1. Do I consistently deliver more (in output, impact, or reliability) than peers at my pay level?

2. Is my work visible and tied to meaningful business outcomes, rather than low-impact tasks?

3. Am I known as dependable and easy to work with, especially under pressure?

4. Would the company feel a real loss-operationally or financially-if I left?

5. Have I made myself clearly more valuable to the organization than what I currently cost?

Promotions are supposed to incentivise people to stay, rather than leave. If the company never promoted anyone, people would leave. So there needs to be a path for promoting people. But that process doesn’t have to be transparent, or consistent, or fair - in-fact it rarely is.

You promote people who consistently overdeliver, on time, at or below cost, who are a pleasure to work with, who would benefit the company long term, who would be a pain to lose. A key precondition is that such people consistently get more done compared to other people with equal pay, otherwise, they don’t stand out and they are not promotion material.

What counts as overdelivering will vary based on specific circumstances. It’s a subjective metric. Are you involved with a highly visible project, or are you working on some BS nobody would miss if it got axed? Are you part of a small team, or are you in a bloated, saturated org? Are you the go-to person when shit hits the fan, or are you a nobody people don’t talk to? Are you consistent, or are you vague and unpredictable? Does your work impact any relevant bottom lines, or are you just part of a cost centre? It really isn’t rocket science, for the most part.

I'm tired of people dunking on the west.

Iraq today is likely a better place to live in than Iraq under Saddam. That's thanks to a painful and costly intervention. Muslims continue messing it up for everybody everywhere, the way they always did, regardless of geography or circumstances, under any pretence and excuse under the sun. West gets blamed for it no matter what. Rinse and repeat. It's getting old.

I simply asked you to qualify what makes the EU a victim of the US, and why that's somehow the reason for things never being built or done in the EU.

That's socialist dictatorship. Why do you want the EU to be more like China, instead of the EU being more like the US? It will result in further isolation and decline of Europe which sorely depends both on the US (and China) for survival.

And just because it's a law somewhere on earth, doesn't make it reasonable or enforceable or legal.

1. American and European laws have different standards for data processing 2. EU citizens willingly go into a contract with an American company, buying and using American services 3. EU citizens complain American law is different than European law, whilst continuing to use American products 4. EU citizens expect their laws and regulations to apply to American companies

Nobody can reasonably expect American companies to just bend over for whatever the lawmakers in Europe demand. It's an absurd scenario that only the EU can come up with.

This is all hot air. If it's so easy to build, it would've been built by now. I bet you that there won't be a single successful European LinkedIn competitor - not for the past 20 years, not now, and not for the next 20. Europe is fundamentally at a deep state of decay at every level. The only way anything might be built, is by banning the competition. At which point you might as-well just forget about a social network for professionals entirely, because you're probably working at a gulag and there's no job hopping to be done anyways :)

Fully agree. Europe expects some kids from nowheresville Tennessee to die in a ditch defending Ukraine. The war will be over the second they need to draft 18 year-olds at scale from anywhere in western Europe to go defend "Europe". Nobody in France will die defending Poland, nobody in Greece will die defending Latvia. The EU is such a joke.

And where's all of this evidence of this hidden extraordinary European talent and ability that just needs to be unleashed given some more lawyers and regulation?

This is a joke.

LinkedIn doesn't need to obey to EU law. It needs to obey to American law, which allows LinkedIn to do business with anybody (other than people from sanctioned countries) whilst complying with US law. EU's laws don't matter in the US. The EU can sue LinkedIn, but LinkedIn can just safely ignore any lawsuits and ignore sanctions, because they are an American company subject to American laws.

EU citizens are willingly subscribing to an American service, then complain the American service doesn't abide by EU laws. That's laughable at every level, to any individual with a modicum of intelligence. If you don't agree to the terms, don't use LinkedIn. You are not entitled to anything.