Keep in mind the high degree of variance we're all going to experience due to the fact that there's a lot of variance in the field and in general most of us hav

Keep in mind the high degree of variance we're all going to experience due to the fact that there's a lot of variance in the field and in general most of us have held a small number of jobs. Those of us who have held enough jobs to have even an anecdotally-significant sample arguably weren't around long enough in any one place to get a solid sense of how their promotions worked! There's plenty of places that hand out promotions as rewards for being good at your current job. There's plenty of places that require to you to have been doing some percentage of the promotion already. There's plenty of places that just never promote you. Heck, in different times and places, the same company can end up doing all of the above. Calling bullshit on any one of those because you've never experienced them is not sound.