Denied promotion for having a smaller headcount

I don't know, to me this sort of makes sense. I agree with the underlying critique I've seen elsewhere that headcount alone is often considered sufficient cause for promotion in tech — rather than what was created with that headcount. But I also see why a company might have a tough time promoting someone to "Director" who manages seven reports, regardless of their impact on the company. Ostensibly they want someone at that level to be capable of a certain amount of management that goes beyond 1:1s and into value-setting and overall strategy, so that when they want to laterally transfer they can take a director position on another project. And it's pretty hard to prove that with seven reports. The general reaction here is that Copilot made a lot of money etc, so Director is commensurately well-compensated. But probably companies should just be better about rewarding people for work within their current role rather than giving folks senior management titles and responsibilities merely for working on hit projects.

Useful context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408700

Quite odd that the last time around he complained about only getting a promo out of it, and this time it is about not getting one. Are we supposed to believe that he was promised a promo skipping past levels for delivering this? Who would even had the power to credibly promise that at a company like MS? Certainly not his VP, if the first story is to be believed.

Copilot is a feature which almost literally writes itself. It sounds like Alex doesn’t understand how lucky he was to be at the right place at the right time, but superiors _did_ understand that.