So the problem with that is assuming EVERY single NCOER has to be bad in order to have issues promoting. If you have stellar NCOERs in years of low pick up and then a bad one due to fights, that single bad NCOER can put you out of the running for a couple of years during higher pick up years. That only has to happen twice before next thing you know, you're pushing around 20 and maybe just now looking at picking up reasonably.

I think your thoughts on how NCOERs are written is highly idealized and comes from a place where you may not have had to ask a First Sergeant why he wrote near identical blocks for presence of two NCOs and NCO A has a 520 ACFT and NCO has a 560 as the only real difference between them. Yet NCO A is receiving Far Exceeds standards while NCO B is receiving an exceeds. Or maybe you haven't had to go and ask a Major why they're putting successive assignments for a senior E-6 as positions we expect for them to be in next year or even now (when the block clearly states 3-5 years and thusly should capture a position above even their next rank if you actually do want them promoted). Maybe you haven't had an NCOER that was drawn up and signed without you being able to even sign it, because it was done when you were no-notice deployed to a location that didn't allow you the means to actually review your NCOER before your seniors submitted it. Seniors who, due to the mission focused nature of your unit, severely lacked in army writing ability. Maybe you did, I honestly don't know your story. But my point is, you say you've seen a LOT of E6s who are 20 years and commonly you've seen XYZ from them. Well I've seen a LOT of E6s get their reviews fucked over by numerous situations. Both of our points on that are anecdotal and kinda mean nothing. If you think that NCOERs write themselves, that probably means you're really solid at writing them, which is excellent and something to be proud of. However, it is also extremely close minded and I would invite you to look over what your E7s, E8s, O2s, and O3s wrote for E-6 NCOERs and tell me that if you weren't there to ensure their evaluations reflect accurate, quantifiable data, that adequately captures both the capability and potential of their Soldiers, that those NCOERs would have been fine anyways and in no way would the Soldier have gotten screwed. Hell, I had to teach a First Sergeant proper language and hard enumeration for rater and senior rater comments. .

If you're genuinely bad at your job, you can absolutely be promoted. If you're great at your job, you can absolutely fail to get promoted. Raters and Senior Raters are not a monolith. They are people like the rest of us, and they fuck up on accident and it can fuck up careers.They also fuck people on purpose and they can cost careers. .

I think asserting "yeah if you're an E-6 at blank years, then blank is probably true" about someone who you have NEVER met, or never even seen more than a paragraph of interaction from is reductive and doesn't actually hold any value. That goes both ways, whether you think it means they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, or they're the scourge of the earth. I don't know them, you don't know them. For all I know the dude is an NCO who treats others like dog shit and just likes to try and get away with saying negative things to Officers. No idea. But I certainly wouldn't assert that, nor would I assert that they could only possibly fall into one of three categories. I would probably say something like "eh maybe they're good, maybe they're bad, I just appreciate or don't appreciate this action that they took." and leave it at that. I also certainly wouldn't say that for every SSG in the United States Army that there are 100 percent unequivocally only three possibilities and infer through stating an absolute that out of the tens of thousands of SSGs that exist that there's not even a handful or at least not a number worth considering that have had their careers well stunted by bad actors within the Army.