Engineer passed over for promotion for their own direct reports, instead up-skills himself on the job, uses those skills to land a better job with 3x the pay: 'I developed skills on the company dime that got me a >100% raise at another company'

Advertisement
  • 01

    "My boss refused to promote me or give me reasonable raises so I developed skills on the company dime that got me a >100% raise at another company."

    Cheezburger Image 10562524416
  • Advertisement
  • 02
    Early in my career I worked as an engineer for a defense contractor for about 4 years getting my typical 2- 4% raises and standard promotions that take years and years to qualify for. I realized that in my current role I was pretty much maxed out for the foreseeable future, and would be scraping by for years more, so I tried to get on the management track and got given a project engineer position to prove myself.
  • 03
    I managed a team of 4 engineers, a designer, and 2 admins and we designed and manufactured a system that made $1.6M in sales in our first year of work. We got the company a patent, and were nominated by the USAF and became finalists as DoD
  • 04
    Contractor Technical team of the year (I don't recall the exact wording) and were flown to DC for a big awards ceremony. I spent 100 days away from my family that year, traveling to test locations, customers, vendors, etc. It was brutal but we were wildly successful.
  • Advertisement
  • 05
    When annual performance reviews came in mine was 10/10. I was thrilled, then I found out one of MY team members (who had a different manager) was promoted early to a senior position and that I did not and I just got the standard 3% raise again. I was livid.
  • 06
    I had a meeting with my boss and his response was that he didn't think my team member deserved a promotion or a big raise but he wasn't their boss so basically I should try real hard again and we'll see next year.
  • 07
    F that. I basically quite quit and just barely worked my 40hrs and went home. I never traveled unless I really wanted to, I never stayed late, I took almost every Friday off to burn through my leave. I took all my sick days, etc. My mental health was much better. The only thing I really did extra was take advantage of the education budget our group had but rarely got used.
  • Advertisement
  • 08
    My previously promoted co-worker (who I really liked personally) started taking MBA evening classes, that the company reimbursed him for, but they came with obligations to stay there for x amount of years. They also had a nice budget for software training (without such stipulations) so we both signed up for FEA and 3D modelling classes. We traveled around together taking these classes and building our resumes.
  • 09
    About a month after the classes were finished I secretly started applying for jobs that required those specific skills and quickly got hired for a position with a base annual income that was 200% my existing rate plus it paid overtime. I put in my notice and my boss was really upset.
  • 10
    "Don't you have any loyalty or guilt!" "How much are they paying you, lets see if we can match it" "That's more than I make!" It was and with OT I made about 3X the following year for a competitor. Life changing good times.
  • Advertisement
  • 11
    Cheezburger Image 10562524160
  • 12
    Awkward_Dimension_12 "Employers hate this one simple trick....." In OP's case, wasn't simple, but highly effective!
  • 13
    chrisk9 Wouldn't be surprised to see management respond by slashing training budgets rather than directly address the appropriate compensation issue
  • Advertisement
  • 14
    fvives Nice. Always love the "you have no guilt?!?"...."oh I do, the same amount you had when you denied me a promotion after I crushed my goals and made the company top $".

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article