I’m just amazed there are companies actively grooming employees to be promoted.

In my experience, rarely an individual contributor ends up being promoted to a manager (because the latter retired/layoff/etc).

At the higher levels, they are filled with executives in acquired companies or hired from the outside. (CEO of LittleCo becomes VP of BiggerCo)

Although I have seen 2-3 unicorn cases where someone goes from janitor to director in 3 years - far faster than a high performing junior engineer with demonstrated accomplishments can become a senior engineer… Always assumed the former was flat out nepotism.