am I being a brat about not getting promoted?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I recently applied for a promotion at work and was passed over in favor of an outside candidate. I won’t go into all the details, but hopefully it suffices to say that I was a very strong candidate, I had a lot of internal support, and everyone I’ve talked to has been legitimately shocked that I didn’t get the job.

I feel really disillusioned after this turn of events. It’s a small company with an important mission and I had previously envisioned staying here for a long time, but now I don’t really see a path forward in my career unless I leave.

I’ve put in a pretty extraordinary effort over the past few years, taking on assignments well above my pay grade when the company was in a pinch (and knocking them out of the park), working on weekends to finish urgent projects, and becoming a trusted advisor and critical part of the leadership team — so I really thought upper management would have my back on this promotion. I guess I’ve abruptly internalized the lesson that a company is not a family, and employment is just a business transaction.

Consequently, I very suddenly have lost my motivation to go above and beyond. Since I got the news, I haven’t been checking email after hours or working on the weekend, and I even turned down a project that I didn’t really have the bandwidth for. Nobody has said anything to me, but I can only imagine that it’s noticeable.

I’m not slacking compared to an objective standard, but I am kind of slacking compared to my own previous high standard. Is that okay, or am I burning a bridge that I might need in order to find another job and leave?

It’s okay to do what you’re doing.

It’s also understandable. Anyone in management at your company who didn’t realize this would be a possibility when they didn’t promote you was being naive.

No one is entitled to a promotion — but companies also aren’t entitled to employees who go above and beyond if their work isn’t rewarded. It’s reasonable that after not getting promoted, you feel less motivated to go over and above in the way you used to.

To be clear, I’m talking about things that truly qualify as going above and beyond; it’s not a good idea to slack off on core expectations. But from the specifics you gave, you’ve just pulled back on the extras.

From a practical perspective, it is a good idea to compare yourself to the average performance on your team. If the changes you’ve made put you below average for your team, then yeah, there could be consequences in your job search, even if it’s just a more lukewarm reference. But if it’s just that you used to go above and beyond and now you don’t … carry on. This is a natural and foreseeable consequence of not promoting someone and then not bothering to have any kind of conversation with the person to help them feel good about what their future with the company will be.

That’s not to say your company necessarily made the wrong decision! They might have been absolutely right; it’s possible the other candidate was clearly the stronger hire. But you’re allowed to draw your own conclusions from that process and adjust your behavior accordingly.

For what it’s worth: it’s a good thing that companies aren’t families and that employment is a business transaction! When workers are convinced to believe the opposite, it’s usually to their disadvantage: they generally end up feeling pressed to prioritize the company above their own interests — to accept lower pay, work longer hours, avoid pushing back against bad policies, and feel guilty if they consider leaving. Meanwhile, the employer on the other side of that equation isn’t normally offering benefits that would justify any of that (nor should they, in most business arrangements). But it’s perfectly fine for work to simply be a trade of your labor for money, and for you to reassess what you’re willing to give in return for what your employer gives you.