In 2024, only 12% of senior engineers received a promotion after 18 months of internal tenure, down from 34% in 2019, according to a Stack Overflow survey of 48,000 developers. LinkedIn 5.0’s ‘Career Coach’ feature and Glassdoor 4.0’s ‘Salary Transparency’ dashboard have failed to move the needle: 89% of engineers who relied on internal ladder progression reported stagnant compensation, while job hoppers saw a median 34% salary increase per move. Career growth through corporate HR portals and crowd-sourced review sites is dead. Job hopping is the only viable path left.…