Not everyone cares about promotion

eazybee

I find many of the above posts sad; promotion brings extra responsibility but it also brings more knowledge, experience and much more involvement at decision -making level, plus job satisfaction. Making a difference, you could say.
Also sadly, in my opinion, a great many people underestimate their ability.

Some people don't want things like involvement at decision-making level. Some people are completely satisfied doing a quiet job well - perhaps the hands on helping of clients gives some more satisfaction than decision making.

Also, there are times in life when other things are more important, satisfying and challenging and you just don't need to seek those things from your work.

I meant to say, I agree Dickens

Cross posted with you Callistemon21 so sorry for almost repeating what you said.

Great minds, Coastpath!

The Peter Principle is an observation that the tendency in most organizational hierarchies, such as that of a corporation, is for every employee to rise in the hierarchy through promotion until they reach a level of respective incompetence

Not that I am suggesting for a moment that any of you lovely people are not competent at your job. In fact reaching a level where you are content and know you are good in your role can show maturity.

The same can apply if you are running a small business, as I am.

I don want to "grow the business" because that would mean taking on staff with all the added bureaucracy and responsibilities of tax/payroll/NI and so on. No thanks. I just prefer to jog along as I am.

If I hit a lean patch I can pull my belt in and economise. However if I employ people I still have to pay their wages when profits are down. I can live without the hassle.

Actually it is quite insulting to imply that people who are not working at a management level in their careers are not 'making a difference'. There are many ways you can make a difference. How narrow minded, and indeed sad, to assume it is always through career ambition and success.

I've got no interest whatsoever in growing someone else's company, but I know I make a huge difference in my job.

On leaving university I was taken on as a Graduate Management Trainee in a banking organisation. I spent 18 months working alongside directors and company solicitors at the highest level, down to the ladies on the switchboard and microfiche machines. What I learned was that everyone's job is important and I was extremely grateful for that lesson.

Beswitched

Actually it is quite insulting to imply that people who are not working at a management level in their careers are not 'making a difference'. There are many ways you can make a difference. How narrow minded, and indeed sad, to assume it is always through career ambition and success.

?

How would we have managed without a team effort? From the manager through to the cleaners, the canteen staff to the trainees?

Well, we could probably have got by without the manager.

I couldn't agree with you more Beswitched and am so glad to be retired now and out of all that pretentious nonsense. At annual assessments for a past job I always said that I was happy in my present position and didn't want to take on more responsibilities but felt that it was considered a little strange. We don't all want to be brain surgeons or the like.

I was certainly content to do my job and had no particular ambition to join the management side of things. I was a primary school teacher and never aspired to be a head teacher. I never worked out what they do all day but it must be incredibly boring. I was happiest in my classroom with my class.

I think that as long as you are in a job that you enjoy and gives you satisfaction, with a high enough pay to live on, does it really matter about promotion ?
Don't forget that even if you are WFH, you will still need or have supervisors online so there will still be a possibility to step up the ladder.
One thing I have noticed is that many remote jobs are either minimum wage or just above and has anybody also noticed how many WFH jobs are for 40 hrs a week with unsocial hours where before they were 35/37 hrs and 9-5 ?

I think you cut your cloth to suit your lifestyle. I was highly ambitious when I first started my job got promotion,had to move on marriage got two more promotions then a family came along. I had a husband with a 24/7 job day and night.
I decided I would give the family my time for a number of years and then go back and make myself as good as I could with the routine job. I lost another promotion because I could not attend out of hours meetings and that finally made my mind up.
We don't all have to be go-getters some as it has been pointed out have to be willing to work hard at the routine. Or there would be nothing for the managers to manage.
Looking back at the ones who did push on it was often to escape the routine daily job. There was a saying when I was young, those that can teach do, those that can't go for Headship those that can't lead get out and go for
Advisors jobs.
It is often easier to come up with ideas than fulfil them in their actual setting.

Sone of the best practitioners I have known have also been managers.

