as effective. I wonder how Google does it?