Yes, that’s true. But that only happens if you give them something to work with. I volunteered for the thorny complicated initiatives at the startup I worked for prior to AWS.

While there was no place to be “promoted to” besides being a team lead as an IC, it did give me the chance to have the skillset to get my next job. I specifically told my CTO - we had a good working relationship - that a team lead would be a demotion. I was already influencing the direction of the entire company. He couldn’t “promoted me”. But he gave me a nice raise and kept letting me choose the hairy work that crossed team boundaries.

At BigTech, your manager can help you go through the promotion process. But it is still mostly out of their hands whether you get promoted. You have to prove you are deserving to a wider audience.