Why big tech is promoting in a panic

Using 3D data from Findem's Talent Data Cloud, we're surfacing insights that help talent teams uncover key industry trends, market shifts, and strategic opportunities.

Amid layoffs and instability, tech companies are scrambling to retain talent and keep operations running. Despite recent uncertainty and turbulence, Deloitte predicts that the tech industry is primed for growth, buoyed by an increase in AI investment and a renewed focus on innovation. But as we look back on how technology companies weathered the recent storm, a clear pattern has emerged: organizations appear to have leaned heavily on promotions.

While promotions should signal growth and opportunity, they can often mask a deeper organizational strain. Our latest analysis charts this dynamic across the largest technology employers, revealing how promotion rates closely correlate with employee attrition. What it uncovers is a cautionary tale of reactive talent strategy in uncertain times.

Top promotion and attrition trends for Fortune 500 tech companies

This visual maps two key metrics: the percentage of employees promoted in the last two years (x axis), and the company’s attrition in 2024 (y axis), with bubble sizes representing overall employee count. 

• The upper right quadrant represents high attrition and promotion rates, suggesting a more reactive talent strategy.
• Those companies in the middle of the graph experience similar behavior, where promotions spike after talent loss is already in motion.
• Companies in the lower left appear to be exceptions, combining high promotion rates with comparatively low attrition. This suggests more stable and strategic internal mobility practices.

Analyst Josh Bersin wrote about Tesla's decision to lay off 10% of its workforce in 2024. Bersin asked: “Was there time to balance and redeploy talent internally? Absolutely not. According to my sources, every business unit had to let 10% of its workforce go, and many of the people being fired were talent acquisition leaders, the very people who help with these issues.”

Promotions can fail when leaders don’t take the long view

In theory, promotions are a powerful tool for employee engagement. But that’s not what always happens. Achievers Workforce Institute found that while 50% of HR leaders believe their companies’ internal mobility programs are effective, only half as many employees agreed.

People often take on a new or expanded role as a sort of reaction. We’ve seen this happen (and continue to happen) at the highest levels of the U.S. government, with Henry Kissinger becoming both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser after a resignation in 1973. It also happens regularly in the private sector. A chief product officer may add on marketing responsibilities after a CMO resignation, or the chief marketing officer will, at least temporarily, add sales to their duties after the head of sales leaves. 

These promotions may involve expanded roles, but not expanded resources, support, or pay; they’ve been called “dry promotions.” The “new employee” is stretched thin, maybe not ready for the new responsibility, and vulnerable to burnout, disengagement, and eventual attrition — ironic, as these are the very people companies are trying to retain.

Uncovering the hidden cost of knowledge loss

Companies fear losing institutional knowledge, so promotions become a way to retain what’s left. Layoffs and resignations can hollow out middle layers of experience, leaving gaps in decision-making, customer context, and product history.

Bersin has studied how the most effective organizations use internal mobility to improve decision-making. These companies “listen to input from hundreds of front-line employees,” he says, “and they reorganize on a regular basis. The process of internal mobility is actually the ‘lubricant’ or ‘fuel’ that makes this work. People with skills in one group bring their ideas to people in other groups, forcing ‘experts’ to reconsider their dogma and learn new ways to solve problems.”

Promoting from within becomes a necessary move to preserve business continuity. But when done without a supporting framework, it risks overwhelming newly promoted individuals and compounding the talent problem. Deloitte wrote about this in its 2025 Human Capital Trends report: “Managers need support and development — especially younger managers who earned promotions based on their achievements as individual contributors.”

Maura Lemon is a long-time learning and development leader and HR executive. She says the rapid adoption of AI is altering companies’ skills needs, and in turn making it necessary, not optional for companies to help their employees learn new skills and provide them paths to promotions.  

“The companies that implement workforce planning and talent development strategies will be the ones who thrive in this new disruptive environment, but only when their strategy includes the employee in the process,” Lemon says. “Many organizations overlook the critical role that a strong partnership with employees plays in shaping effective planning and development strategies. They often spend money hiring new people when they could be promoting employees in their own workforce if they were fully aware of the skills they possessed. Having career conversations between managers and their staff is one way to ensure a complete process.”

Lemon is currently working on a skills gap analysis, inventorying her company’s skills and figuring out what skills it needs to build for the future. At Disney, Lemon once used “baseball-card” profiles to map skills and internal aspirations as an early version of today’s talent marketplaces.

Modern-day approaches include talent marketplaces, skills assessments, and company-wide skills taxonomy aligned to roles.

What makes up an effective internal mobility strategy?

“To work, internal mobility must be part of talent reviews, talent planning, and workforce strategy — not just something that happens during recruiting,” says Mimi Turner - Vice President, Executive Search, i4cp. “Don’t just think about mobility when you’re trying to fill a role. Think about it early and often.”

Turner is right. Forward-thinking companies use promotions and internal movement as intentional tools for resilience. Their approach to internal mobility includes a few different strategies.

Workforce planning

Succession planning and workforce planning at leading organizations are always up to date, with the organization armed with data on what skills their employees have developed in recent months and years that can help them move into new internal roles. 

Proactive movement

Leading companies don’t wait for employees to apply to jobs internally. Managers regularly ask employees what internal jobs they are interested in, and what skills employees would like to develop. Managers are also trained not to hoard talent, but to think of employees as working for “the organization” and not an individual person. As HR Executive reports, “One major reason internal mobility efforts fail is that managers want to keep their best talent, largely because they are rewarded based on how their units perform.” 

Expansive thinking and support

Proactive internal mobility involves a wide range of role movements: promotions, transfers, additional projects, mentorships, new positions, and job swapping. Newly promoted employees are provided onboarding and pay adjustments.  

Knowledge sharing

To avoid the feeling that people are “irreplaceable,” proactive organizations are always prepared for employee turnover with knowledge-sharing initiatives to reduce reliance on key individuals and protect institutional memory.

These practices turn promotions from a quick fix into a meaningful retention and development strategy.

Kyle Ramkissoon heads up internal mobility at FIS, the world’s largest fintech, with 55,000 employees. He says he’s “not aware of a single person who comes into a role and wants to stay in that role forever.” 

He and FIS are helping employees change roles, internally. The company works with employees to understand what their skills are, how proficient they are at those skills, and whether they are better suited for a different role, internally.

Reframing promotions as a sustainable talent strategy

Promotions alone won’t solve retention. Without structure and strategy, they risk compounding attrition.

The organizations that will thrive in this new era and are primed to seize the growth moment are those that approach internal movement deliberately and backed by data, driven by strategy, and supported by real infrastructure. 

Ultimately, a promotion should not be a survival tactic. “We wouldn’t promote somebody just to keep them,” says FIS’s Ramkissoon. Promotions should be a signal of growth — for the employee, and for the organization. And, it’s a recruiting tactic. The software company Certinia, for example, set up a proactive internal mobility program and found it to be a “powerful recruiting tool.”

It’s also financially smart. Ramkissoon says existing employees generally should have a leg up at an open job, as they understand the culture, how to navigate the organization, and who to go to for what. Their promotions save the company money as well, he says, in not having to go externally and recruit.

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