I’m out of college only a few years and joined a company last year in an entry-level analyst role. I was hired to do the day to day work on our biggest account. They paid for some course certifications in Excel and my boss spent a lot of time training me on how projects are handled on our big account. After my last performance review, I was promoted (with a 20% raise) and my boss has promised I can take on a project manager role and work on getting my own clients once we hire someone else to take on my “junior” duties.
However, none of this has happened. I’ve spent the last four months since my promotion doing the same Excel work as before and we have yet to hire someone to replace my role so I can move up. I really hate this work as it’s tedious and not based in real analysis, just what my boss “feels” we should report. Worse, we were recently acquired and learned our company has no interest in pursuing custom work for clients, so there’s no way I would be able to move up.
I am not enjoying my time here and want to look for another job but I feel guilty for leaving my company high and dry. What we do is very specific and my boss would have to take over all of my duties were I to leave. They have put a lot of time into my development and compensated me well after my review but now I feel like I’m going nowhere and they purposefully want me to stay in a dead-end job to fulfill the work. I’m crying all the time because I hate what I do. Am I wrong to want to move on and find something more enjoyable? How do I handle transitioning when I wouldn’t be able to get another job without having done this one?