> Giving good career advice...
> That’s how you increase your impact.
> High-agency people make things happen. Low-agency people wait.
> ...the best way to get what you want is to deserve it.
It's unclear what problem(s) this advice is meant to address but perhaps TFA means obstacles to promotion, although TFA seems to assume a strong correlation between "impact" or feature/product delivery and promotion/career-advancement.
The fastest way to get promoted is:
1. don't get fired/let go
2. frequently interview for higher positions with other companies and become good at interviewing
There are exceptions but, on average, it is much harder to advance via internal promotion than by getting hired somewhere else with a higher title/compensation.
The reason for this is multi-faceted:
1. It's difficult to measure employee value, so companies rarely have a good handle on it. This incentivizes set rates of advancement ("employees" perceive "fairness") and creates a fear of promoting someone unready or unreliable for a new position.
2. Employees want to "advance" by being promoted to positions with higher responsibility and higher compensation. The ability to allow for this advancement requires a higher level employee to leave or a business case for creating the position out of thin air. Thus, companies don't always have a position available.
3. (etc.)
This is true in the lower rungs, but you'll hit a glass ceiling where this starts to work against you. At a certain point your reputation with those whom you have worked closely matters much more than interviewing skills.