It doesn't matter whether you have achieved or not achieved something. It does matter for your immediate manager to like you. Only then he will recommend your name for a promotion.
In my current team, there is a guy M who is my manager's favourite and been with the company for 1 year. There is another guy R who is not a favourite and been in the company for more than 2 years. Now this guy M who is the manager's fav has resigned from the company. The manager tried to retain him by offering him things like, sending him to US for short trips regularly, at some point he will transfer this guy M from India to US office. etc. But good for us the M guy is going away for good.
Sometime back when the R guy went and asked the manager to move him to another project coz the current project is complete. The manager said that there are no new projects where he can be used so he has to wait for a month or so to be assigned a new project.
The manager can't give work to a guy in the company who is with the company still coz he doesn't like him that much but willing to do anything for a guy whom the manager likes and who is decided to leave the company.
My manager doesn't care about doing something better than what it is for today for the people who are still in the team. Instead he is ready to go everything under the sun to keep the M guy from not going away because he likes this M guy.
If your manager likes you, you get good appraisal reviews with may be salary hike, promotion, overseas project etc. what not. If you happen to be the unfortunate that your manager does like you then you have to wait in order to even get new work assigned to you.
