What are the criteria for promotion within the company?

Knowing what kind of person is more likely to be promoted, and clarifying the direction. But after working hard to improve, has the ability met the promotion requirements?

Maybe you are full of confidence, but the reviewers may not approve
If TL doesn't approve, you don't even have a chance to be nominated
If the managers in the department do not approve it, it will be canceled during the pre-review
If the jury does not agree, you will still fail in the review stage
What kind of ability level can stand the assessment of different reviewers and different perspectives, and can be promoted almost without dispute?

1 Appears to be objective

Some common practices of judgment ability. In the review stage, it is the jury that formally judges whether your ability meets the promotion requirements.

But in the nomination and pre-screening stage, it is TL who judges your ability, and possibly HR, managers and directors. They are not like the judges who carefully confirm whether you have met the promotion requirements for nearly 1 hour, but combine your promotion materials and make subjective judgments. When TL and others judge your ability subjectively, they are also under great psychological pressure. Because there is no unified objective standard, it is prone to lack of persuasion.

For those who have not mastered the correct method of judgment, in order to avoid controversy during the nomination or pre-trial stage, they may adopt simple and crude logic, completely based on objective conditions. Common practices are as follows:

1.1 Based on the current level of years as the standard
Like P6, you have been at this level for 2 years, and Lao Wang next door has stayed for 4 years, TL may give priority to nominating Lao Wang. This is also the phenomenon of "priority for elderly employees" that many people complain about in private.

1.2 Working years
Like 1, except it looks at total years of employment rather than hours at current level. This is also reasonable, because although some socially recruited employees have not been in the company for a long time, they have accumulated a lot of experience before, which is different from newcomers.

1.3 Performance
Link performance directly to ability, and apply for promotion if performance is good. This is most convenient because the performance results are clear.

But in fact they are all only seemingly objective. Although the number of years and performance are determined and quantifiable, they are not directly and positively related to ability. In a large company with a complete promotion system, I have never seen the judges rely on these conditions to judge whether the applicant's ability meets the promotion requirements; on the contrary, when the judges conclude at the end, they will specifically remind TL:

No matter what the number of years is not our standard of judgment ability. It takes 1 year to master a certain skill and then repeat it for 9 years, and it takes 10 years to continuously improve. There is a huge gap in ability between the two.
Performance is not the same as ability. There are many reasons for good performance, and strong ability is only one of them. Not to mention, companies have paid off in salary/bonuses/stock for performance. Promotion is a recognition of "ability improvement" and cannot be used as a performance reward. Performance focuses on business results, and promotion focuses on capability improvement. Some people may be handy at the current level and get good performance, but their abilities have not improved substantially.
2 The first logic: do the next level of things in advance
The jury reviews what you have done to see if it reflects the ability required for the next level. Only those who are doing things at the next level at the current level have the opportunity to be promoted.

According to most people's thinking, what level to do, as long as you do the current level well, you can apply for promotion, and then go to the next level to do the next level. The reality is that you have to do the next level of things in advance, and you can only apply for promotion when you do it well. This also explains why many P6 and P7 do similar things.

Therefore, if you want to judge whether you can apply for promotion, a simple and effective way is to see if what you are doing is similar to the next level.

In many large factories, if you are a P6 and want to apply for a P7, you must "bring a small project or a small team" (about 3 to 5 people). If you have been only completing the project tasks assigned by others, even if you are very skilled, it is difficult to get nominated; even if the supervisor helps you to nominate, it will be difficult to defend.

3 The second logic: do well at the current level
You may think of a shortcut to promotion: after the promotion is passed, immediately ask the supervisor to arrange a job at the next level. In this way, you can improve your abilities according to the requirements of the next level, and you will be able to usher in the next promotion soon.

It's a beautiful idea, but unfortunately, it doesn't work in reality. Even at the same level, different people have different abilities. Supervisors are afraid to hand over the next level directly to the newly promoted.

So we also need to add the second promotion logic: only by doing well at the current level can you have a chance to be promoted.

You may have doubts: I have been promoted to this level, and I must already have the ability of this level. Isn’t it a matter of course to do things well at this level? The real promotion logic is not understood in this way. Successful promotion only means that your ability has reached the basic level of the current level, but it does not necessarily have the level of proficiency and proficiency. If you want to advance to the next level, you must first achieve mastery at the current level.

If it is a leapfrog rank system, people at the same level will actually be divided into several ranks, such as "P6-/P6/P6+", "T2C/T2B/T2A". (Some companies will also be divided into four levels of ABCD, but the difference between B and C is difficult to determine, not recommended)
If it is a stepped rank system, people of different levels at the same level are originally distinguished according to "basic", "proficient" and "proficient", such as T2.1/T2.2/T2.3 under Tencent's old rank system.
Although these grades are not necessarily reflected in the management system, there is generally such a division of grades in the minds of HR and supervisors

Only when you reach the level of proficiency will you have the opportunity to be promoted to the next level, and the supervisor will assign you the next level of tasks. The reason for labeling P6+ and T2.3 levels as "Mastery & Improvement". Because of this level, you have to do both the current level (because you have achieved proficiency and high efficiency) and the next level (because you have achieved proficiency, you have to consider promotion).

So after you have just finished the promotion, don't immediately think about doing things at the next level, and rush to the next level; instead, you should first consider how to do the things at the current level well, and improve the ability of the current level to "proficient" degree.

4 Distinguish between basic, proficient and proficient
There are no clear and objective criteria that can be directly applied. Based on empirical understanding, a set of relatively easy-to-operate standards is summarized.

4.1 Basics
Means "will do". If you can do the things required by a certain level, it means that you have the basic ability. "Will" means to complete it independently, rather than tell you after someone else has designed it, and then you will do it according to someone else's design.

4.2 Skilled
It means "doing well". Unlike basics, proficiency refers to being able to do things well at the current level. Doing well is reflected in being proficient in doing things, mastering the best practices in doing things, being able to ensure efficiency and quality, and being able to get good results.

4.3 Mastery
Things that can optimize the current level, such as taking different ways, thinking and tools to do the same thing, and making breakthroughs.

4.4 Do a good job of V.S optimization
Doing well just means mastering the mature experience summed up by others
Optimizing, you create new experiences yourself
What is "new experience"? Not a "world's first", but something new in its own context (team, line of business, company, etc.). For example, the "microservice" architecture may have been used by other companies for a long time, but if you are the one who introduces it to this company, this is your optimization.

This set of standards is to judge the ability required at a certain level, not the level of individual skills. For example, the core responsibility of P5/P6 is project development, and project development involves a series of individual skills such as business understanding, project planning, programming language and bug fixing. For these levels of specific skills, it is more appropriate to distinguish between technical breadth or depth.