Report managers are playing politics on the developers and doing favorism to the close friends or their known persons.
If you question on their decisions (with respect to the project or raised any concerns about the project operations or technical decisions) then you won't get any salary hike or promotions.
And also they will change the reporting manager of the candidate and will provided bad reviews to the candidate while processing the yearly review (appraisal process) since that is doing on the background without knowing you.
Especially, these politics are genuinely high in Seattle area.