Well the other half of the problem is that I think most companies are so disorganized that even if an engineer does great work the company might not know within

Well the other half of the problem is that I think most companies are so disorganized that even if an engineer does great work the company might not know within a year. They may look at tickets completed, "buzz" around the individual, being assigned to a project that was highly profitable, staying late a lot, or any arbitrary thing they want to.