[woodrow]

The author is excited to talk about helping the employee grow and have more impact, which (if successful) should make them more valuable to the company, resulting in promotion and increased compensation.

He perceives employees who want to talk with him about "leveling" as seeking the formula or checklist to get paid more, and not necessarily about growing or putting in the work.

The latter is fine if your performance objectives are objective and directly aligned with company success (i.e. achievement of sales quotas). It's more fraught if your performance objectives are more subjective or defined in ways that are proxies for company success—it's easy to fall prey to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law where employees do the things that get them promoted, which may actually make them or the company more valuable.