Worker Turns Down Promotion With Four Direct Reports and No Raise, VP Calls It Disloyal

A post to r/careerguidance describes an employee who turned down a "Senior Team Lead" title. The role came with four direct reports and no raise attached. The post had drawn 5,100 upvotes and 1,800 comments at the time of publication.

Last Tuesday, the poster's vice president called a meeting to announce the promotion. He handed over a list of four direct reports who would start the following month, praising the poster's leadership at length. The poster asked about an adjusted salary band. The VP chuckled and said compensation reviews were frozen until the fourth quarter.

Still, he said the title would look "phenominal [sic] for my internal resume."

The poster declined the change and chose to stay in an individual contributor role until the budget opened up again. The VP turned red and went silent. He then told the poster that refusing added responsibility showed a "disturbing lack of ambition and loyalty."

HR has since scheduled two separate meetings about the poster's "team alignment." The poster's manager has turned cold since the VP's reaction. They asked readers whether declining the promotion had damaged their standing at the company and whether management had overstepped by pushing added duties without pay.

Replies were split on what the situation meant for the poster's future at the company. One commenter suggested attending the HR meetings to see what direction they take. "Sometimes they are basically prepping your departure," the commenter wrote.

Another commenter treated the standoff as a matter of self-respect. The company had already "shown you who they are and exactly how much (little) they value you," the commenter wrote. The company's first move, they said, had already shown its true priorities.

One Redditor asked whether the manager would personally do extra work for no pay. Doing so would be financially irresponsible for anyone, they argued, so why expect it from the poster instead? The reply then concluded, "This is my resignation."

One commenter claimed that the VP's reaction likely damaged the poster's position at the company. That happened "through no fault of your own," the commenter wrote. The VP was out of line, the commenter agreed, and said there was little the poster could do unless the VP had done something provably illegal or unethical.

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the events described in this post, including the meeting, the promotion and the exchanges with the VP and HR. The details above reflect the original poster's account as shared on Reddit. The identities of those involved and the company have not been confirmed.