Turning down a promotion….

Has anyone ever turned down a promotion to a manager? I am being lined up to replace our manager who is retiring but I am not sure if it is what I want.

I really enjoy my job at the moment, I enjoy the technical aspects (which I would no longer be involved in) and I also enjoy the work/pay/hours ratio.

I have never considered management and it was sprung onto me this week and has put me in quite a spin!

Anyone been in a similar position? If you did turn down promotion, how was it received?

Started at the bottom and liked it there.

Haven’t directly turned it down as such, but have resisted being pushed that way. I like locking up bad guys. I’m not interested in sorting out other people’s holiday dates or doing appraisals or any of that shite.

In my old job as an IT manager, many technical people used to turn down the chance for promotion as they loved to write programmes and do actually coal face work. I always really respected them for that and so did the other manager. It was never a problem. Just make it clear that you are really pleased to have been considered but you really enjoy your job and the technical aspects and you don’t wan to lose that.

doing appraisals or any of that shite.

That is truly the most mind numbing, boring crap any employer can throw at you.

I just used to make them up and even swap them with other managers so we didn’t have as many to do 🙂

I’ve known colleagues turn down promotion because it took them over the threshold for overtime pay i.e a pay cut!

if you don’t want or need to then why would you accept?
just make sure you have a solid reason for not accepting rather than apathy. perhaps they are nervous about bringing somebody new into the business so maybe you could offer to support any onboarding of the new manager.

jota180 – I can’t even bear doing my own. At least my line manager turns a blind eye to the fact that it has been identical for the last 3 years!

I just rehash ones from 5 or 6 years ago – easy 🙂

I got made up to manager last year. Don’t really like it to be honest.
I used to be on the tools and when there was an issue with someone’s work you could be fairly blunt and honest. Now I have to ‘manage’ them like a child and be concerned about their well being and motivation when all I want to do is tell them to sort it or bugger off.
Money’s good but you earn it. Its the only thing keeping my in the role is the extra dosh

did and then returned to a lower role

More hassle and less reward was how I would describe it tbh

such a strange attitude to work that we have in this country.

“That guy’s a really good engineer. Let’s promote him to a position which involves loads of man management and no engineering”.

The Peter Principle is a management theory which suggests that organizations risk filling management roles with people who are incompetent if they promote those who are performing well at their current role, rather than those who have proven abilities at the intended role.

Just politely say no and leave it at that, if you get into a conversation someone will persuade you that it’s a good idea and frankly if you thought it was you wouldn’t ask the question.
I didn’t enjoy management I felt it was just moving stuff around and not actually doing anything productive.

I got made up to manager last year. Don’t really like it to be honest.
I used to be on the tools and when there was an issue with someone’s work you could be fairly blunt and honest. Now I have to ‘manage’ them like a child and be concerned about their well being and motivation when all I want to do is tell them to sort it or bugger off.
Money’s good but you earn it. Its the only thing keeping my in the role is the extra dosh

Pretty much sums it up for me as well. Pushed into it, hated the man management side of things but loved the engineering aspects it opened up with the rest of the site but even so I looked elsewhere for another job. Had a chat with my manager one day and just blurted it all out about being unhappy in the role and looking elsewhere. The company created a new full time role (project manager) which we’d never had before and I moved sideways into it and we found an external replacement for my old role. Way more than happy again and looking forward to anther 10 years of being here!

Yup same here. Enjoy the technical stuff and wasn’t interested in sorting out peoples holidays and sick and generally acting as Mr Motivator. So I turned it down.

No I haven’t. I think there is a difference between taking a promotion offered to you versus actively pursuing promotions to higher levels.

You should think very very carefully about this. You sound like you don’t know that much about the new role, find out. Its normal to be a little apprehensive about such a move but you can and should get some training for he new skills required. You should think about what might happen, a different boss could be employed who you don’t work well with and your view of your current job could change dramatically. You may also find yourself increasingly sidelined in he future. You may be happy with that and lack of stress being in a job you are comfortable today but think carefully.

If after considering all of this and speaking to management (ie whoever your new boss and his peers would be) the make a considered choice.

I sometimes wish that I’d turned down my last promotion.

They sacked my old director (who was on at least twice my money) and ‘promoted’ me – except that they didn’t pay me his salary, and expected me to do his management role on top of my existing role!

Before promotion, I was the top performer in the business, after promotion I wasn’t able to do my old hands on role or the management role effectively and was therefore shit at both (well, I wasn’t shit, but I couldn’t reach their expectations…which made me feel shit)!

