Personally, I think it is still not a perfect system, but it is overall much better and perfection is really only possible by manual management as every player wants something slightly different.
The big benefit for many players will be the ability to use automatic promotions to manage hundreds or thousands of officers, without being restricted by the arbitrary ratio of ranks. This is IMO a bigger deal for ground forces, but even for naval officers it is tricky to find the right balance of all the different ship types and command modules to maintain full employment of officers. Usually I end up finding difficulty when I try to use the command modules, as I have not enough officers of one rank (say, CDR) to staff all of my escort commands and executive officer positions, and too many excess officers of CAPT or LCDR ranks. Replacing rank ratios with on-demand promotions makes it much easier to build the fleet you want without arbitrary limits on your ability to manage officers.
It's worth noting that you still have promotion score factoring into promotion decisions, albeit mainly as a tiebreaker, and political bonus still plays a big role as it is added to the relevant skill score. If you need a new admiral to control a survey department, for instance, the CDRE with 30 survey score will lose out on promotion in favor of the CDRE with only 20 survey score but also 15 political score. I think it is different than before in a way which is better sometimes and not as good other times, but overall the same flavor is kept while the underlying mechanics are improved. There will still be a natural promotion pace of one rank at a time, so a reasonable career progression occur and you won't see LCDRs jump to VADM just because they are the only officer with a certain skill.
Personally I also see this system will lead to better "appreciation" for rare/secondary skills. Right now for example it can be hard to get a full staff of admirals with economic skills in terraforming, mining, logistics, etc. because these skills are not valued as highly for promotion as the military/combat skills. The new system will ensure that you see officers promoting upwards with these skills if there are jobs for them, so you can have a robust logistical and industrial arm of the admiralty instead of one guy with 15 Mining at a desk in the basement to manage your entire commercial fleet. With the ability to also choose what skill to emphasize for each admin command I think it will work very well in this regard.