Originally Posted by Unregistered

The concept of "average" and "strong" has also changed over the last 5-10 years though.

And history does matter. Some ROs now may not even be teaching as well as his/her subordinate, but in the past they managed to rise up so fast to their current position now.

The bar has been raised so much already.

If we zoom out and look at the bigger picture now, a high performing GEO3 will need to have a portfolio that covers almost everything (IP and non IP related), while specializing in some of his/her strengths (leadership role e.g. IC-ship or being extremely skilled in something). Most of such officers' lives revolve only around work. We can already see so many SEOs and GEO5s (can also guess their ages already) remaining single or childless by choice due to the demand of work. Gotta sacrifice something to climb. Those able to juggle work and everything else are either rare, or have some sort of external support (rich or free spouse, family etc)

There is also that element of luck of having a good RO who fights for you and SLs who are fair.

In a human centric type of industry, your progression is a lot more complex than other sectors like tech or finance. Right here, it is a combination of arbitrary numbers, proper connections and finally, luck.

To put this in a more crude way, the complexity and demand of this industry now ensures a constant flow of officers resigning, remaining stagnant, being recruited and finally, being promoted, no? Bell curve model for fairness, no?