Most of the time it's the "friends club" which gets promoted, either founders old friends or close colleagues recruited after. That makes sense I guess in terms of social relationships but I would rather prefer that they cut the BS and say it openly instead of pretending they have a promotion process.

That feels even more insulting having a review on the supposed past performance and knowing it's just theater anyways.

My advice here is that if you want to get promoted, just switch companies.

To be fair, I never pay any attention to getting promoted. Most of my career growth has been through changing jobs and contracting. If I really want to do something else, I just look around. The chance that a suitable position exists in the company I'm in and I want to do it is fairly low.

For most engineers, "promotion" means "convert yourself into a manager somehow", and I know many engineers who just aren't interested - to the point it wouldn't surprise me if this is assumed in many orgs.