Interestingly I worked at Credit Karma years back and part of the reason I left was I asked my manager directly, "Tell me exactly what I'd need to build to get promoted, it can be any amount of work, just set the bar." He said he couldn't.
I think some people would find my question profoundly fair ("OBVIOUSLY there's SOME amount of work that deserves higher pay"), and some people would find it profoundly unfair ("OBVIOUSLY a manager can only promote so many people per team"). I think this would be a good litmus test for employee-company compatibility.
Regardless, I was never getting promoted there so I work at facebook now.
Well, to be clear I didn't say do your job with no screw-ups and get promoted.
What I'm saying is in theory if somebody is willing to personally build a huge project that should deliver enough revenue to the company to more than pay for the difference. If everybody is willing to work twice as hard as 9-5 worker the company could 10x or 100x, isn't that the whole premise of startups?
Of course not all companies are poised for hyper-growth and are just in maintenance mode or dying, and those places probably don't have much use for people who will build extra hard.
So to answer your question, really the theoretical upward limit is how much value you can generate. Imo it's the opportunity for any great manager to say "Let's meet all your deliverables for the quarter, then I'll talk to the business team and see if there's an extra project for you"
I think some people would find my question profoundly fair ("OBVIOUSLY there's SOME amount of work that deserves higher pay"), and some people would find it profoundly unfair ("OBVIOUSLY a manager can only promote so many people per team"). I think this would be a good litmus test for employee-company compatibility.
Regardless, I was never getting promoted there so I work at facebook now.