Overlooked for promotion again

[tinselvestsparklepants]

I'm a programme leader and for the second time (two different institutions) I've not been promoted. I don't know yet who has got the job as they won't tell me, but the indicators are that it's gone to the man I replaced as PL because he couldn't cope with the job. If this is true, this will be the second time this has happened to me. (My feedback from the interview said that they wanted to keep me as PL because I'm so good at it. So they are promoting the man who wasn't.)

I'm so so tired of this bullshit.

I feel your pain. I've just posted in work about being overlooked for promotion. It sucks, especially if he's no good at it. I'm stuck in an organisation with nobody having a clue and the directors just making things up. I want to work out what I need to say in an interview that unlocks the magic key.

In my case I think it's probably having blackmail material on the boss. Otherwise.... just why? Or it might just be Being Male? My workplace has an 8% pay gap. Can you ask your employer for proper, detailed feedback? Sorry this happened to you as well, it sucks doesn't it.

They. Don’t. Care.

I have seen this time and again in research organisations. It is futile trying to get a reason; the best thing is frankly to move on to a better place that actually values you. If you are expecting them to validate you or approve you, they never will.

So sorry to hear this, OP. It sucks.

We just had promotion announcements in my place. Guess what every single person promoted in my School has in common?

A penis?

How on earth did you guess?

does your university have an Athena-Swan program? this is the kind of thing they really used to be hot on and would push departments to consider everyone equally for promotion. I don't know if they still do, but you could see if the program is active and talk to the AS lead. Don't volunteer to lead AS though - it is a lot of work.

Identify as male?
Ticks the diversity box plus you may actually get treated like a man and get a promotion.

Seriously though, that is shit. And you probably have to leave.
Arrrrggh this drives me MAD

My best advice for promotion is to get a very successful male colleague to rewrite your promotion documents in man-speak. The result will be unrecognisable and slightly nauseating. Forget about being honest.

Other advice is to look at the jobs you are being asked to take on “to improve your promotion prospects” and those the men are doing. All our female staff (Engineering) get pressured into taking teaching management roles, hardly any successful male staff have had these roles.

I am so sorry @tinselvestsparklepants . I can actually believe that the feedback you've given is truthful. My own experience is that being efficient and well-organized, turning things in on time and not indulging in weird interpersonal behaviours (i.e. what you need for roles such a programme leader) are rare skills in academia, and that women are most pressurized to develop and apply those skills across the board (as opposed to applying them only to roles that further one's promotion opportunities or research profile, like men do). I would advise you start being incompetent at your role to enable an upwards promotion if it were not for the fact that this is what I should do myself (following the example of many esteemed male colleagues) but simply don't have the guts to put into practice.

They. Don’t. Care.

I have seen this time and again in research organisations.

I think this is very true, @manontroppo . While the generalized perception might be that this is a matter of people bringing in big grants and therefore being allowed to get away with anything, what I see is that this is only true in a small percentage of cases. What I think is at the root of this is a pathological fear of confrontation: people can half-arse their work, come up with big ideas and big plans while neglecting the very basic day-to-day tasks that make programmes and department works, or even be actively incompetent, and they're not called out on it, and in some cases might even be promoted (I've heard of two such cases in my discipline recently).

Thanks all. It was confirmed today that the man I replaced as PL - because he couldn't hack it - did indeed get the job. I'm so conflicted. I can't leave as I don't have another job to go to. My team are howling with fury - apart from one person who the new boss would replace me with if I step down as PL. I literally feel sick.

You have my sympathies OP—I saw my DH go through exactly the same blocks to promotion while people with less of everything that he had got promoted instead. He just kept applying and finally it has worked and he has got his promotion— I think they just ran out of excuses and their reasons for not promoting him appeared more and more substanceless to all those tasked with evaluating candidates. I have no advice except if you are sufficiently motivated, keep applying and with each application point out how past objections have been addressed or are wrong. But it stinks and I wouldn’t blame you if you left.

It's a dead man's shoes promotion. Though one of my team has likened him to Liz Truss and suggested we buy an office lettuce...

Im sorry. Like most academic women I know how this feels. In the end I got another job and left, being promoted two rungs in the process.

I'm not at the promotion stage yet (need to do a PhD first and it's killing me), but it's not a surprise to read. So many men are strategically incompetent at jobs like programme lead, freeing up their time to focus on other things.

PL and Course Leader roles bring a good deal more hassle to the table and no conceivable benefits. CL in my institution is a senior lecturer grade post bringing no promotion.

I'm at the end of my rope with academia. So many honorary, non-contractural obligations come with this job that bring no discernible rewards to the people carrying them out. My own institution has treated its lecturing staff with such contempt that it's rendered me unwilling to do one thing in addition to my contractural obligations that I don't actively want to do. External examining is one such example. It places huge demands on our time, and for what? A whole lot of expectation and negative judgment when situations like the MAB arise.

But given the current state of the Humanities, without competition the worst part of the sector to be in at the present moment since those disciplines are being consistently undermined, I confess I'm seriously jaded and even beginning to reconsider my future in academia. When I completed my PhD, started out on my career with such optimism and developed the strong research profile which I (wrongly) assumed would secure my future, I did not think I was signing up to this.