Promotions are just a form of vendor lock-in that (especially) small companies employ to keep people longer. I’ve seen barely two years out of college non cs majors promoted to senior engineer based on finishing some “large project” which anyone else in the engineering team could have done.

The real sleezy thing is that by promoting someone to senior who isn’t nearly qualified at all, the company has now made it exponentially more difficult for these engineers to switch companies. Esp funny is the promotion of unqualified individuals to “project lead”.

I’ve seen many of these individuals move to next companies and revert back to standard level software engineer.

It’s never about titles - you need to be aware that companies are using the titles against you rather than for you.

Also it pisses off the engineers in your organization who do deserve a raise to see unqualified promotions. Its a one way ticket for a small company to very quickly lose its true talent (80/20 rule) and talent follows talent. Once you get a few supporting cast leave, even the actually qualified senior engineers won’t want to stick around longer because they will feel intellectually isolated as well as feel like the engineering management are inept.