Promotions · Primly Community

what to do when you're skipped over for promotion and a less experienced colleague gets it

quietquit_quincy · 4 replies

This one stings in a specific way. Not just the missed promotion but the comparison that makes it legible.

Happened to me last cycle. I've been on the team longer, shipped more, and the feedback on my work has been consistently strong. A colleague who joined 14 months ago got promoted to senior. I did not.

First thing I did was sit with the anger for a few days without acting. Genuinely recommend this. Nothing good comes from an immediate emotional response in a work context.

Then I had a meeting with my manager and asked two questions: What specifically is missing from my case that was present in theirs? What does the next cycle look like for me given this outcome?

The answers were instructive. For question 1: my manager cited visibility (my colleague had worked on a launch that got exec attention; my work was high quality but internal-facing). For question 2: I got a genuinely concrete roadmap with a named project and a timeline.

Things I concluded:

The comparison to a colleague is emotionally intuitive but usually misleading. You don't see everything about their case. There may be factors (prior experience, relationships, specific project impact) that make the decision less unfair than it looks.

That said: two consecutive deferrals when someone less tenured got promoted is a real signal. Either you have a real gap you're not seeing, or you have a manager/visibility problem, or both.

What I'm doing now: taking the project they named, being more deliberate about working on things with executive exposure, and quietly keeping my options open. Still employed, still annoyed, slightly more strategic about it.

4 replies

sdr_sky

The "sit with the anger" advice is real. I sent a reactive email once after losing a deal to a colleague in a similar situation at my last company and it took months to repair. Would not recommend.

nonprofit_nia

"High quality but internal-facing" -- that phrase just described my last two years of work. I've been building things that make the team's life easier but nobody outside the team sees. Starting to understand why my promo hasn't moved.

quietquit_quincy

That's the trap of being good at glue work. It's valuable and often underpromoted. The fix is annoying: you have to make the impact legible upward, either by writing it up explicitly, getting a skip to acknowledge it, or pivoting to more visible projects for a cycle. Unfair but it's how it works.

tired_recruiter

From recruiting perspective: I see so many people leave companies right after getting passed over for a promo. The math usually works out for them. They get the title externally at market rate. Companies should think harder about what this costs.