> you likely didn't work at a FAANG or similar company
I do work at a FAANG company. I'm very much familiar with the promo process, as an individual, as a manager and as a peer reviewer.
Managers cannot unilaterally promote a report, but they have an influential role in helping shape the packet, in getting the right reviews from sufficiently senior employees and in trailing performance reviews. The managers also read the ladder description, not just the committees, and make sure the packets contain "evidence" of all the key points. Nothing broken here, just rigmarole that people on all sides need to follow.
You can choose to believe that the committees can do a good job of ranking applicants, but a large part of this is down to how good the packet itself is.
I should state that nothing is wrong here in my opinion. There's no managerial conspiracy or role inflation. My point is that being a Jedi-like "Staff-plus" engineer is not at all necessary to reach the level.
As a "staff-plus" engineer at one of the big tech companies, I find that much of this material is simply not true in practice.
Staff promotions are of course given to some people with a good mastery of soft leadership skills, technical thought leadership and related qualities.
They are also given out for a number of other reasons. For example, when someone is perceived as a flight risk, because it makes their manager look good to promote their team, because someone has been given a lot of responsibility, whether or not they're good at handling it, because it's good for team morale to show that promotion is achievable, or because it can make a headache go away for the manager.
These reasons are all perfectly valid. But let's not overdo the Jedi-like "staff-plus" engineer trope.
I do work at a FAANG company. I'm very much familiar with the promo process, as an individual, as a manager and as a peer reviewer.
Managers cannot unilaterally promote a report, but they have an influential role in helping shape the packet, in getting the right reviews from sufficiently senior employees and in trailing performance reviews. The managers also read the ladder description, not just the committees, and make sure the packets contain "evidence" of all the key points. Nothing broken here, just rigmarole that people on all sides need to follow.
You can choose to believe that the committees can do a good job of ranking applicants, but a large part of this is down to how good the packet itself is.
I should state that nothing is wrong here in my opinion. There's no managerial conspiracy or role inflation. My point is that being a Jedi-like "Staff-plus" engineer is not at all necessary to reach the level.