> Career ladders generally don't support that kind of progression I can't speak for the generality of edge cases as I don't have that much experience with them

> Career ladders generally don't support that kind of progression I can't speak for the generality of edge cases as I don't have that much experience with them, but from my limited experience, that's not what I see. In my company, people putting together promo packages will typically ask people at higher levels to provide feedback or supporting evidence. For promo packages that I helped with, I'd absolutely look for evidence of packing punches way above their level as it's literally the best evidence that the person could operate at higher levels. As far as I can tell, IC promos do run on the back of relatively narrow expertise (e.g. mine was on the back of expertise about integration between niche systems that a person of my background wouldn't normally think to integrate). But the pursuit for said expertise was also in service of organizational impact with high visibility among higher-ups, i.e. one could argue it could fall under both "rock solid eng" and "steep trajectory" buckets simultaneously. So I don't think it's as clear cut as an "either/or" proposition.