For years, my company has operated at bare bones where I work. At some point when I came aboard, they realized that the people working there for decades were going to leave soon. I presented my idea of spreading the knowledge around, mainly because fuck that noise I'm not doing it. Unfortunately, I'm the only person who can do a lot of the things right now. They gave me this “acting” title to be the “leader”, told the team to follow me, told me that everything runs through me. I found out this last week that there has been a lot of projects going on behind my back, lots of things coordinated without me, and that the job I applied for (team lead) is being given to someone else. I didn't find this out by being told one on one by my supervisor, I instead found this out by rockstar upper manager stating during a meeting that they found this “amazing candidate, they really like them, the offer has already been sent to them”. So for the past 5 months I have been “the saviour, the person, the one they want to push a new vision of change with”, only to find that the moment they didn't really need me they would just treat me like trash. I didn't really need the title, I was happy doing 1/4 of my work capability for amazing pay. I get to go back to that (yeah me), I just thought all these meetings where they were saying they see a leader in me and that they wanted to cultivate that meant something. Instead I find myself backstabbed by finding out I didn't get the job in front of 7 managers and some of my peers. Previously, I had been burned by a company and kept my distance with ones since, this company started having me feel like maybe I was wrong to treat it as a paycheck and not a career. Paycheck it is.