EDIT: What I mean is, you need multiple passionate people across many levels to achieve that. If reward culture wasn't somewhat healthy, I don't believe this could work.
What I am saying is that there are a lot of good engineers don't get promoted, despite doing important work on vital systems, because they don't aggressively self-promote and optimize their careers around the promotion path.
There are also companies that are good at recognizing good yet normally-under-appreciated work, and there are companies that are bad at it. FAANG is bad at it, in my experience, and the experience of people I've worked with. It's an anecdote and not data.
I even stated that I don't doubt this may have been true for you. But if every large company were really so bad in general as is portrayed here, the people who make good stuff, and who need to work with each other a great deal to achieve that, would leave.
PragmaticPulp specifically said the engineers his team hired were actually rather good, just had bad habits:
> The strange thing was that many of them were actually good programmers when it came down to it.
And I did see other peers who did not play any games that I could see be promoted for merit.
So maybe generalizations over large companies just don't work well.
I think that this largely depends on how good or bad one's immediate management is. Good managers hold the line to insulate their teams away from this kind of corporate culture to the extent possible. And the proportion of such managers varies from company to company, and even between different units in the same company.
If there is no somewhat healthy reward culture, the multiple passionate people in the many different levels needed would leave.
I have heard lots of stories about how the only real way to get promotion/real raise was to change company you work for. Because getting raise is harder compared to hiring someone of the street with hefty premium on top.
I have heard lots of stories about how the
only real way to get promotion/real raise
was to change company you work for.
80% of engineering promotions/raises come from switching companies
10% of engineering promotions/raises come from doing greenfield work. If you can find a way to do greenfield work you will look great (because you can move fast) and multiple other people will be dependent on the mess you left behind and they will look bad because they are moving at a fraction of your speed.
10% of engineering promotions/raises come from engineers who show obvious managerial talent and are interested in a managerial role
0% of engineering promotions/raises come from maintaining somebody else's system