This post is basically an example of a survivorship bias and the rationalization of it. What is missing is the statistical insight into internal moves to the VP positions vs the external ones.
I would say it is extremely hard to get an internal move to a VP position, either it is a startup or a big corp. Startups need to succeed and big corps require you to put in years and develop good political relationships.
The easiest way is to start hitting the top roles early in life and do it constantly instead of thinking to start at the bottom. If you cannot make it into the top in the existing company then build your own. If you start at the bottom then you remain there because your skills are not valuable in the top leadership roles.
I don't think the article touches on internal vs external hiring at all. They tried it but eventually didn't do it. But there's no value judgement -- it just seemed like they couldn't find a great candidate and then the author was eventually promoted.
Fwiw the same thing happened at my last startup. We did a search for a VP eventually promoted from within. I hereby claim, that statistically speaking, it definitely happens sometimes.
I guess the author disagrees with your last statement,
> If you start at the bottom then you remain there because your skills are not valuable in the top leadership roles.
She says that she had the space to think more about strategy because the "people at the bottom" were doing an good job of keeping the company's infrastructure stable as they scaled. Maybe it's less about top and bottom and more about what types of problems people are good at solving. My tip: if you like planning and management and strategy, you should try to get roles, in the top, bottom, and middle using those skillsets. Lots of even introductory roles involve "manager", and lots of non-management roles are a great career path for many.
Unfortunately true, one should apply this mindset everywhere.
e.g. don't settle for Js roles if you want to excel you have to push yourself into competitive spaces and write cursed code in OCaml to truly be a Good Programmer
I would say it is extremely hard to get an internal move to a VP position, either it is a startup or a big corp. Startups need to succeed and big corps require you to put in years and develop good political relationships.
The easiest way is to start hitting the top roles early in life and do it constantly instead of thinking to start at the bottom. If you cannot make it into the top in the existing company then build your own. If you start at the bottom then you remain there because your skills are not valuable in the top leadership roles.