Sorry for the long winded post, but I've been saving up this story and I struggle with paraphrasing, bare with me.
I worked for an Aerospace company for 10 years. During those 5 years I wanted nothing more than to learn every facet of the job. During those 10 years I received 9 perfect performance reviews and 9 max raises. The ones I didn't get was during my early time when I went out of my lane and performed a task that was not my job, and could have caused issues regarding (already damaged) equipment investigations. Needless to say, I was a stellar employee who got shit done quickly, effectively, and efficiently. I was the go to guy on site. And my one fuck-up, led to the company sending me to train on the work that I was performing out of my lane.
Fast forward to the story. I was one of the most senior guys on the program, most of the rest had moved from field work to management/office roles. At my 9.5 year mark, performance evals came out, and I again received perfect scores accompanied by a max raise, but there was more to be had in a Sr. Level promotion. Same job, just a higher pay bracket. When I asked my supervisor how I would know if I was getting promoted to Sr. He responded with “If you were getting it, you'd know.”
Cool, thanks.
So I started job searching that night. I was still in the field and had plenty of vacation saved up, and leave coming soon.
I found a Position with a new company (the competitor) that was a significant pay cut (about 50% less), but they just gave me this guy feeling, that they were different.
The timing worked out that their training would start while I was one Leave, and my 10 year mark with the old company would hit about 1 week in. 10 years is significant because that's when my 401k became fully vested.
To be completely transparent, I wanted to start the training before resigning in part to see if it was for me, and if it wasn't, I'd keep searching, while staying with the old company.
I changed my away messages and voicemail to “unavailable” and blocked all calls from the corporate area code. I told nobody about my training, but coincidentally some former old company employees were also in this training, and I started getting calls from my Supervisor from HRs phone number. I blocked these as well.
They even had the gall to call the new company and ask if they were training me. I had already informed new company of my situation and that I would stand to lose 10-20k over a few days discrepancy and they were awesome. SO when the old company called, new company knew nothing, and “we don't release information on those who are or aren't training with us.”
After I hit my 10 year mark, I “returned” from my “out of cell reception ” vacation to being locked out of my email and payroll website. 🤣
I returned the missed calls, and they asked in the most “we got you” tone, if I was working for a competitor. I told them No (I was only training), and that I started my own business (I did) and that I didn't like their accusatory tone, and that my talents would be appreciated elsewhere. I gave them my notice effective ASAP, and where they could mail my check.
After one year with new company my gut feeling was correct, the low pay was based on contractual limitations of the job I was hired for, but they had another division of the Company that paid more, and was very interesting to me and they moved me there as soon as an opening came up. 1.5 yrs after I quit, I was making double my old company salary, had management that truly cared (and are not lifelong friends), upper management that loved my innovative mind and ideas (and embraced them), and my quality of life was so much better. I'm going on about 5 years from this story and recently had to leave due to a lack of work (nature of contracting) but I have no doubts that if work starts back up they will call me back. I'm focusing on my business now, with the support from all of my former Management and friends as clients.
TLDR, didn't get promoted, trained for a competitor while on vacation, took a pay cut, increased my quality of living.