How does Bank of America make decisions around promotions?

On the engineering side, promotions, as well as performance reports, are based on office politics. For quarterly performance reports, the managers get together and horse-trade a limit number of "Exceeds" ratings among the departments. Those Exceeds are applied to the employees who are most visible or who engage in the right kind of politicking. So for high-performance teams, still only one member of that team may be recognized with an Exceeds, even though the entire team may be exceeding expectations. In these same meetings managers dole out a limited pool of pay increases and bonuses, trading with the other managers. Promotions are handled the same way, and are influenced by one's manager's previous ability to get their employee Exceeds ratings and political recognition. So an engineer at BofA is better served by politicking and self-promoting, than by quietly and consistently performing up to a high standard.

It’s a politics game. Each manager gets a set sum. They determine who gets what. So if your numbers are better than ‘John’ but John is a buddy. John will get more. I made a good salary there, but consistently got less than the men, even when my ratings were consistently higher.

Base on your connections they don’t value employees