Ezri Dax started as an ensign but was promoted to lieutenant by Sisko almost immediately.
So, TNG had Wes as full ensign for 12 episodes. DS9 had Ezri for 2. I think making Harry a lieutenant on S3 of VOY wouldn't have been a problem.
Because as a department head that should be expected.
Ezri should have been (temporarily) removed from Starfleet after her brain "changed" fundamentally until they were perfectly sure that she was not evil or insane.
Nope.
It's a little ship with a tiny crew.
The original XO, Cavitt was only a Lt. Commander.
Any Starfleet Graduate can do a duty shift at any position on the ship.
Rank is about how many crew you can manage before you start fucking up.
The size of department determines the rank of the Department Head.
There may have been 3 people in Harry's department, including Harry.
After 2 years in the USN officers move to lieutenant j.g. lieutenant j.g. is a given.
Which means that he should have moved to a bigger department that needed Lieutenants JGs in management positions.
So long as he stays at Ops, there is no room for advancement in Ops, even though Kim is not the highest ranking officer in Ops. Durst "was".
He can get promoted, and that may trigger a transfer, or he stays in ops and a different Officer who is still only ensign becomes department head, but if he stays as the department head of Ops as a Lieutenant Commander, Captain or Admiral, that's really unfair to all the other Ensigns, who need the leadership experience, and this is a bridge position with training wheels that some one fresh out of the academy can master on day one.
Since he steps in to bridge leadership it's hardly unfair. He's in the chain of command and so should move up. He should not be over a operations officer lieutenant but instead step in to that role as a j.g. If operations had a lieutenant that means the department has billet availability for a lieutenant.
They were on a two week mission, arguably a black ops suicide mission to kill Chakotay. If they had murdered that particular native American, odds are that most of the crew would have been promoted and transferred, and then the mostly new next crew of Voyager would have killed someone else, and then also been promoted and transferred, as a bribe, to shut the hell up.
Voyager is not a city in space.
No one wants to live there for years if they have a choice.
Yes, or at least given a very thorough psych evaluation, preferably by Trills who were expert on how joining works.
But then, there were three different occasions in TNG when Picard should have gotten a thorough psych eval, and didn't.
So, how did so many other officers on all three TNG era shows get promoted? Including Tuvok on Voyager?
It seemed like Data and O'Brien were fairly important members of the crew.
According to Data in "Datalore", it's three in Starfleet.
A purpose built deep space exploration vessel probably wouldn't be one, not like the Enterprise-D was. But it would be designed for years of self sufficiency. Voyager was better equipped than the Equinox was... but it should have struggled a lot more than it did. The last few years were more "Caribbean Cruise" than "Lifeboat".
I should have said minimum time in grade to be eligible for promotion. But, yes, by 3 years with Kim's record the only reason to hold up a promotion up one grade is punitive.
We already know there are Operations division lieutenants. We already see Kim managing a department and participating in senior officer meetings despite being a junior officer and inexperienced. He pulls a duty shift and bridge watch.
If the goal is to get home then treat his career as if it's going to progress.
The Enterprise is ten times the size of Voyager and Data's Department is ten times the size of Kims. There's probably more than one Ops station on the Enterprise.
Chief of Operations means Chief Engineer, when you are on a space station, which is a completely different job than operations officer or Section head of Ops.
Ops is still important, it just needs a fraction of the staff that Engineering needs to run.
Came across this on Facebook. Harry always getting crapped on. 
Nog was promoted to Ensign and spent nearly two years there until he was also promoted
When Ensign Kim was being scammed by Nog's uncle, Nog could barely read. When Ensign Kim returned to the Alpha Quadrant he had to call Nog "Sir".