I eventually suggested that they either hire somebody to specifically look after the management tasks, or let me just manage and not do 2 jobs…they hired a hands off Director who gets paid 4x what I earn! Logic in there somewhere I’m sure.

I’m now 40 and can’t leave the industry as having to retrain would see an unworkable salary drop, and need the salary for at least the next 10 years.

If I could do a job that I loved and could live on the money associated, I’d jump at the chance.

I suppose that all of the above is a long winded way of saying…do what you enjoy and don’t let them drag you into their bull4h1t as it will be for their benefit and not yours!

I turned down a supervisor role about 10 years ago for all the reasons mentioned above. It then dawned on me that a lot of the things that annoyed me and those around me could be improved if we had the right supervisor. A few months after that I was offered the position again and took it, it was steep learning curve but was worth it, it also opened doors into other positions over the years which means the money is probably double what it would have been had I stayed where I was.

I’m going to totally disagree with all you apathetic lot! What would you rather have, someone new and potentially unsuitable doing the job, or taking a chance and stepping up with the intention of trying to improve things?

such a strange attitude to work that we have in this country.

“That guy’s a really good engineer. Let’s promote him to a position which involves loads of man management and no engineering”.

Surely it is better to have a manager who has first hand knowledge of the tasks that his team are performing, rather than a generalist administrator? If none of you technical staff are going to step up to a management role then you have no right to p**s and moan if unsuitable people end up in the role…

doing appraisals or any of that shite.

That is truly the most mind numbing, boring crap any employer can throw at you.

I just used to make them up and even swap them with other managers so we didn’t have as many to do

That takes the biscuit. If you don’t take the appraisals seriously then you shouldn’t be involved. What about the employee looking to get good feedback/praise/development from their superior, but they get you? I bet you moan about the performance of your team as well even though its your responsibility to manage their performance.

If you have responsibility for the performance of others then you owe it to them to take it seriously.

When you excel in a certain role, you typically get promoted to a greater role. If you excel at that you get promoted again, and so on.
Eventually you get put in a role that you do not excel at and you no longer get promoted.
Therefore, we are destined to be stuck in a role that you are not particularly good at. Its good for morale.

I have a mate in the construction business who having started on the tools now has a PhD in M&E design; despite being better qualified and having been responsible for generating more design fees than anyone else in his office for 5 years or so, will not accept the promotion that has been offered him several times. He acknowledges that he would earn more but he places greater value on his personal time than that of the company.

I just noticed I re-iterated Jambo’s post. Sorry Jambo.

bainbrge – Member

I’m going to totally disagree with all you apathetic lot! What would you rather have, someone new and potentially unsuitable doing the job, or taking a chance and stepping up with the intention of trying to improve things?

such a strange attitude to work that we have in this country.

“That guy’s a really good engineer. Let’s promote him to a position which involves loads of man management and no engineering”.

Surely it is better to have a manager who has first hand knowledge of the tasks that his team are performing, rather than a generalist administrator? If none of you technical staff are going to step up to a management role then you have no right to p**s and moan if unsuitable people end up in the role…

doing appraisals or any of that shite.

That is truly the most mind numbing, boring crap any employer can throw at you.

I just used to make them up and even swap them with other managers so we didn’t have as many to do

That takes the biscuit. If you don’t take the appraisals seriously then you shouldn’t be involved. What about the employee looking to get good feedback/praise/development from their superior, but they get you? I bet you moan about the performance of your team as well even though its your responsibility to manage their performance.

If you have responsibility for the performance of others then you owe it to them to take it seriously.

You tell em fella ! good post !!!

Therefore, we are destined to be stuck in a role that you are not particularly good at. Its good for morale.

that is the Peter Principle of ‘promotion to incompetence’ that plagues “traditional” career paths.

My manager has way more crap to deal with than me and the salary range is only £1k more.

No thanks.

One of a few reasons I’m going to move to another organisation

It says a lot about the company if managers/team leaders have themselves demoted.

That takes the biscuit. If you don’t take the appraisals seriously then you shouldn’t be involved.

That was my plan

What about the employee looking to get good feedback/praise/development from their superior, but they get you? I bet you moan about the performance of your team as well even though its your responsibility to manage their performance.

