The Citadel

This came up this evening in conversation with my girlfriend. She (mid-20s) is on the verge of an official promotion at work and it got me wondering if I had ever been promoted and... I hadn't. Four professional employment jobs since 2008 and I never have been.

Maccy D's - I was training staff as well as bordering on assistant to the shift manager at times but I was never paid or promoted past a basic crew member.

Skype - Sat in an eMail centre on nights for six months and hated it.

Slovak IT faff - essentially a sinecure at a start-up that didn't take off.

Teaching - I'm currently an English teacher but the structure of the labour racket means there's no advancement. I can 'earn' additional responsibilities but not climb the ladder.

This is actually a bit hard for me to answer. Management has asked me to compete for a promotion at one point (I declined). I ultimately took a weird job where I could demand or earn various kinds of promotion by performing certain actions. I'll give you an example.

If you can become a PE (professional engineer) automatically after being in the job for 2 years and taking and passing the PE exam, is that a promotion? I'd argue not really, it's more like you promoted yourself. If you can make senior sales representative by moving 200 units per month for 2 consecutive years, is that a promotion? I'd argue not really, it's more like you promoted yourself. If neither of those qualify as promotions, then my entire career has just been a long string of me promoting myself or going after an open position and getting it.

My wife has been promoted once, and turned down one promotion. But she has obtained promotions several times by changing jobs. She also was in line for a big promotion as part of a massive corporate restructure, but then they didn't mange to restructure (because corporations do some insane wasteful things sometimes).

I'd say I've only been promoted once.

First job: Went from intern to full time position, was shuffled around but no promotion other than marginal pay raise. After a while, I became disillusioned as I wasn't getting acknowledgement and eventually was told I didn't "look professional". Before I was going to get fired I chose to resign as I was generally unhappy after the most recent merger.

Second job: Was a temp job.

Third job: Temp job.

Fourth Job: Was promoted from bank officer to Assistant VP in a position where I have a lot of responsibilities but none of them significantly changed with the promotion. Technically could be considered not a promotion.

I've essentially worked at the same company doing the same job since i left university in '95.

I was promoted to deputy head of department then head of department and now i am the whole department! My overall responsibility is much higher than it was at tea-boy level, but ultimately what i do is the same as what i did 30 years ago.

My company likes to give us new titles and job responsibilities; so they either move you along the stream, stratify the existing position, or re-classify your job altogether. Technically, I've moved up two "ranks" since I started 15 years ago. Some of my advanced responsibilities in that time have been kept, others moved onto people in other positions.

Whatever, they pay me better each year for my skills and occasionally my opinions. 80% of the job is the same as it ever was.

Yes, three times.

First was working for an East Anglia domestic electrical retail chain (Hughes Electrical) where I went from a member of the Installations Team to Assistant Team Lead of Installations and Warehouse.

Second was in Canada, for a security company, moving from a dispatcher (troubleshooting, scheduling techs and dispatching) to Operations Team Manager.

Third was for the same company. I quit and was rehired two years later in to the Customer Care & Retention team. In my first one-on-one with my manager she asked what my aspirations were and I told her that I wanted to make Team Manager in a year. I'm not sure if she took that with an unintended "or else", but exactly one week short of a year after that she promoted me to Team Manager of Customer Care & Retention.

Amusingly though, none of the promotions came with significant pay increases, because the companies paid poorly. The biggest pay increase I've had was moving to my current role, considered a "lateral promotion", which was a 22% increase.

Not really. I worked at my family's company until 2006 when I left so I wouldn't exactly call it being promoted. It was more like I inherited my pay raises. It was going to happen anyway.

When I left there in 2006 and moved here where I live now in 2007 I started with my present company in the same industry I was before but for a different manufacturer. I was given a couple of pay raises but not promoted as there was no where to go up until the person at the top left. The manager was fired in 2018 and I was offered the manager's position after the more senior person in our department turned it down, I turned it down too.

The owner and founder of our company passed away in April 2024 from cancer. She had made arrangements for our company to be sold after her death. We were sold to a bigger company with 35 other locations in other states. I was given a pretty substantial pay raise under the new owners. There were only three of us in our department at that time including a manager. Since I was hired in 2007 my main job was to handle the technicians in our shop. The other two mainly handled our out of town business on the phones and the internet. So I've become very good at my job in those 18 years. I'm sure I was given that pay raise to try and hang on to me and make sure I didn't leave.

Fast forward to this week. On Tuesday the manager of another department suddenly quit. Thursday they made our manager the head of that department. This morning when I got to work he came to me and asked if I would be interested in being the manager of my department, I quickly said no.

I spent all of those years at my family's company being a manager/owner and once I left there in 2006, I did not want to be a manager anymore. I don't want the responsibility. The guys in our shop don't want me to be a manager. The people in the front that handle our customers on a daily basis don't want me to be a manager. They want me to be right there at my counter where I've been for the last 18 years. Some of the guys in our shop were there when I was hired. Others have been there for close to 10 years or so. They know I know what I'm doing. I brought those 25+ years in our industry when I was hired in 2007. They all know I'm more valuable doing the job I've been doing for the last 18 years than me off of that counter worrying about reports or something else. I just turned 60 in August and I'm probably not going to be able to retire anytime soon so I've got a few good years ahead of me. To quote the great Kimi Raikkonen, "leave me alone, I know what I'm doing".

So while I have been offered promotion twice, I've turned it down both times.

A bunch. I worked in an art gallery/jewelry store during college and was promoted to gallery manager upon graduation. After that, I began my career in healthcare as a medical anthropologist, but it lasted only 11 months before the health system had to cut all non-essential office staff, resulting in my job loss. However, I was friends with the clinical informatics guy, and he offered me a contingent job working with electronic medical records. I worked there for over a year and eventually secured an entry-level analyst position at another healthcare system. I went from an entry-level to a mid-level, then to a senior-level analyst. When I took a job in Utah, I started as an Analyst II, and after less than a year, I was promoted to Analyst III. I've turned down Analyst IV twice now because I have zero desire to manage people in any capacity.

I'm content being an Analyst III, which means I get projects but don't have people reporting to me, nor have to attend more meetings than I already do. Maybe someday I'll change my mind, but I still have about $30k buffer until I'm at the top of my pay range, which gives the 3-5% raise I get per year (yay government job). I still have some time.

I have to work 8am-2pm every other Saturday or so. If we work Saturday we get the following Monday off. Yesterday was my Saturday along with our former manager working in his new position. But he was getting his office stuff moved and set up in his new office. We were talking just a little before work started and he was telling me that he doesn't know what he's got himself into with this new position. But he said a guy once told him that you never turn down opportunity because it looks weird to those that offered it. I don't know if this was a little jab at me for turning down his old job or what.

When he said that I thought to myself "yeah you do". If I was miserable in my current job and was looking for something different then I might be more open to taking something. But with this I would be going from being responsible to making sure our techs get what they need and that our department runs smoothly, to being a numbers cruncher and having to submit reports and answering to corporate etc. and I just don't want that. No matter how much more money it is.

The position is probably going to go to a guy that's been with us a little more than a year but he did the same job for a different manufacturer for about 20 years. My responsibilities will change a little but nothing major and the new guy really isn't going to be interfering with our side because he worked alongside me since he started with us and knows what our job entails.