It's easy to get cynical about the review process. But just, for crying out loud, put yourself in the organisation's shoes. Tech is full of BS, and full of bullshitters. With the size of this organisation they need some consistent metrics, however not great these are, to assess and gauge performance versus other employees. You can't have the decision to promote in your manager's hands exclusively, they don't have the visibility of the organisation. The author also sounds like he went 'off books' a bit helping out on things they were interested in, rather than what was on jira boards or whatever their sponsor cared about. You'll get punished for this in a lot of places, it's just how it is. Management need to see what you are doing.
Let me try a short reply: if the manager needs to see what somebody is doing, he hast to look at it. Not look KPIs and metrics.
KPI and easy metrics are for lazy bad managers.
I already mentioned above, direct managers don't have organisational visibility and can't decide among the hundreds who should be promoted and who shouldn't. The promotion request needs to go some central forum with objective criteria. This is not to say your manager can't represent you vigorously to this forum.
