Any promo process with any randomness (especially a promo process that changes over time as upper management changes) is effectively a stochastic version of "promo after N years after not being fired." I don't worry much about promos, but still randomly get promos because the stuff I found important for a few years was also nicely slotted into the promo standards at the time. And the obsession on titles and such book-cover-like triva does seem to get worse the more they try to systematize the process. When it's clearly equivalent to rolling dice, people worry less about it. The more rigorous they make the process and the more they have panels and packets and so on, the more people start introducing each other with their title. My first ten years in software, no one cared about titles at all unless you met with a non-engineering org and met dumb people with an exalted titles (in which case you felt bad; titles only serve to harm morale, they never improve it). The last ten years, people act like becoming Senior Principal Staff Engineer is like becoming a different sort of human. It does correlate with more pay, so it's hard to say it's completely trivial, but honestly, once you can afford a house or whatever, it's less important to happiness than fulfilling work, good co-workers, flexibility to meet your family or parenting obligations, autonomy over your work, and so on. One imagines one gets more autonomy by having a grander title, but really you get autonomy by just exercising the autonomy you have by being in control of the scarce and valuable resource of being able to create and improve software systems. If what you find important is valued by the organization you work in, then it will work out that people trust you, no matter the levels.