Distilled Essence: Loyalty is dead.
Slightly Longer But Still TLDR: Got passed over for a promotion to a job I was already doing, then left the company after 20 years. Loyalty is a two-way relationship, and that relationship is dead. A year later, most other people on the team have left, the person that got the job instead of me left after 6 months, the position is still open, and they are struggling.
The Unabridged Story
About this time last year, I left a niche job in life sciences IT after 20yrs at Company A. Loved the increasing roles I'd had there for so many years, and quite happy with the culture, including a long indoctrination on the corporate Kool-Aid talk of loyalty and dedication to the company's mission to 'save lives' through our work… but creeping leadership changes that shifted the IT political environment resulted in a slowing-then-stop of my career progression, and I finally realized that my loyalty was not being rewarded with the advancement options I sought.
I finally got the message when I was slowly passed over for a promotion to the leadership job everyone agreed I had already been doing for years, with very lame reasoning given as to why. My previous boss (someone who I trained into the role's details needed regarding the life sciences niche of IT) had left almost a year beforehand. Instead of just offering the role to me then (like I had watched management do to others in situations similar to mine on other teams in our department) they instead asked a leader from a different team to become our interim boss in addition to their other duties, with the promise that they would post the permanent boss position “soon”. While I got along very well with this interim boss, they (admittedly) had close to zero experience in our little IT niche.
My loyalty had been clouding my judgment, but I was beginning to see the end of this long train, so I quietly started looking for opportunities away from Company A. No hurry, though, because I knew I could take my time and find a 'perfect' role elsewhere, as I was confident Company A was perfectly content with me remaining in the niche position I was already in. After 20 years, people don't ask about loyalty, they just assume you will always be there.
Meanwhile, I continued to quietly but visibly carry our larger Company A team from my existing middle-manager position, using influence in lieu of direct authority, with most others (at multiple levels around me in the organization, including our interim boss) continuing to defer to me in most of the decision-making, based on my skills and comparatively long years of experience with the company.
While I was waiting for the permanent boss position to post for applications, I knew I would be fighting against the 'succession planning' perception, so I also made a point of very visibly documenting our processes and training my own small team to ensure they could do everything needed for our processes, whether I was there or not. I proved that by taking a long vacation (with no check-ins, none) and everything functioned perfectly in my absence, so I had documented proof I could be promoted without creating a 'subject matter expertise hole' behind me.
So, after almost a full year of this nebulous interim situation, they finally opened applications for the permanent boss position. There was never any explanation given why we were left drifting so long in this interim state — our interim boss, while again very nice but always holding their cards close, remained far too busy doing three jobs of their own to meaningfully progress any of our roadmap goals. I applied for the boss position the day it posted.
Nobody at Company A knew I was also in the final stages of getting a written offer from Company B. Even though I knew in my heart they were not going to select me for the boss position at Company A, I went through all 3 rounds of interviews anyway, because I very much wanted to hear their (BS) reasons why.
So, no surprise, after their deliberation process completed, they informed me I was not the chosen candidate, and that they had extended an offer to someone else at Company A (another person with exactly zero experience in our particular IT niche – zero). I asked for reasons why, and was given what was meant to be encouraging feedback that “maybe I'd be ready for the next step” after a year of coaching on how to operate at the manager level (wtf?), because “a leader cannot afford to get enmeshed in the detail work.” Sure. Ok.
Before we had that particular awkward conversation, I had already also just accepted the written job offer with Company B, so I was able to tender my resignation the day after I was officially turned down for the boss job, and before I even learned who they'd made the offer to. Company A got a full two weeks notice period from me (my niche is a small world, and I very much believe in not burning bridges). I only found out who it was that got the boss job a month after I left.
Time has passed, and in the close to one year since I left Company A, I can say the only regret I have is the beloved colleagues I left behind. I love my position at Company B, since it is the promotion I wanted, including title and salary increase, and the written responsibilities I'd already had for years at Company A.
Meanwhile, things are continuing to devolve at Company A. The person that got the boss job left the company after six months in the role, and the position was quickly re-posted on all the job sites. Almost every other member of that team has also left – the few that remain are struggling to get everything done. So, I suspect the leaders are also having to do a lot of that detail work now, since there are so few people remaining. The schadenfreude is delicious.
But in hind sight, I know now that I should have left Company A years before I did, fooled into thinking my loyalty was being reciprocated when it was not. Some niche jobs are so specific, there are few career advancement options available within a single company. My mistake was to ignore that, placing too high a value on my loyalty to the company, instead of remaining aware of my own value and career goals.