Last year a friend of mine turned down a fantastic promotion and pay raise, out of principle. He went even further and walked away from his career.
He was a high school principal. The superintendent of his school district approached him and offered the superintendent position, once he was promoted, but there was a catch. The school needed to show specific numbers, and that could be accomplished by using money the school would be receiving on the best and brightest students.
My friend had already decided the money would go primarily to the kids who were struggling. The school stats would not be improved by this move, but he felt it was the right thing to do. After some bitter infighting, my friend quit his job as principal and went back to teaching.
So, he turned down a big raise and took a pay cut instead.
I got sort of that when I left one company - they said “what would it take to keep you”. I was getting a 20% raise, and they countered with a 3% raise and the opportunity to take classes (on my own time) and they would pay for it. I said No Thanks, and they made another offer - I could use my vacation days for the training.
I believe in management-speak, this is considered “thinking outside the box”.
It wasn’t exactly a promotion, but a few years ago I had a direct manager suddenly quit/fired. The CEO approached me to ask if I would like to be considered for his position. She was familiar with my work and I’m still not 100% if she was hoping to promote me or just willing to consider it vs outside candidates.
I turned it down because I already had plans to move cross-country (no job lined up though) and had been planning to put official notice in soon. I ended up staying 7 month to cover the search/hiring/training of the new boss and then cover a major project my replacement wouldn’t have had time to get up to speed on.
It worked for the best I think. The company itself was having difficulties and taking over my boss’s job would have been a bit of a stretch in normal times. I don’t think I would have been very successful. I could probably do a good job of it now that I have some experience in a role with responsibilities halfway between those two.
The closest I can come to these is when I was a lowly grunt at Target. I was asked, constantly, to move up the ladder and be a Team Leader or an all-out manager. I had the degree already and was clearly one of the top 5 workers in the building. But I kept saying no because I knew I wasn’t going to work at Target my whole life and I was hell-bent on leaving as soon as possible for something in my field anyway.
Yes, twice. Once early in my working life at a national retail chain when I was offered an Assistant Store manager position that would have required a transfer - at the very least to another city and quite possibly to another state. Every promotion thereafter would require relocation. Even absent a promotion, relocation generally occurred every 2-3 years. The company allowed one to turn down only 1 relocation in their career. No thanks, not my style. I’ll live where I want.
The second time was in banking. I was offered a Branch Manager position, but had only been in the industry 6 months. I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge or experience at that point to be successful, so I turned it down. That bank had a habit of promoting promising people too quickly and acting surprised when they crashed and burned. A year later, when I was ready, I took over a branch from one of those. I was able to quickly turn things around and springboard to a regional office position the next year. Had I accepted the original offer, though - ::shudder::.
When I was in the Navy, I figured out that I was a lousy manager, and early in my engineering career, I saw what was required of bosses, and I didn’t like it. I was content to continue as a worker, leaving others to be in charge.
At one point, we got a new overlord in our group, and he had individual meet-and-greet sessions with each of us. He asked me if I wanted to follow the technical or the management career path, and I told him I wanted to stay technical. He then proceeded to tell me why I was wrong. Lucky for me, there was a reorganization shortly thereafter and he was moved elsewhere. The rest of my bosses (till I retired) had no problem with me doing what I did well - I was never encouraged to move up.
After retiring, I’ve had 4 jobs as an engineering drafter. Three were essentially temp positions, but my current gig has lots of potential. Several of the boss types have asked why I don’t want to be an engineer any longer. I’ve told them flat out - I don’t want to deal with meetings, or customers, or the stress. While it’s not exactly a promotion offer, I know if I wanted to do the job, they’d give me the title and pay. But honestly, at this stage of my life, they couldn’t pay me enough to put up with the crap.
I turned down the family business, which is a small zoo. My parents started it, and I worked there on an off from when I was a teenager to age 24, at which point my parents decided they would like to start planning to retire in 5-10 years, so offered me the chance to take over. Basically an immediate promotion to assistant manager, then them stepping down at a later date. The existing staff would have been fine with it, the only one who was senior to me had (and indeed has, she’s still there 10 years later) no interest in management.
I loved working there, but I knew very clearly how much work went into it. The thought of having to replace both of them, while continuing to live in the arse end of nowhere, probably still at their house because housing pricing is insane in the area (it has a tourist based local economy, and it’s more profitable to rent weekly for the summer than monthly for the whole year) meant my higher brain didn’t even need to get engaged to decline. I would have loved some of it, but I would have had no life at all outside work.
I also decided that it wouldn’t be a very good plan for me to stay while someone else gradually took over either, so I moved to a city at the other end of the country and worked in a series of low paid random jobs instead. I don’t regret it.
