For the past 4 months, I've been advocating for a promotion and raise at work. I'm a data analyst and I've been outperforming in just about every area of my job, including leading projects, supervising staff, and overall outperforming the paygrade they brought me in at. While my manager has agreed with me on multiple occasions that “they got a good deal on me”, she's been dragging her feet on getting me the recognition I deserve. There may be a variety of factors as to why, but one that sticks out is her own insecurity over rustling feathers with the higher ups. I have also caught her in lies about going to our VP to advocate on my behalf and stealing credit for my work.
In my most recent mid-year review, I noticed she started nitpicking incredibly odd details about my performance. In one instance, she claimed that I was going too far above and beyond what our internal clients were expecting. Huh?!?! When I asked for elaboration on this, it became apparent that she didn't have anything worthwhile to convey. She also claimed that “some” have mentioned that I don't understand their data, but could not provide a specific example of this when I asked for an example. I also noticed she is attempting to be highly exclusive about work that I should be involved with by holding meetings without me. In some cases, she is also re-working projects I've completed and the output looks amateurish at best (she does not have an analytics background).
Since all this started going down the past couple months, I began slowly pulling up the stakes. I stopped working on all the “extra” projects that I was putting together to make myself and the team shine. I've stopped trying to get involved with additional projects. Whenever she has gone in and re-worked something I put together, I'm just leaving it alone and letting her own it despite how terrible it looks. I've started doing the absolute bare minimum of what needs to be done to survive. Instead, I'm spending my time applying for jobs, getting certified online, doing work for my Master's program, and interviewing for other roles. In fact, I have one interview this afternoon which could potentially lead to an offer in the coming week or two. If this is how she wants to proceed in “rewarding” her top performers, I'm out.