Earlier quoted context omitted.
What Kortilla said matches my experience at a few companies. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there are different/worse ecosystems out there. Also just working harder doesn’t guarantee anything, which some employees misunderstand—communicate with your manager! You need to work on the right things and understand leveling expectations and promo cadences, and of course your manager is hugely important.
"leveling expectations" are mostly pure nonsense, you should know that. People are promoted for visibility in the eyes of management and delivering the final product, but not real ownership of the actual work that goes into advocating for and building the correct solution (which management is often clueless about, since it involves details which may seem minute but are essential to producing real value).
What you think is the correct solution is often not the correct appropriation of engineering resources for the business.
> which management is often clueless about
It is your job as an engineer to communicate this to management. If you are not capable of doing do so, you are incompetent as an engineer. Being an engineer isn’t being paid to just build whatever you want. That’s how you end up with Juicero.