The only time I was promoted, I immediately regretted it. I jumped ship to a job doing program management (mistake #1) and about 8 months later after someone left, they bumped me up to department manager with 5 direct reports. Burned out within a few months and left to go back to an engineer job. And that’s where I would like to stay. Where I am now, I’m basically at the top of the general salary roll, and any actual promotion would put me in first level management (supervisor.) So, no thank you.
I haven’t. My wife has turned down several raises from her current employer because they would bring her from the “get fired if you screw up” middle management pay band to the “get fired if people under you screw up” upper management band.
My understanding is this is common phenomena. For some reason, people from outside the company are seen as more attractive prospects than people inside the company that have the same qualifications.
So Company A will fill a manager opening with somebody who works for Company B while Company B is filling their own manager opening with somebody who works for Company A. And neither company offered the job to the guy that was already working for them.
In college I worked part-time at a Lechter’s (now defunct; they sold kitchen gadgets). When I was about to graduate, the manager offered me the full-time assistant manager position. I wasn’t interested in retail as a career, or in staying in Philly (I was ready to move back to Baltimore), so I turned him down. It was flattering, though.
The second time was a year or two later, while I was temping and trying to find a job in my field (or decide what else I wanted to do). I had a short-term gig with a large lighting supply company, cold-calling customers and asking if they were planning to attend an upcoming industry event where the company was going to have an exhibit. Or maybe it was an event that the company was hosting. Something like that. Anyway, I hate sales but I’m pretty good on the phone, and when the gig was over my supervisor offered me a full-time position in their marketing department. In that industry “marketing” meant “sales,” so I said thanks but no thanks (I would later have a very brief tenure as the head of marketing at a small smoothie company, but that was more the advertising kind of marketing). Also flattering, plus I was proud of myself when the supervisor was surprised to learn that I’d hated making those calls.
Fast forward 20+ years to last summer: I’d been working as a senior proposal writer and had applied for the lead writer position when my previous manager left the company, but then the team was restructured and that position went away. Two writing teams–in different physical locations–were merged organizationally, and they decided to have one overall manager with a handful of team leads managing 3-5 people each. No extra pay, but a “manager” designation. I was offered one of the team lead positions, but by then I’d identified an opportunity to become a proposal manager and I went down that road instead. So in a way it was still a promotion, but with that move extra pay did accompany the extra work.
I’ve done it a couple of times.
The first time, I had the skills, but I wasn’t ready to take on the additional stress, I eventually eased my way into the job a little at a time until my boss finally just told me instead of asking.
The second time I did it because there was someone who had been at the company much longer, had basically the same skills for the job, but I was chosen instead because I had more experience in certain areas than him. That resulted in me working for another company within a year as up to that point, I was the boss’s “Golden Child” (and that’s a fucking miserable thing to be at work)
Both times because I was leaving to undertake extensive travel, and wasn’t going to give that up for the sake of a promotion. And in both cases, I was pretty certain that after I’d finished with travel I could just come back and pick up the promotion at that time.
I’m pretty sure I was due for a 10-15% raise when I was working for a big private clinic. Instead I took about a 15% pay cut and went into academia.
Best thing I ever did. Academia has its own problems, but the private practice world is a shitshow. I’d go to work at Taco Bell before I’d go back to that mess.
I was offered a promotion and significant income increase in 1972. I turned it down, flat.
I said, “I’m not going to mow the grass AND rake up the grass clippings for a measly $5 increase in my weekly allowance, dad.” Heated negotiations ensued, but ultimately broke down. My title remained. “Tibby, Mower of Family Lawn.” I could have been titled the more illustrious, “Tibby, Mower of Family Lawn and Raker of Clippings”, but, alas, it was not to be.
Do I regret my decision? Yes, sometimes I do. But, as I recall, there were negative tax implications in play as well, not to mention less available time to pursue my favorite recreational activity.
I’m in that situation now. I can take a promotion and raise any month I want. Provided I’m willing to travel halfway across the country to go to work each week. Or I could move there.
If I was commuting cross-country I’d be spending most of the incremental raise on hotel rooms and meals. And spending 20 days a month away from home instead of 7 to 10.
And I’m sure not interested in moving from the beach to the Reddest part of the Midwest.
Not interested at all. So here I stay.
I ought to be able to get the promotion and raise here locally in another year or so. At which point I’ll probably take it even though I’ll be working harder.
I recently declined to apply for a position that mirrors this almost exactly. They decided to attach a location requirement that similar jobs in my company do not have. I don’t want to move, so I let it go. It was hard, because I’d spent the last three years or so angling for just such an opportunity.
Since I wasn’t applying, they asked me to sit on the interview committee. That was fun.
Shortly after the new person was hired, they decided to waive the location requirement.
I meant to mention this myself. Thanks for bringing it up. I’ve seen so many folks pass their level of competence; I truly don’t want that to happen to me. Which is what would occur should I rise higher, I believe.
