Does promotion make sense as a goal?

It varies from company to company, but I do think Etsy is a very solid shop so my answer is yes. I share a lot of my thoughts around how promotion is underrated in this video.

In terms of how it helps tactically:

1. You are generally genuinely growing while getting promoted - The growth amount goes up the better your company is. Like I said before, I think Etsy is a good company, so this should be a decent amount of growth if you were to progress to Staff.
2. Protection against down-leveling - It's similar to negotiation: The higher you start, the better the worst-case scenario is. Let's say you're Staff at Etsy - I don't think a company like Google would down-level you twice to mid-level. I think if you were to switch from Etsy, you would get down-leveled once at most, which makes Staff useful as your lower bound is now Senior.