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I watched a senior engineer on my team nail every project for eighteen months straight. Technically brilliant, mentored other engineers, and was super efficient with his work, which moved revenue metrics. I really had no complaints about him. His performance review was stellar.
As we were talking about this with him, he asked me:
What is stopping me from getting a promotion to Staff?
And that was a question that, as his manager, I had raised with my leadership too. In my eyes, he was absolutely ready for it and deserved it.
The answer I kept getting back was that there is no “organisational need” for another Staff Engineer in our…