By giving you a dry promotion, it becomes easier to give you a fat raise during the compensation review season.

Easier for who? And how exactly? The idea that some schedule is stopping corporate from giving the lowly worker a raise becomes completely laughable when you see how they treat their top management, and has no validity either way - they make the rules, their hands are never tied by this kind of bullshit.

You're not being "contrarian", you're just regurgitating corporate propaganda, actively acting against your own interests by swallowing any of it, and serving them by repeating it to us as if it has any legitimacy.