Yeah I get the concept of hard work, go above and beyond, but that's not what this is about.
I've worked in various organizations where it seems like people never quit. If people never quit how does one get the spots. Here's some examples:
My current gigs is government. There is a tech assigned to each site, two techs that supervise the area, and a manager of the dept. To move up I'm going to have to wait years for one of the two area techs to quit (then hope to get the job yet I'll be competing with people who've been site techs for years...). Then after that you have to hope the manager will eventually quit to move to that. It seems like it will take 30 years to be a manager!
Another gig was corporate. In my dept there were level 1-3 sysadmins (lvl 3 were supervisors) and a manager. People have been level 1 techs for ten years. How am I going to move past all these people?
I get the whole concept of moving to a different department but all of the postings for management require X years of management experience. Plus in certain places (like my govt job) the higher ups NEVER quit. This leads to the chicken and the egg problem.
So what can I do to improve the chances of my being promoted?