Multiple times teams would end up losing their manager and the promotion felt to the one that losing as a contributor would hurt less.
I've seen it happen outside IT too, e.g. in banking where a higher position also implied legal responsibility so it came with perils. But again middle managers, bank directors, stuff like that.
I have seen less capable engineers who were more interested in management being promoted. Some engineers may interpret this as promoting incompetence, because many engineers only value engineering competence. Which is also why they don't get put in management positions.
This just isnt the case and suggests you have not been at a senior enough position to understand the dynamics of promotion into middle management from a the top-down pov.
It is not uncommon for an incompetent person to be promoted in order to be a fall guy, to be setup to fail and take the blame -- to play one department against another, and so on. Promoting incompetent people can also surface their incompetence to others in ways that could be politically useful. This happens all the time.
I’ve definitely seen something approaching this before, in different industries even.
Your anec-data is no more valid or invalid than mine. You probably have had a "better" and more successful career than I've had is all I'm saying and that probably colors your experience in a way where you see something like this and you think, "no way! no company would ever do this! How stupid of a company!" That's good - that's "correct," it is stupid.
Well, I'm here saying, "meh, I've seen variations on this for sure, maybe not exactly, but yeah... it's a thing people (IMO stupidly) do."
Some companies are pretty dumb. Speaking of "dumb" companies, I once worked for a company (now out of business) that had a little switch under the dashboard I found that turned off the mandatory maintenance tracking for their airplanes. Every time the owner would cover shifts, he'd forget to turn that switch back on and the airplane would stop logging time. Weird how the previous day it had mysteriously flown all day and only logged an hour or so... Needless to say I left shortly after I found this out. Colossally stupid that move on their part - but it happened. When I tell my airline buddies about this experience they look at me like I'm a martian. "Like a switch? No way, you're exaggerating. Didn't the mechanics fix it?" Guys... the mechanics were just as complicit in the issue, some organizations just do dumb stuff. Some workplace cultures breed stupid behavior. Sometimes people are dumb. In the long run these companies burn out and fail typically though...