All the comments here so far ( 4 hours since this post went up) are very disappointing. They have so far:
1. Insulted the company the person has worked for (Irrelevant to the post)
2. Insulted the titles as meaningless (Irrelevant to the post)
3. Talked about Job scope (Irrelevant to the post)
4. Demeaned the promotion (Sour grapes and just nasty)
Now, i get that promotions in corporate environments are always a nasty business - unfair, political, skewed and arbitrary. It doesnt always go to the most deserving.
What this post has done (at least in my experience in the corporate world) is shown how the sausage is made. It is not pretty and a lot of the post dwells on "buy-in", "sponsorship", "relationships", etc because this is how the game is played. I have personally seen it played by both technically competent and technically incompetent people for senior technical roles.
I wish the comments would focus on the contents of the article rather than sounding like a bunch of people tired of corporate shenanigans. I mean, we all are tired of corporate bullshit when it comes to promotion. At a certain point, i decided to stop playing it and decided i am going to effectively "plateau" at that level. But, that gave me leverage i didnt have before which is that i no longer that to do anything i didnt want to do - skip-level ass-kissing, show-boating, etc, etc.
To all aspirants who wish to climb the corporate ladder and reap the benefits (financial, better job prospects, ability to work internationally at higher levels of seniority, better mating chances, better access to higher quality of life services, etc while trading off your time, stress and likely your physical and mental health), this post has solid advice.