A few jobs back, my employer promoted me once within a year of starting from a new college graduate position to a junior position, then strung me along for three years with "you're just not quite ready for a mid level position but you will be. Any day now!" This was all in spite of me doing the work of a senior position within the company for the last two years.

So I got a job at a different employer and went from a junior position to a senior position, like magic, nearly doubling my total income in the process. My coworker did the same, hopping from a senior position to a management position at my current employer. I've increasingly observed how corporate United States is painfully stupid and inefficient and it continues to boggle my mind

Going to use this chance to vent about the fact that when the senior guy on my team left for another company it was basically all but confirmed I would take over his role I had been there the longest, was already doing a lot of senior work, and was the giy people on the team came to when they needed help, to the point we spent the month or so after he handed in his notice to train me on what he did and give me access to the systems he managed. Then a week after he left my boss announced that the guy that had been there 3 months would be taking on the senior role.

Yeah, idk of people actually just get promoted to a new job. I always have to apply to av internally posted position. If I get it I guess I technically get promoted.