I work for a big financial company and they're saying i'm going to get a promotion but have to go through an interview process and be compared with external candidates. Basically that a new position will be created and I need to apply for it.

To me it feels like an insult as promotions should be a reward for good work done on the job?

And technically I'm like the most experienced, expert on the team...

Everyone comes to me asking for help or to explain things...

"In recognition of all your hard work, we're going give you a chance to interview for your own job.""

Yeah I'd be a insulted too...

The folks I work with should know my work in way more detail than any interview ever would tell someone.

They should know if I deserve a promotion long before a song and dance.

If you have to interview there...may as well interview elsewhere too...

Nah this ain't it chief.

It would be pretty petty to go through the process and get the job but then decline it

If you're going to have to interview either way, might as well do it at another company and start a bidding war.

Then turn them down because that's some bullshit.

They're also shitfucks for wasting all the applicants time as well. Dick move all around for the sake of paper shuffling.

@SortOfTested well COVID... plus other personal problems have to tell care of... Don't have time or want to bother.

Boss said he'll tell me the questions beforehand but so this whole thing is like a BS act probably meant drag out the promotional... Not like they going to back date my salary increase....

Honestly I never cared for a promotion but every time I get more details about the process, I just get more and more pissed off. Like wtf? Why?

And well each time I feel more like acting dumber....

@halfflat yes if I was going to go for a more senior team, fine.

Not for my current position though. I don't think I'm gonna be getting any junior devs to boss around and do my bidding... Or be able to tell the rest of the team to get their shit together and up their game...

@donuts
Your boss is the type of person I'd love to throat punch. He's literally going to waste your time, and the time of unsuspecting stalking horses with no intent to hire, all to satisfy their desire for a bureaucratic fashion show.

The fact they can conceptualize something like that without batting an eye shows how far gone they are as human beings.

@SortOfTested not really my boss... Seems like some company policy... He's just following what his boss says... Some new promotion process...

Maybe HR....

Agree on wasting ppls time... I didn't even tell my family about this even though he mentioned it a few months ago cuz I'm like...yea "show me the money" first

Yes, I find this very insulting, too.

On the one hand, I don't consider a promotion just a reward for good work. That's what raises are for. To a higher title some more strings are attached. On the other hand I don't get how utterly anal some companies are about promotions. Well, and "on the third hand" I'm less and less fond of titles anyway because it feeds egos too much, but that's a topic for another day.

This "you have to interview for your own promotion, while external candidates with zero inside experience are your competition" just takes the cake. If you're a boss and want to show your employees you don't appreciate them one bit and instead see them as simple cogs in the machinery, this is the way to go.

Definitely interview for your promotion elsewhere if you can.

Check if this is standard at your company. For lots of reasons your boss and others may be forced to do it this way. Big companies come with big bureaucracy.

@justamuslimguy well that's really insulting still.... Which is why I'm like wtf...

Maybe in prevents incompetent people from getting promoted by the boss... But why would boss ever do that....

@justamuslimguy
That's something I don't think I can fully agree with. I can agree that it exists, yes, but not that it has to be that way or that it is remotely valuable.

If there's one thing that became painfully clear to me working at Amazon, it was that bloated bureaucracy is a choice of the membership of the company to do nothing about it. It's a symptom of a management culture of absolute risk aversion that leads to continuous hedging and abstraction designed to deflect blame rather than solve problems or grow the business. It's the mindset that the only way to increase profits is to cut costs.

The practice at Amazon of dispassionately removing anyone who wasn't an "A player" gutted the dead weight to such an extent that it established a culture of continuous measurement of everything. There's a joke inside amazon that's it's not an Amazon presentation without a pie chart, and more pointedly without datasets backing every word that is said. Any practice that was not valuable was shown as such and was soon excised.

@donuts, not more hijacking, promise 😘

@donuts if in theory a boss out there is promoting incompetent people...the problem is the boss.

Processes will not ever fix that. Especially if it involves disconnected people who feel it is their job to evaluate people they don't know.

@M1sf3t that I'm probably the most overqualified person on the team from a technical point of view... But they still want to look outside.

If they needed to look outside to replace me... They had years to do it....

@M1sf3t problem is it's hard for me to find a job due to disability and health issues... If I didn't have to deal with that id be long gone by now...

I learned to just be happy with a job that pays the bills and just enjoy life... but this sort of thing still pisses me off and reminds me about how fckd up and hypocritical the world can be...

@M1sf3t the second... Let's just say my health problems are so bad that if I were to predict 10yrs from now... There's a high chance I may not be alive or so disabled I wouldn't be able to work anyway.

And well my just my current liquid assets could let me just live comfortably for 5yrs... And then maybe I'll be poor enough to be eligible for Medicare, government disability...

@M1sf3t yes but that 5yr plan assumes I just accept whatever happens and don't bother seeing doctors...

The only reason I really work is so I can get health insurance... Which caps out of pocket at $3000 a year. If I needed to pay all the medical bills myself, I'd be broke long ago....

So yes... It's complicated....

@M1sf3t well the team will notice and maybe give a fck but it'll pass.... After maybe a few months no matter where you work.

I had the urge after my boss told me this to just say, u know what don't bother. I quit immediately.

And then pictured him "chasing" me but reality set in pretty quick...

@M1sf3t yes maybe after covid and I'm still alive without too many problems I'll try. Having some brain surgery next 2 weeks More specifically Radiation beams shot into the brain to try to kill off tumors...

to me, it would depend on what the position is. something that i want to do and claim i am able to do, but is different enough from my current position that the fact that i'm competent on my current position doesn't necessarily translate into the new one? sure, interview me, that's a good HR in my opinion. i would like to be promoted to the topmost level of my competence, not o the first level of my incompetence.

@Midnight-shcode no change in position, just title

This is standard practice at a lot of large companies. When a new position is created they have to open it up to internal applications, as an equal opportunity policy.