The Art of Resisting Promotion — The Autodidacts
The default course is: as soon as you’re doing a job well, you get encouraged to switch to a different job. This new job will likely be similar to what you’ve just been doing, but slightly larger, more complex, higher status, more flashy, and higher pay. And higher pressure.
This can seem like a tantalizing upgrade — and sometimes it is, especially for the ambitious climbers out there — but sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes this new job is actually less fun than the one you had been doing, and had finally gotten good at. Sometimes it takes ten to twenty percent more of your time and attention, which is exactly the time you would otherwise use to rest, restore, and work on creative projects. Those vital few minutes needed to defrag, kick it back, and feel like you’re not constantly behind on everything.
In addition to that, it’s usually slightly different duties. These can be a fun challenge and a welcome respite, if you were bored with your previous duties. Or it can be frustrating. Sometimes — this seems to often be the case with management promotions — the skillsets required to do the new job well are slightly different from what you had already developed, and sometimes even conflicting with your creative passion or aptitude. For example, a programmer who is good at programming and enjoys it, but gets promoted to a team-lead for a programming project — since they obviously know what they are doing and produce good work — but doesn’t actually enjoy managing other people and isn’t necessarily very good at it. What they’re good at, and enjoy, is programming, which they no longer get to do.
