I had my performance review at work the other day. The feedback I get is pretty much the same every year. But this time something new was thrown at me. My boss basically told me that they (department VPs and such) think that I need to take the next step in my career (i.e. promotion), and in a couple of weeks I need to tell them what aspirations I have, what type of job I want, etc., and they will try to match that with any opportunities that come up next year. Sounds great, right? Well, not so fast.
I work in a 24/7 industry that is very demanding in terms of time commitment and frequent travel. I am fortunate to be in a position, where I can do my current job in 40 hrs a week without night/weekend work, and my work travel is very light. (Travel in this context means more often than not going to middle-of-nowhere places and working outside in any weather at any time of day and night, not resort-type trips). I see other people getting promoted and their quality of life dropping (or should I say, falling off a cliff), and I am terrified of the perspective of this happening to me.
I have mentioned on more than one occasion to my boss that I plan to FIRE, but he just doesn't get the concept. He thinks that I am just joking, and I am certainly not going to show him my FIRE spreadsheets, so I stopped talking about it. I recently posted a case study about my FIRE timeline here, and the range of time till FIRE from those who responded ranged from 1 to 9 years. My own calculations and assumptions gave me a 5-6 years timeline, but after seeing the 1 year suggestion, I decided to set a stretch goal of 2 years for myself.
Telling my boss that I do not want to move up will definitely be career suicide. Even though I plan to FIRE, I am not sure that suicide far in advance of FIRE is a good idea. The boss told me that he sees that I don't have much ambition, but what he is missing is that my ambition is not to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as possible, but rather get off it as soon as I can.
Another issue is that I am often told that the next level (upper management) comes with some lucrative benefits, yet I have never seen a specific list of what they are. I should mention that I already receive very good compensation, my take home pay after taxes is ~$73K.
On the other hand, as far as work goes, I do like a challenge and have no problem accepting new and bigger responsibilities as long as my QOL does not suffer much.
If you were in this situation, what would you do? Would you openly convey all concerns I mentioned above to the boss?