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Our department restructured and my new boss called me into his office a while ago. He offered me a new position title with a raise. Long story short I asked him if I could just be a senior project manager instead of the new position of operations manager. He declined and I asked him if I could just add operations manager to my job title or project manager. He accepted this and I got the raise too.

Fast forward some time. A coworker is leaving and I now see the new job posting senior project manager to replace him…

This makes me feel a little upset, why wasn’t I asked to be senior project manager? I’ve been at this company for 5 years with successful performance reviews (although under a lot of different bosses).

I want to schedule a one on one with him and ask him can I also become a senior project manager / operations manager with more PM responsibilities and if not, can you please tell me what I am missing because I don’t understand… this is my desired career path after all. Plus my skills abilities and talents are under utilized right now with what I am currently doing. And I have been there for 5 years lol.

Thoughts?

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    Given that each company can freely make up their own titles, what are the differences between Senior PM and Operations Manager? Is one higher up the chain than the other? Are you looking to get promoted or demoted or is it just a parallel track of advancement in another discipline?
    – nvoigt ♦
    Mar 13 at 7:16

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Long story short I asked him if I could just be a senior project manager instead of the new position of operations manager. He declined

This is the point where you should have started a conversation along the lines of "what do you need to see from me before I can be a senior PM?" That would have given the answer to

why wasn’t I asked to be senior project manager?

and potentially avoided a lot of these issues now. I appreciate we can't change the past, so certainly start that conversation with your manager now - but try to avoid the tone that comes across in your question that you are somehow entitled to the role.

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    They promote the person who is the best candidate for that position at the time the position is open. Having expressed interest does not necessarily make you a good candidate. Being a good candidate does not guarantee they will see you as the best candidate at a specific time for a specific task. This is not first come, first served; calm down and accept that. Definitely ask your manager how to be a better candidate next time the position is open, but keep the focus on exactly that, not what has already happened, since you were not wronged.
    – keshlam
    Mar 12 at 23:00
  • @keshlam: "They promote the person who is the best candidate for that position at the time the position is open. " - in an ideal company, yes. In other companies... well..., we can debate on it.
    – virolino
    Mar 14 at 9:12
  • They get to decide what best means, of course. Which is why we need to ask manglement what the criteria are. And yeah, sometimes they do something else; humans are weird, and we sorta have to live with that.
    – keshlam
    Mar 14 at 13:19

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