During my teaching days I often observed Headteachers and Deputies standing in front of a class of children with no real idea of how to teach and quite poor at behaviour management. They were very confident however, of telling the rest of us how to do it! Also very true about advisors leading us all and often having nothing of significance to add.

I detested being asked "Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years time?"

Obviously, the right answer was not either "Working somewhere else where they don't ask blooming silly questions learnt at a HR seminar", or "Hang on, while I pray for enlightenment, after all only God knows the answer."

But I have been sorely tempted to use one of them.

Why is it wrong to enjoy, teaching, nursing, general practice or wrapping up parcels? Surely any boss should be pleased to employ people who actually like the job they are doing?

I was asked if I would consider becoming the head of a small private school, and I said no, thank you. I enjoy teaching. I would not enjoy admistration or talking to difficult parents all day long. You should have seen the looks I got.

I am working up to retirement. Every year I have an annual review and I need no more training, I'm not sent on coursers/conferences, I am patted on the back for my achievements and sent back to do my job..

I would much rather work at home now that I have a taste of it, I have been left with nothing to aspire to, like I did when I was younger. Now I would rather start winding down, taking less responsibility and working from home more to ease me gently into finding things which interest me and making new life choices...

Working at home over the pandemic helped me settle into my natural biorhythms and stopped the stress of commuting. if I had enough to retire now I would...but thats a different topic!

In my first job I was promoted so quickly that I was the youngest Section Manager in the 200 year old history of the very big Insurance Company. My second job I was also promoted, so quickly that my line manager had to step down, so that effectively I became her boss. Luckily she had not wanted the promotion in the first place and was happy to move back down the ladder.

I definitely didn't want promotion in my last job, as a holiday rep my job was to assist people on holiday and make sure their holiday was the best it could be. I dealt with all sorts of people, all sorts of problems and I loved every minute of it. I was often told in my 13 year career that I should go for promotion but it wasn't for me, it would have taken me too far from the job I loved.

Of course not everyone cares about promotion and that's a good thing because if everybody was chasing this there'd be a pretty awful and competitive atmosphere in the workplace. However, as far as women are concerned, it's a fact that the workplace is where women organise to fight for their rights - this is not done in the home where women are isolated and the switch to wholesale WFH is detrimental to women in the wider scale. Many WFH women are actually doing a lot more housework now during the time when they would be travelling, preparing the evening meal at the time when they would have stopped in the office/factory for their lunch. So the tradition that women are faced with the double whammy is perpetuated. The burden on women WFH is significant. They work, and keep house and family together at the same time, and for years we have been trying to find solutions to that situation. Unfortunately, there's lots of evidence to show that men are not playing their equal part even when they too are WFH. So I'm not really in favour of women WFH full-time - I believe it's a step backwards not forwards.

But surely it depends on the individual, their circumstances and how they would prefer to organise their lives? There are presumably lots of women who for various reasons would prefer to work from home, including single women, women who don't have children and women whose children are now grown up.

That's a problem of equality between men and women rather than necessarily a specific issue with wfh I would have thought, women do more housework, childcare, and home admin whether they are in the office or out of it.

I agree
I have been the manager of a children’s care home for 2 years. I’m well laid but there’s a huge amount of responsibility and stress
I’m thinking of asking to return to the Deputy Role when they open a nee home.

I haven’t got enough days in the week to do everything. I haven’t seen my mother in nearly 3 weeks snd my adult children need me more now than when they were babies…it’s all getting a bit much!

Can’t you leave?

Agreed!

I agree that there is less visibility from management in someone working from home, but I am sure those that are ambitious will find a way to make themselves stand out.

For many others, the flexibility of working from home has many benefits, and many are happy doing the job they were hired to do, and not really want promotion.

My daughter is very capable mid-management in provincial government. She did take a promotion during WFH, and found the learning curve to be very stressful. It was hinted at late last year that there could be another promotion, but she acknowledges to herself that she wants to stay stable for the next few years while children are young.