It occurs to me looking at this and the other responses so far in this subthread - that it's quite likely more common in larger organizations (Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Intel) where career advancement is not quite so directly correlated to "leaving for a better position in a different company". If you can get your best employees promoted into roles where they are likely to become your reports again when you yourself get promoted, there's more benefit for the manager in advancing people they want to keep "on their team" as they themselves climb the career ladder. There is, I guess, less opportunity for that sort of mutually beneficial career development in startups or SMEs (with the exception of the occasional "freelance teams" that you sometimes see all jump ship from one project/startup to another together - I've seen that both in tiny hardware startups as well as in 9 figure projects in major corporations.)

Actually, there is generally even more opportunity for career development in startups than in larger organizations. If the company is growing, new positions are opening up regularly and there isn't a large bench of talent to fill them with.

When I was a manager in a small startup, I tried to regularly discuss their career goals and how they could develop towards those goals. One of the benefits of a startup was that we had a lot of flexibility to create experiences matching those goals.

I think your right - there definilty a different incentive dynamic. At intel, I once heard someone mention recruiting strategy that goes something like "Intel - you're next 5 software jobs" ..which i thought was a pretty interesting and powerful approach. I've certainly had 5 software jobs at Intel over my 16 years there, and the ability to move in a large company may have also allowed me to select for better managers/mentors.

Some of these places have technical tracks where you can get promoted, have more money and a better title, but not change your place hierarchically within the team.