Promotions and titles play a huge part in a lot of people's self-image, even at Google. While I was there, I heard more than a few engineers describe their near

Promotions and titles play a huge part in a lot of people's self-image, even at Google. While I was there, I heard more than a few engineers describe their near future goals as "Achieve level n by next year" instead of "build this thing" or "Improve this technology" etc. We liked to think we were better than "traditional" software companies like Microsoft or IBM but it was all the same. Corporatism and careerism as far as the eye can see.