[Thread] Have you ever witness someone get unfairly promoted? What was the reason?

I met one of my college friends yesterday at a bar. She got married last year and was laying down the struggle of finding a new job. Now, apparently in many interviews when she reached the final few rounds, the HR or the Hiring Manager enquires about marital status and whether she has any children. When she mentions that she recently got married and that she does not have any kids, the company stops responding to her. She elaborated that although they might have found another fit for the role but she is a T-1 grad who did her Masters from an Ivy League college and has worked for 4-5 years in both NA+EMEA and India. It is becoming more apparent to her that, HRs and Hiring Managers have a strong bias because they are definitely presuming that since she recently got married and will likely have a child soon, that she will use up her maternity privileges leading to significant productivity drop. Meaning, that the company will likely have to hire someone else to make up for productivity loss. She does not plan to have kids for another 3-4 years but getting married is proving really hard for her. Especially in the Series B+ startups that she is applying to.

sounds shitty but have heard such stories

Here’s my story in the field of software engineering: There’s this colleague of mine who is on a pure tech role but hardly codes. The person spends his entire time on LinkedIn sharing new age tech stuff and projects himself to the world as if he is the Messiah of architecture. The guy preaches the same gyan to members of my team. For the last one year, this guy, in the capacity of Software Architect has not pushed a single line of code into our application source code and this is on record. Yet, he is highly regarded as an expert in technology. The guy has killed the careers of some genuine software engineers with his unique approach to make it look like he is taking a lead to own stuff in tech space. The guy has had tremendous career growth, got promoted 3 times in the last 5 years. In my view, the guy is a tech junkie whose knowledge carries no value. Yet he managed to butter the leadership team to reach to position that he is currently in. Did you encounter any such people? If yes, comment your story.

One of my close coworker rather a best friend, recently talked to his manager for promotion. However the hike after promo what manager said was ~25%. However same experience, same team -same experience guy who got promo in last December cycle got fixed around 28-30L. Now he had asked suggestions. He's fixed is coming around 24. He asked me how to get fairly treated. Both are having same experience, same team. However the earlier guy joined at higher fixed. Is there any way to see this as he can't compare himself directly. I am not expecting promotion this year but this seems to be a genuine question to be treated fair. If any such scenario comes to me , I would simply get an offer and leave. However I want to know the correct approach.

Knew this as concept but didn't know the term. Learnt it last week on one of my posts here Have you faced this in any of your previous companies?

Just came to know from a friend. How incompetent are management to promote someone to just lay them off citing performance reasons.

There has been scenarios in which a hard working smart employee doesn't get promotion or hike. Whereas few who are ready to share beds, go to pubs and do quid quo pro are getting every benefit out of it. This highly demotivates the hard working female emps. So have u faced any such? Or do you know the full story of someone doing it ? Bcoz at startups there is no time restrictions. Sometimes late night work happens and so many things are linked with it. I hope I don't need to elaborate.

A friend of mine had a promising interview with a company, but unfortunately was not chosen for the position. From the past few days, one of the managers from her current company started acting suspiciously, showing an unusual level of interest and care towards my friend, and expressing a desire to have her on his team. It's worth noting that my friend received a referral for the interview from a former employee of her current organization, who also happened to be a member of the interview panel. I suspect that news of my friend's interview somehow leaked to her current organization through the ex-employee, and that some kind of action was taken as a result. Have any of you experienced something similar?

Joined as a management trainee in a city I went to for the first time (totally different culture, language issues etc), had a very poor performing team (at times unethical sales practices), made a few personnel changes. New person who joined has great contacts in the market and is helping me grow. Now my boss says it's all because of his connections and experience, what have you done? When the team was bad, I was incompetent, when the team is good, they are good what am I doing? Is this fair?

Why does HR ghosts? Is this being taught to them in HR courses? In a decent work setup a simple No or Yes either on mail or text would be ideal.