The company really doesn't want you to get promoted. Even if you do your job at the next level, the company would even be more interested in not promoting you. Why bother to give you increase pay when they can fool you into getting someone to do important work with less money? It's actually a given that a company will try with every means not to give you extra money if you do amazing work.
Managers don't really care about your career and never have your best interest in mind. They speak for the company and first and foremost follows the company's interest and not your interest. Their job is to milk you as much as they can for the current money that you make.
They want you to compete with other workers so that you do as much as possible for the money that they pay you, even if your life is miserable. They want you to keep you in your position for as long as possible, especially after you become really qualified at it. Why risk promoting you and risk losing their useful tool.
Heck, they may even deny you opportunities to advance so that they don't lose the useful tool. They can use the promotion like a dangling carrot, to milk you even more. Some managers may decide that you are useful in your current position while others will try to milk you as much as possible. Actually both can be possible.
Forget about worklife balance, you are responsible to push back against your bosses and managers. They don't give a crap about it and actually see it as a bad thing.
See past all the nice and sweet talk because at the end of the day, it doesn't mean anything. Just another may to milk you as much as possible. They will try anything and see what makes you work as much as possible for them.
If bosses and superiors never listen to you, then don't do anything about it. Let them fail miserably and laugh at it. Enjoy seeing them make mistakes and screw things up. Even encourage them to screw up by constantly complimenting their stupid ideas. Just enjoy this as much as possible. Best feeling in the world is seeing a boss destroying his own company,org while you move away from them.
And if you notice something wrong at work, it's not always a good idea to try to fix it, you may get assigned extra responsiblity for finding and fixing that issue. Better just leave it like that and see the how the company wasted money with that. Have some dangling recurent payment that you notice, for things that are not used? Just leave it like that. You may even get into trouble if mention to your boss or anyone else what you noticed, it may make them look bad.