A commonly held belief among people is that only employees who have spent a significant number of years working for the same company should be promoted to more senior roles within the organization. Although the reasoning may seem like a logical one at first, it naively ignores a vast plethora of other factors that are generally taken into account by managers who are considering promoting one of their employees.
Firstly, most people who adhere to the sentiment expressed in the prompt seem to ignore the importance of performance in determining whether an employee is fit for a promotion. After all, companies are profit-oriented institutions that shall, by nature, opt for the most efficient solution in every scenario presented. Therefore, whenever a company is fortunate enough to have hired a rock-star employee, even if his tenure within the company has been a short one, it will try its best to retain said employee using every armament in its arsenal, including promotions. For this same reason, a more novel employee could quickly outrank one of his colleagues who has spent his entire career working for the same company, just on the basis of performance alone. This phenomenon is clearly reflected in the hedge fund industry. A first-year analyst with a nose for good investments will climb the corporate ladder faster than an average-performing vice president.
Secondly, the line of thinking expressed in the first paragraph erroneously places an exaggerated importance on the employee’s loyalty towards the company. Although this attribute is indeed of no little importance, most people overlook, once more, the intrinsic profit-seeking nature of every company. Loyalty neither inflates the company’s topline nor does it reduce costs, whereas excellent performance does both.
In conclusion, the belief that only employees with a long career within a company should be promoted is a childish and nonsensical idea, in that it wantonly downplays the importance of crucial criteria, such as performance, in deciding whether an employee should be promoted.