At companies with slower headcount growth, promotions will usually become harder. The reality is that promotions are much harder and rarer for any team with no – or sluggish – headcount growth, within a business expanding slower than before. There are many reasons why, but here’s two:
• Budget increases are under more scrutiny. A company that’s slower in headcount growth, usually cares about costs. Adding headcount is a major new cost and so new headcount is given only to teams with a very strong business case. Promoting someone is a moderate cost increase, but leadership might still require a business case.
• Seniority ratios . Companies care about non-senior-to-senior ratios, and staff-and-above-to-senior ratios. When a team hits the “normal” seniority or staff ratio there will be valid pushback from the business against more promotions, when the team does not need more senior or staff engineers.