Organizations are generally pyramids, where you have fewer people on top than on the bottom. You can't promote everyone, so you have to decide on criteria - and

Organizations are generally pyramids, where you have fewer people on top than on the bottom. You can't promote everyone, so you have to decide on criteria - and hard work in software engineering isn't always high-leverage work. In my experience the best engineers can figure out the right work to get done, saving hours of hard work that never even needed to happen.