Too valuable to promote

[SanctusInDistress]

I think I’ve worked too hard and been too accommodating by taking on extra tasks and going the extra mile so now I’m impossible to promote because they’d never be able to backfill me or recruit a replacement without much upheaval.

tell me your story if this has happened to you too and how you dealt with it!

I don’t want to leave, but I’m fed up of seeing people around me progress whilst I’m still here. It’s been years now.

I unfortunately don’t have any advice but am in a similar position. I’m always given excellent feedback/pay rises/ promised future promotions but know they don’t want me to leave my current role/team to progress in any other areas because our team is quite a key team financially speaking. I hired an assistant for another team 2 years ago, who has just been promoted to my level/ same job title despite our responsibility being on completely different levels. I’ve been there 6 years! I’m going to start looking for new jobs now but I know they’ll be shocked when I hand my notice in.

I love this mentality...

If you're too good, you stay as you're too valuable. If you're not good enough, you get booted. If you ARE promoted, chances are you're good at your old job and not the managerial one you've inherited because you haven't trained specifically as a manager... but managers inevitably aren't good on that job either because they don't know the system and company like a seasoned, experienced employee.

Leave.

If you’re that good, you’ll walk into another job. And it’s always easier to negotiate a pay rise in a new job.

Let them miss you! They don’t deserve you.

Don’t do what I did. I stayed too long because it was a slow creep and they did a number on my self esteem. I eventually left under terrible circumstances and my role is now covered by multiple people.

Unfortunately, if you work hard and people rely on you, they don’t want to promote you. I always think those full of hot air get higher up the ladder, but it’s not in me to be like that.

The people who get promoted are never brilliant at the job they do because for them each job is an opportunity to find out as much as they can about this part of the process and how it fits in with other processes, and are expecting to move on up out of there sooner or later right from the start. They don't impress the boss by working hard. They impress by finding out ways the current team's work interacts with other teams and finds ways for making that better. They may have an idea that creates a way for them to develop higher level skills.

Seniority is not awarded on a scale of how hard you work or how difficult your job is. It's more about how much you understand, can steer and influence and ultimately be accountable for all the big picture stuff that the people focusing on working hard in their individual roles don't see.

That's them giving you platitudes I'm afraid. They're taking the easy life because they have no incentive to do otherwise. You are their ready-made solution right there.

Once upon a time when I was trusting, cooperative and loyal I stuck around with endless promises of promotion if I jumped through hoops, completed a long list of targets. They got the best from me because they got their list delivered + + + I naively thought that over-delivering was proving myself worthy. Around me I was seeing lots of men effortlessly gliding into the senior roles I knew I was qualified and capable of.

And still I didn't get promotion but I did prove myself to a very important which was me.

so I applied for another job elsewhere in the company and got it, then went back to my manager to give them the news i was moving on and they said " oh um err ah OK, so are you going to accept it then ?" No shit Sherlock they were American so wouldn't have got the irony, but I fell off my chair laughing 🤣 🤣 🤣 and relished in saying to them yes of course, why would I turn down the promotion I deserve they asked for it!

Leave with all your experience and skills, find a great career elsewhere and don't look back. And never think loyalty is a good attribute in any company. Be loyal to yourself, your family, but not to a faceless organisation that will hide behind platitudes and block women from meeting their potential.

How do people get promoted in your organisation? If vacancies are advertised, then apply.

This has happened to me more than once. Often, if you are overloaded with work that leaves little time and energy to dedicate to career advancement and I think some managers overload people on purpose. Some people are perceived as workhorses and some are given protected time for courses and development.

Without a supportive boss, you may just have to dedicate your own time to applying for new opportunities.

Yes, but if you’ve been leading your team for several years and getting increasingly additional responsibilities, and doing them well, on top of the tasks for the role you were originally hired for, then I’d think that person has proven themselves. This is exactly what’s the problem. How many more projects involving increasing seniority can you take onboard to prove that you deserve the promotion?!

You can't "prove yourself" in role, it doesn't work like that.

You have to look elsewhere. Be a new person in a new role with a new manager completely out of sight of your former people.

Youll burn yourself out taking on more and waste precious years of your career not getting to the next level up.

This happened to me. I was so pissed off. I left within 6 months. Having said they couldn't promote me because I was so indispensable in the job I was doing at the time, of course they managed to replace me when I left.

Leave @SanctusInDistress Don't get sucked into the martyr position. If you're so good at your job, you'll get a better job. Changing jobs is generally the way yo get a promotion & a pay rise. Men do it all the time.

And the schadenfreude will be sweet.

This is such a progressive way of working!! Typically only the schmoozers get promoted whilst the people with the skills just get more work dumped on them!

I wish my company were like that.

Some vacancies are advertised, some vacancies are advertised as internal only, and some people just simply one day have a new job title.

this is how we roll.