Reading this comment and thinking back to my memory of the article from reading it earlier today and when it has been posted in the past, I wonder if the "faile

Reading this comment and thinking back to my memory of the article from reading it earlier today and when it has been posted in the past, I wonder if the "failed promotion" wasn't so much a matter of "not working on a shiny new project" as not making sure metrics were in place to document how the improvements to the service he was maintaining made it so it could handle more load. At some point on the ladder it's no longer enough to do good work, you need to show your work and why it matters to the company.