I understand your sentiment. However, put yourself in the shoes of a manager. Who does he look to promote? Those who are already doing the job. It is annoying, but at least Square is codifing this so that the expectation is explicit.

How is this different from, say, Google, except that Square is open and honest about it? After I got my offer from Google last year (that I rejected), my prospective manager told me that in order to get promoted (from L4 to L5 in this case) I would need to be operating at that next level for some period of time before my promo packet was even submitted, let alone the promotion come through.

As someone who worked at Square ~3 years ago and now works at Google, the rate-limiting and "promotion by apology" (their term, not mine) feel fairly similar - Google's is a bit more impersonal. However Google pays much, much better. Square (I felt) offered more opportunities to build a good engineering reputation and to gain actualization in other ways, and to make a significant impact.

> However Google pays much, much better.

Eh, at least in my case the offer they extended me was shit (speaking from my privileged and fortunate position). Combined with that promotion process it was easy to reject (and a month later I got an offer elsewhere for one level and $75k/year more).

So my data may very well be out of date. Google's salaries are indeed somewhat low, but their total comp was way higher than what Square targeted at the time. Since Square is now public and doing so well I'm not surprised to hear they're paying better than they did.

To be clear, google is also open and honest about it. "We aim for promo to Avoid the Peter principle" is like in the official guidelines.