I never actually came across anyone that had more than a passing interest in appraisals etc. (Human Remains Dept’s excepted)
My team performed exceptionally, we kept our issues within the team where possible and looked out for and respected each other rather than playing office politics all the time.[/quote]

I’m glad I’m out of it though and back at the sharp end, on half the salary but twice the satisfaction and enjoyment.

when I had staff, I got them to write their own appraisals.

In general they were pretty modest.

Fortunately I only manage products now, not people.

I thoroughly enjoy managing teams, never thought I would for a lot of the reasons above. Sorting people’s bullshit out? Yes it happens. Ridiculous appraisals? Mmm, partially – done right and it can be really good. The best bit is bringing people on and getting them to learn skills and deliver stuff they never thought they could. Very satisfying to be honest.

when I had staff, I got them to write their own appraisals.

You should have got them to write each others – like a sort of ‘secret Santa’ for HR 🙂

Yes. I agree with Yossarian where my first team working with junior people I built up to be a first rate Consultancy, which was very satisfying and most of them went on to be top level employees elsewhere. Then the second team I manage was a Senior team full of very clever people with atypical personality quirks that made them very hard to manage. I got exposed to the next rung up within a corporation at that point, which was steeped in politics and corporate BS which I am not good at, so I took an option to not go to Senior Manageement and go solo and become a relatively self managed SME reporting to the business. This occurred throughout the birth of my two kids and allowed me massive flexbility also.

Now, I’ve moved teams and am an SME at a strategic european level, setting the go to market plan and team strategy around which we’ll be judged. I’ve manage to be a Director level self managing employee without the title or political exposure, which my boss deals with for me, and frankly I’m glad I took the route I did as I’ve learned much more.

I’d happily now move into a senior management role where I had minimum senior direct reports managing their own team where I worked with them to set and manage the strategic outcome, rather than deal with 20 employees moaning at me about their sick pet rabbits as an excuse not to come to work today*

So I’m glad I took the step to avoid management first time around, it probably worked in my favor.

*this may still happen.

Where I used to work we promote then fire. i.e. if you get promoted then your chances of getting fired increase many folds because we pay you to perform/lead whatever … not sit there to earn fat money.

😯

Surely Chewkw thats poor management 101? I mean, why promote someone who can’t perform to the point you fire them immediately after? Perhaps they shouldnt have been promoted and surely at least some of them might carry some experience which could be valued?

Promotion should be a recognised challange around your core skillset, designed to push its boundary’s. I was always taught that its an ever cyclic principal of learning from the person above you and teaching a successor below you.

such a strange attitude to work that we have in this country.

“That guy’s a really good engineer. Let’s promote him to a position which involves loads of man management and no engineering”.

Alternatively you have the “That guy is a liability but doesn’t do anything badly enough for us to legally sack him. Lets promote him out of harms way, where he can’t injure himself / lose a client / meet the public” career path. 🙂

Don’t forget to strut out of your bosses office.

Alternatively you have the “That guy is a liability lets promote him out of harms way, where he can’t injure himself / lose a client / meet the public” career path.

If he can’t do the job, fire him, don’t waste money & time and his own self worth pissing him off in a lowly position. His own job satisfaction – assuming he had any – should be a factor in easing the decision to move on.

Kryton57 – Member

Surely Chewkw thats poor management 101? I mean, why promote someone who can’t perform to the point you fire them immediately after? Perhaps they shouldnt have been promoted and surely at least some of them might carry some experience which could be valued?

That’s their management style in the far east btw. Some of them can perform but just that they can only perform at certain level which is below the expectation set by the CEO. The company is willing to pay them handsomely but then they want a lot in return so if the person is promoted and cannot perform the CEO get the excuse to get rid of them instead of earning fat pay. Yes, they should not be promoted but when they suck up to the CEO by overselling themselves they get it. No, experience does not count that much as the job is not about rocket science. More like corporate sales.

I’ve considered a supervisor/manager role a few times here at Treblinsk Rubbish Tractor Production Facility No.1 and every time I see the rubbish that my managers have to put up with.

It ranges from playing the happy clappy isn’t this a world class organisation propaganda before unveiling a rehash of the procedures/new latest idea or another useless bit of software that makes the job harder not easier but must be used on pain of death! to dealing with the pathetic bitching from some members of staff regarding doing work and also managing people that have had any shred of innovation, task ownership or professionalism eroded out of them by years of overbearing micromanagement.

Apologies I’m having a grumpy day.

@ chekw Sounds like the company interview process is a fault if people are allowed to bullshit themselves into a position.

What happens to the now vacant Senior position & the position they vacated – are they filled with lesser experienced people?