TLDR I feel like I have no luck in my career. Am I doing anything wrong?
Turning to OzB to get your advice on how can one effectively progress in his/her career. I feel like I am doing something wrong as my progress is as slow as a snail.
I started my career in a state owned firm. Everyone was pretty relax. It was a 9-5 culture with lots of breaks and chats during work hours, and people gave me weird looks when I stayed back late to finish my work. Entry pay was really good, but I wasn't happy as it wasn't based on performance. I worked real hard in my first year as a fresh graduate, just to find out that my manager had recommended I receive twice the salary increase compared to other graduates but was turned down by HR because "all graduates should be treated equally". For 2 years, I nominated the same team as my preferred graduate rotation, but had no luck at all, despite me approaching HR few times, each time telling me different criteria was used to make their decision, sending me to teams that I knew wasn't my strength. Towards the end, I was doing design work that was totally unrelated to my field, under supervision (OMG). Whilst that was fun as I learned a lot about the new field, I decided that it was a dire career progression. I didn't want to get audited and be found to be designing towers / poles when I didn't have a structural engineering degree. So I went back to uni to further my study in finance.
When I completed my studies again, I tried to look for jobs in banks / big 4 accounting firm but they seem to prefer either fresh graduates or people who have had few years of experience, and was stuck doing the same design work. After a year or so of search, there was an opening in the finance department of my company. It was the same department that I worked in for 3 months after I spoke to my manager telling him I was really sick of my job and needed a change. It was that 3 months that I learned a lot about valuation and finance, and decided I wanted to remain in finance. Fortunately, I performed well during that 3 months as I was leading a project that the permanent staff wasn't able to complete, and I was eventually hired for this role permanently. At this point, I was stepping into a new career, effectively wasting the first 5 years of my career which wasn't great, but I was optimistic.
Fast forward 4 years, I had learned almost all the required skills to takeover my immediate manager's role. I was effectively doing his job, whilst he was doing his manager's job. The mental stimulation was no longer there and learning curve was pretty much non-existent anymore, but the journey wasn't easy that's for sure. Managed to stop all the old processes and turned a 6 hours process into an instantaneous one (with excel VBA), restructure our internal systems etc etc all by myself. Our team has never produced a number that we can't explain since then as everything was on a dashboard and they could see everything on a one pager (A3). Yet, I found myself still stuck as an analyst at a reasonable remuneration. Admittedly, both my managers had tried hard to get me more pay increases than my peers in the team, but it was a small team and probably there wasn't much room for career progression to begin with. But what I ultimately found frustrating was other people in different part of the finance team literally free riding, are good for nothing, but yet either getting the same rem or even more. I didn't want to be competitive, but it was hard as recall those late nights where I had to get inputs from them to do my job, but had to go through lots of rework as they couldn't get their numbers straight, and they are the ones that got promoted I don't know why.
I later on received an offer from a bank. Job scope was related but totally different, which meant I had to reset again. I thought it was a good addition to my resume that I have banking experience, especially when I intend to step back into a normal corporate later. Most of my counterparts in other companies had banking experience so I thought this would be good chance for me to catch up. I had to take a pay cut for moving to a bank because of slightly lower pay, and that was before considering I had roster days off in my old role (free 26 days leave on top of sick / annual leave), more work life balance, as well as an offer for 15% increase in pay if I stayed. The recruiting manager assured me that my career progression would look totally different, and I would catch up (remuneration wise) in no time. So I decided to give it a go, hoping that my sacrifice would pay back one day. In the bank, my hours effectively doubled. There was one point in time when I got in at 8am, and left at 3am the next day, and returned 3-4 hours later for another 8am start. It was hard but I thought if I did well, I will be compensated eventually. Ended up making a loss in first year as the partial bonus I got wasn't enough to cover lost income, not to mention the hours that I put in (effectively for the bonus they paid me, it was equivalent to $10 per hour for all the overtime etc), but I was pretty much across what my scope, and was already contributing to the team already. The same thing happened the following year, lots of learning as people were reluctant to teach so had to figure out things myself, but extremely long hours too and I got a promotion in 1.5yrs time after joining the bank. Was I happy? Probably not as I felt I had already proved my worth in the first year, so this was probably something that was 1yr late.
Earlier last year, I told my group manager (not immediate manager) that I wanted another promotion and was ready to step up, but he thought I was very good at my analytical work and probably wanted me to continue in that space. He also said I was lacking networking skills and said I should start to socialise more. Now to put it in perspective, the duties in my team was really segregated and my immediate manager was doing all the relationship management work whereas I was left to perform my analytical work. I didn't have to network with too many people when doing the analytical side of things. Moreover the amount of analytical work was so huge that I really do not have time to go around for a quick chat if I wanted to finish my work on time. I did build very close work relationship with those I regularly work with and my group manager is well aware of that, but the feedback he gave me was I needed to build my relationship with those that I occasionally work with as well and I found that really hard just because I didn't have time.
Anyway, today I found out I wasn't recommended for a promotion this year. Was really frustrated as it was another year of extremely hard work, I know it will definitely come next year, but if it was a fixed duration of time before your next promotion then it really isn't merit-based anymore, is it? I can't recall a weekday when I was able to go to bed before 1am, despite working from home (no I am not the kind that stay up just to appear I was working late, just the amount of work but every now and then I would have a pretty inefficient day). Was I performing terribly? I don't think so. At least I know that my work now gets more attention from senior management because I made it more understandable for them and decisions could be made. I was also fully across my immediate manager's job (but not vice versa when our scope are actually the same). My group manager said to me to get immediate manager across some of my duties as he saw a lot of burden falling on my shoulder, particularly obvious when we had to close out a few major projects). Performance feedback has been great from everyone, I was asked to step into my immediate manager's role during his absence and for that I received really good feedback from my internal stakeholder as well despite working with him the first time. But somehow I feel I don't have the luck to progress as quickly (or naturally) as others. The one thing I do note, is that I don't really like to approach my/other managers for random chats like many others do, partially because I don't want to be seen as sucking up to them, but also because I am really busy with my work.
I am really tired of missing out - and making things worse I am now expected to manage the team when I don't even have the right title to do so. Failing to manage the team means my promotion next year may be at stake but seriously… I am making a fuss because everyone was working in silo without thinking about their downstream processes and I happen to be at the last part of the whole process. I had to ask them to make their processes more systematic and less random as random stuff is difficult to track and its ever-growing. Was I too ambitious? Probably yes but I personally think this is the last promotion that I am comfortable pushing for, as the next one up involves dealing with executives all the time and I'd probably like to do less communication, more analytical work so I would be happy with my one more level up, and sit back and relax after that. But even that appears to be a difficult ask when others just happily get promoted …. I'm tired
TLDNR
What happened with your seatbelt fine?