Take a poorly paid promotion?

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I'm perfectly content to just be in sales...make my own schedule, responsible only for my performance...if I need to make more money I just prospect more , sell more, and I made my own raise.

I watch my managers getting hammered from above and below, making less than the top-selling sales people, with 4x the stress and headaches.

I tried management with a previous employer and vowed to NEVER make the same mistake again. My monthly gross income varies widely, with a range in excess of $10,000 between my best and worst month in any given year, but as long as I can make my budget work with that variable, I'm not going to make any moves into management. In my experience, only 20% of new sales people make it for a year in the department, and the record with managers isn't much better...the company is just slower to remove a bad manager than a non-productive sales person so everyone in the department suffers for months.
 
Universal truths:

American business management is generally poor with shortsighted objectives.

Corporate will abuse you as much as YOU let it.
 
Originally Posted By: Indydriver
Universal truths:

American business management is generally poor with shortsighted objectives.

Corporate will abuse you as much as YOU let it.


Pretty much. Unfortunately, in my experience, when you push back against said abuse you end up MORE abused or out the door.
 
I could add a lot to this but I am going to provide two quotes:

"Stress will kill you."

"When on their deathbed, no one has ever said, 'I wish I would have spent more time at the office'."
 
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Originally Posted By: Char Baby
Best of luck to you

~7 years prior to my retirement, I took a poorly paid promotion. The annual pay increases were better over those years than what I had been receiving in the past however, they money, responsibility & stress ratio was never worth the difference.

Many of my co-workers wanted me to take this promotion for similar reasons that you want to take the promotion...so that someone less qualified didn't get the job.

The stress increase put my health at risk and those same co-workers turned against me, originally thinking that, "he's(me) one of us in this position"! But, instead over that period of time, I became one of them(upper mgt) and I had to perform the job in the name of the company & my superiors, and not the employees.

Although by the time I had retired, I was making more money than I had ever made, once it was over, I feel that it was never worth it. I would rather have stayed where I was and not taken the promotion. The extra money and short period of time that I was in this position didn't help much(too small to calculate) in my retirement anyway unless I could have had this position for 30 years.

Maybe I wasn't cut out for the position as it does take a special person that can handle criticism and stress when performing a job in the name of the company and not your friends.


Yea, i could see that happening to me, i really hope that it doesn't but one can never really know. The small amount money here isn't going to cover my stress levels but i might use the title to get me something better a few years down the road. I'm early 30's so i still have a lot of paths and offers to consider. If i was in my 50's i'm pretty sure i would have easily stayed in the middle and just wait it out.



Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
What does "poorly paid" mean ?
$5K raise, $10K raise, ....???

Sometimes the added stress and aggravation is not worth the small salary increase.



Its about 5% bump each step.

Originally Posted By: Alfred_B
You can go into upper management and if it doesn't work, can always change the employer now with a better looking resume.

If the pay raise is the issue, remember that when promoted from within, the salary is not as high as when someone is brought from the outside. The reason for that is that they weren't able to find someone from the inside so they are upping the offer to attract someone from the outside. Plus, the outsiders start with a clean slate and are able to negotiate better.


This is one of thought processes. I hate to be the guy the bouncing around jobs every few years but i'm not at the level where i want to be yet.

Originally Posted By: bcossa2001
What an outstanding thread. Real life advice from experienced people.


100% agreed, a lot more then i honestly expected. Everyone here rocks!
 
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
Originally Posted By: Indydriver
Universal truths:

American business management is generally poor with shortsighted objectives.

Corporate will abuse you as much as YOU let it.


Pretty much. Unfortunately, in my experience, when you push back against said abuse you end up MORE abused or out the door.


Detach yourself if you go for it. He who has nothing to lose has the most to gain. Troll those above you if they give you contradictory or impossible orders. Give them a list of what you need to make X happen, via email, with a personal copy of said email. When they bust you for missing a target, flip it right around and say under your plan of which they already have a copy this wouldn't have happened and they should invest more in Y.

I had a "fun" last couple years at my former employer doing exactly this. Lampooning the stupid to their faces. Demanding tools I didn't get. (Sadly I still was able to provide the product anyway...) Saving emails off-site. It helped that I was underpaid and knew I could have done better. I do better now.
smile.gif


If you're getting pushed into this promotion, it could be they're sick of you on a lower level and would let you go. I say go for it but emotionally uninvolve yourself. Delegate your work so you get out after 40 hours like you morally should.
 
A 5% pay raise is a slap in the face for all that extra responsibilities and stress.

Sounds like they'll use and abuse you for peanuts.
 
Originally Posted By: bigj_16
"When on their deathbed, no one has ever said, 'I wish I would have spent more time at the office'."


THIS

There is some crazy talk in this thread. Life is more than work.
 
From what you've written, taking the promotion might be a good defensive move.
More responsibility for a minimal pay increase seems troubling, but you may have no better choice.
You could otherwise end up working for an unqualified fool who might then badmouth you to his organizational peers for everything that goes wrong.
I find myself in this position at the moment, but it is fun to do as eljefino suggests and throw past emails back at 'em and I'm near enough to planned retirement now that I don't need to care too much.
Personally, I'd be perfectly happy doing my own thing at work without anyone reporting to me.
It isn't all that enjoyable to me to rely upon others to get the work done and you do get squeezed from both above and below.
You also get hit with the really difficult stuff that neither your subordinates nor your superiors can quite seem to do, although it is fun to be the go-to guy when nobody else has a clue.
 
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