I've developed a new method of corporate promotions. I'm calling it Predatory Advancement.

First, a little backstory. I work at Sun, and like many other tech companies, we've been devastated by the dot com fallout. More so than many, actually, because we happen to sell computers to other companies, and other companies aren't into spending much money right now. So anyway, we've not had promotions for a long time. Since I started there, actually.

However, lots of people have really been busting their asses and deserve promotions, while others might not have been working so hard, or might have been hired during the midst of the boom, where you got a job if you had a pulse.

In my new system, you would be allowed to "challenge" anyone of a higher rank than you. You would then be assigned some sort of test involving your knowledge of Sun's processes, programming techniques, your awareness of how Solaris works, etc. It might even be like the old duels where you chose a weapon, where the challengee got to choose what kind of challenge it was, maybe you could have a test, or a programming challenge. If you defeated them, you switch positions, you get a promotion and they get demoted.

That would be fantastic, people would be prowling the halls, trying to smell your fear, deciding who to challenge. People would be scared to death of slacking off, or someone would call them out for a duel at high noon. There would have to be some sane limits about how many challenges you were allowed to make, maybe one a quarter, or two a year.

Anyway, yeah. Once I'm in charge, that's the new system. Bring it.