Battlefield Promotions: Part I
A battlefield promotion (or field promotion) is an advancement in military rank that occurs while deployed in combat. A standard field promotion is advancement from current rank to the next higher rank; a "jump-step" promotion is advancement from current rank to a rank above the next highest.1
What are Battlefield Promotions in the Context of Tech?
To start, it's important to draw a distinction between the military and civilian use of the term "battlefield promotion." Unlike the military where "[b]attlefield promotions are predicated on extraordinary performance of duties while serving in combat or under combat conditions"2, the term is otherwise almost always used as a pejorative to describe promotions of individuals that occur without demonstrated qualifications, performance, or merit; or, more pointedly, promoted on a basis specifically lacking in "extraordinary performance of duties." I'm writing exclusively about this type of promotion in this post.
Consider the following scenario:
> Jane: Hey John, did you hear about Jack's promotion?
> John: Huh? What do you mean? It's not promo season.
> Jane: Well, after Jenny resigned last week, they promoted Jack into her role as the team's software development manager.
> John: Wait a sec. Jack's a level 2 engineer with 3, maybe 4, years of work experience! I thought the manager track was level 4. Not to mention that he wasn't a particularly strong engineer. How's that make any sense?
> Jane: I don't know... there wasn't an announcement. Guess you have to be in the right place and time to get promoted here... 🤷🏼
> John: 🤬 My shields are down.
I'd wager a large sum that more than a few of you have been in Jane and John's shoes (or Jack's, for that matter), or know those who have. We reflexively empathize with Jane and John's simmering outrage because Jack's promotion violates several key principles we'd like to expect in the workplace:
fairness;
transparency; and
accountability
The first time this happens at your company, it's easy to tell yourself it's an unfortunate fluke, but the longer your tenure at a company that has done this before, the more likely you'll see a pattern emerge.
“Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals."3
Though the scenario describes an engineer changing tracks and jumping 2 levels, this sort of promotion can happen within the same track, for any arbitrary number of levels > 0, and also outside of engineering. Potential outrage grows logarithmically with every level jumped in a given promotion, e.g.
but has an upper bound described by the familiar O(log n). [N.B. in case it wasn't obvious, this is tongue-in-cheek]
Kidding aside, in the absence of proactive fairness (merit), transparency, and accountability by organizational leadership responsible for effectuating such promotions, their occurrence is a strong signal of systemic weakness across several areas:
organizational design;
executive and non-executive leadership;
leadership understanding of, and discipline around, promotions/leveling;
respect for employees; and
almost inevitably, hiring/retention
If you've seen this happen more than once at your company, it's probably a good time to contemplate opportunities at more effectively managed companies.
More to come in another post.
“Battlefield Promotion.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_promotion
Ibid.
Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.