Thanks to all - I feel like I need to re-read through all of this a few times to really internalize some of the messages. This part in particular smacked of truth:
It's like a single woman who really wants to find love and keeps going to bars and drunkenly flirting with gross men. It might be the only strategy she knows to meet men, but it's ineffective and it's not who she is. Who she is is someone who wants love, but how she is behaving is going to produce a life where she gets used.
That's what's happening to you. You want professional respect and reward, but instead you're getting used as a work-donkey who doesn't say no.
That makes me laugh every time. It hurts so good!
Each time I hope "this one will appreciate me!" Nope. Well, not in the way that I want. I want to feel like my boss has my back, but even if I feel like they personally value me, it's up to me to make the career moves happen. Frankly, it is exhausting. It's always been easier for me to move on then to navigate the office politics.
Also, what you have been saying about saying no rings true. My most successful year, I surrendered. I did the least amount of work of my entire career and my review was an exercise in creative writing. They couldn't have been happier with me that year. A recruiter managed to lure me away before the promotion came. The golden ticket I had been waiting for and I still walked away because I was mentally done with that job. Was that the right or the wrong decision? I don't know. It doesn't matter now.
Y'know, IRL people are always quoting me back to myself and my reaction is almost always, without fail "No, I didn't really say that, did I?"
And then people quote me here and I read what I wrote and sometimes have the same reaction.
I swear I don't even realize how ridiculous the things I say are when I say them.
As for your previous experience, it wasn't the wrong decision because you were already burnt out and burnt out staff are poison and need to leave.
Now, I'm going to share a perspective that you might not like. I blame you more for your burnouts than your managers. I've managed a lot of donkeys in my time, and because I used to be one, I thought I could rehab them, but like actual donkeys, they usually proved too stubborn to break of their habits unless their motivation was internal.
Eventually, I just accepted that most donkeys want to be donkeys and will always take on more work than they can handle until they burn themselves out. Thankfully, they usually quit when this happens, which saves on having to pay to fire them. It's always too bad because they're lovely to work with before they grind themselves into the ground and become bitter and blame it on me for not appreciating them.
But think about it from my perspective. Why on earth would I ever promote or give a significant raise to anyone whom I can easily predict will burn themselves out??? What would you do if you owned the business?
Companies don't give promotions and raises as rewards, that's total nonsense. We give them as incentives for performance and retention. If you're going to drive yourself into the ground, then why would I invest in you? I don't want you to stick around, I want you to quit once you're burnt and bitter.
I really, really don't want a donkey in a very senior position because not only are burnt out senior managers/executives dangerous, they're also way too expensive to fire.
I recently saw a donkey in an executive position and they were slowly sinking the entire ship. I was like "Who the hell put them in that position??!! They have no idea how to say "no"! This is a disaster!"
I know this all sounds harsh, but it really isn't. For the people running your company, people quitting and being fired is just part of the normal day-to-day operations of a business, so everyone is viewed with respect to how much longer they have at the company, and raises and promotions are just levers within that system to modulate those timelines.
They are NOT rewards for good behaviour and loyalty. Employees think that way, the people who run businesses don't. You weren't getting the rewards you wanted because you mispercieved them as rewards in the first place. They just aren't, raises and promotions are leverage, not rewards.
That's why switching companies usually is the best path to a raise. You aren't being rewarded for your work, you're taking advantage of the lever the new company has at their disposal to recruit you.
Try to reflect on your experience when you stopped giving a fuck and glean practical aspects of your behaviour that worked for you. It wasn't the fed-upness that got recognition, it was your sudden ability to strategically deploy your energy only where it was needed.
Smart people phone it in on tasks that don't really matter and conserve their energy for the tasks that need exceptional results.
It's a cliche that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your tasks, and that 20% of your tasks should take up 80% of your energy, or something like that. Basically, if you figure out the small part of your job that yields the most results, then put the bulk of your energy behind that and titrate down your effort on everything else.
When you stopped giving a fuck, you turned down the volume on everything that you intuitively knew wouldn't have much impact on your performance. Your natural drive to succeed took over and still came through when it mattered though. You prioritized instinctively.
You finally let yourself work by intuition instead of willpower, and it actually got you better results.
I'm sure your bosses appreciated you when you were in donkey-mode, in fact I know they did, because we bosses all love a good donkey while they last, but we love you for being a good donkey, and we'll never see you as a champion race horse unless you stop acting like a slow, cart-dragging donkey.
I've been a donkey and been a high performance race horse. I've also been the boss to a lot of donkeys and race horses, and I can tell you very, very clearly that the race horses behave very differently. They aren't pleasers, they don't agree to anything unless it's a good use of their time, and they see demanding their worth as a normal function of business.
What's important for you to understand is that companies are *used to* dealing with race horses. You won't be weird or off putting if you become one, that's why your old employers didn't react negatively to you, because you weren't behaving in a way that was perceived as odd. Just because it's abnormal for you doesn't mean that it's abnormal in business.
People who don't waste their precious time and energy, who get excellent results, who aren't afraid to communicate to their superiors what they need and what they can and cannot do, and know and demand their worth are not just normal in business, they're more respected for it, their behaviour is more predictable, which in the end, actually makes them more dependable.
Learn more about what business is like from a business running perspective. Learn the very teachable skills of communicating your capacity and goals to your direct supervisors. And learn how the levers of promotions and raises actually work within an organization.
These are all shockinglyy simple things to learn.
I hope my intentionally harsh narrative has given you a bit of insight into why your approach hasn't worked at producing the outcomes you have wanted. Hopefully you retire your inner donkey and find your race horse if that's what you decide is your goal.