That sucks. Who does performance review in your company? In every place I’ve been, it has been the manager and the second level manager, with maybe one level up doing a review for equity. Do you have some metric to pay equation? It sounds like your manager is almost claiming he or she had nothing to do with it, which is bs in my experience. I’ve seen first level managers not get someone what they want pretty often, but seldom second level. And didn’t you get a progress review some time? Bottom line, it seems to me you have every right to feel you got screwed.
I got called into a conference room today by my new manager to give me an apology and to tell me that things would change within the next 7 - 10 days although he was not at liberty to tell me what other than they would be positive. He told me that the old management structure (the ones that quit) were dysfunctional and that I should destroy any “action plans” that they gave me. I also found out that the principle person that screwed me over was the person that I considered my best friend there.
Never fully trust companies or anyone in them. I hope this finally works out.
I find that when you are in an environment where three layers of management “don’t know nothin”, either someone is full of shit, ineffective at their job as manager, doesn’t give a shit or some combination.