Decline promotion because planning to change jobs?

Question

Background: I'm a software engineer in my mid-20s working at a small (~20 people) software/hardware company in southern Germany. I have ~5 years of experience, all at this company.

In brief, there are two key aspects to my question: 1) I want to move company because the pay here is too low for me, and 2) at the same time my bosses intend to promote me to a managerial or leadership position at the first opportunity. I will expand on these below.

1) Moving company: My salary is 60-65k EUR. I have aspirations to work at a tech giant or a financial firm in order to earn more and satisfy my ambitions. I am in a 5 month plan to prepare for those interviews. I especially want to leave because, after working my butt off for the past year, going the extra mile every time, and having an impressive list of the ways I've gone above and beyond, my boss declined to give me any raise at all. The reason was that I'm already being payed significantly more than my peers. That said, I already made plans to leave before this refusal.

2) Promotion: I have been displaying a strong ambition to be in a leadership role over the last years. Recently, my boss has revealed to me and reiterated that he expects opportunities to come up soon where he intends to make me the lead developer or project manager.

The fact that I'm torn between the career value of a promotion to manager but with lower pay versus being an engineer but with higher pay, is not my question (I'll ask that on a more appropriate forum).

My question is twofold:

A) If I choose to leave the company in a few months, what's a diplomatic way to decline the promotion, thereby preserving a great reference for my next employer? I have been pushing for this promotion for a while, so to the boss it will be disappointing and might disturb his plans.

B) If I am undecided, to leave or not, would it be terrible if I accept the promotion, and 3 months later look for the other job I have been preparing for? I could be undecided because maybe my market value is not as high as I thought; maybe I fail to join the companies I want to. In that case it would be great that I accepted the promotion and carry on with this career path. Otherwise, is there a minimum number of months that is acceptable to do this?

Answer 1

My answer is one-fold: Accept the promotion. You've pushed for it and earned it, so accept it. It's your employer's responsibility to keep you happy in your role and if the promotion isn't it, then they need to work with you on that. You are within your right to go and find a better role elsewhere when you see fit.

This answers B) too. Voilà, you've got the promotion, so you can move on from not having that as something that is holding you back. If your job hunt fails for whatever reason, you're better off than where you started.

Answer 2

I understand your dilemma, since I've been there. The stress comes certainly from your high ethics and your willingness to avoid damaging others. Good for you!

However, you are seeing this problem from few dimensions: currently you are only analyzing this from the ethical (you want your current employer to win) and career (you want to win) dimensions. Let's add "fairness" to the mix and you'll see how it becomes easier to digest.

First of all, promotions are something you earn , not something they give. If your job description (along with job-grade and pay-grade) demands an X level of activities and engagement, and you are consistently giving X+N all year long, then you are certainly on your way to earn the promotion, regardless of external factors, such as being attracted to another job. THAT'D BE THE FAIR THING TO DO.

However, if you thought you deserved a promotion, but now you realize you are barely giving only X (or below X), then you don't deserve the promotion yet. That'd be the fair thing to do too. It would be unfair that no one asked you to work on a weekend, yet you come on Monday morning telling your boss "hey, you owe me extra pay since I worked on Sunday". So, busting your butt on your job does not imply a promotion should be granted if you are the only person who is working 70 hours per week by your own willingness to do so.

Because of your high ethics, you should pursue the fair thing to do.

Now, regarding market value: that's another thing where fairness come. It's unfair to not be promoted (nor getting a raise) just because you already make more money than your coworkers. So what? You ALL should be paid according market-value for the same job (description+grade+zone). That's the fair thing to do.

Also, if none of your coworkers are willing to fight for a promotion like you do, it's also out of your hands. You should not latch yourself to the same job position just because everyone else does. That'd be unfair. You should be able to make progress based on your own goals, not on someone else's.

Probably you are studying for interviews on your free time, while you're coworkers prefer reading a novel or hanging out. It's fair you can drive your own path.

The only thing that would not be acceptable would is backstabbing your coworkers to get a promotion over them. That's totally unethical and unfair (which I don't think it's the case). The reason why I brought it is because "driving your career" should always be done with fair play.

And regarding your high tech position, that's certainly different from working for small companies. That's a career move that almost no small company can match. If this was about housing construction, a small company usually works only building small houses or apartments, while on a big company you could build 100-stories buildings or overseas bridges. No matter how many promotions you can get in a small company, it'd be unlikely you'll be building real-time-distributed-systems projects.

And regarding pay-checks, it's easier you get a good payment on a high-tech company if you join them in a leader-position. If you accept the leader position in your current job and work it for a year, you might be able to cash it later when you join the high tech company.

All that career and money decisions have to be carefully walked step by step in a well-crafted strategy, if you want to do it right. I recommend you to read the book "Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works" to learn about strategy and make assertive decisions.

As you can see, there's not right or wrong answer, but I hope this helps.