In my case I didn't want to manage people. I was looking for some technical roles like architect. I like talking about programming. What I don't like is just ha

In my case I didn't want to manage people. I was looking for some technical roles like architect. I like talking about programming. What I don't like is just hanging out after work, and spending hours on boring chat, and that's how you get promotions in the companies I worked for. Including the technical positions. So as a result the architects and all technical stuff was made of extroverts who new quite little about the technical work. After some time it turned out that they knew quite little about any work. This is not the biggest problem. The biggest one was that they didn't seem to want to learn anything. Normal programmers were getting more and more unhappy, but the higher management was extremely happy watching how the managers can sell themselves. And now an anecdote: a super-high-boss asked once "how much time would you need for that"... we, normal programmers, answered that about 12 to 14 months. Two days later he came back and said happily "I have sold it to the HQ, they agreed to give us the project, I told them that in 6 months it will be ready". We felt betrayed, powerless and sad... the management was extremely happy. Just guess who was told to spend weekends at work to save the managers' bonuses. The project was not delivered in that time, but I think it's quite obvious. It looked liked this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mokllJ_Sz_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mokllJ_Sz_g. So my conclusion, based on my experience, is: introverts are seldom promoted, the biggest chance of promotion has a stupid mediocre person who walks after the boss replying how super he is. This is of course just my observation. I hope I was just unlucky. As for now, I just don't care about my promotion, I want to make interesting things, and get paid enough on time.