Your job is to get a new job… or something like that
You can’t get people to care about what you want, and you can’t help them get to where they don’t want to be
Back in 2010 I was working as a level 2 infrastructure analyst at a tech company in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As part of my responsibilities, I had to interact constantly with different software developers, so it was common for me to have lunch with them.
In one of those occasions, I was having lunch with a coworker who started about his situation I work. Despite being hired as a Junior Software Developer, he was doing the work of a Senior and being forced to work in a project he didn’t want to. Nevertheless, all his attempts to get a raised or at least relocated to a different project had been always rejected.
After having listened to what he had to say, I proceeded to give him some advice. I told him he would never get a promotion if he was not ready to quit the company if they wouldn’t give him what he wanted.
Therefore, if the wanted to get a promotion, this is what he shoiuld do:
- Send some resumes and apply to some job offers;
- Be selected for a new job positions somewhere else;
- Let his current employer know he is ready to accept the new job, but he would rather stay, if they can do better.
A few weeks later I left the company and didn’t speak to my now former coworker anymore, until he hit me on Facebook just to let me know that he had followed me advice and it worked exactly as I said it would. He got a job offer and used it as a leverage to demand a promotion, a raise, and a project relocation.
He got everything he asked for when he was ready to leave.
It’s time for me to remember my own advice.