I would argue it's different, because customers are harsh but rational, while promotion committees are more capricious than harsh. Customers have "skin in the

I would argue it's different, because customers are harsh but rational, while promotion committees are more capricious than harsh. Customers have "skin in the game". They spend their own money, not somebody else's, and they presumably use what they bought. Promotion committees have little skin in the game. They meet for an hour and make decisions, and they don't see any consequences of those decisions. They're following rules they didn't make that are supposed to lead to a good result, but they may not in practice. If the results are bad, they don't really get any feedback until years later. Maybe this blog post will be taken as feedback. Unfortunately this story sounds pretty familiar to me (having worked at Google).