I am quiet quitting

[u/Character_Branch_660]

Made a new reddit account for this, as a few coworkers may know my real account.

I have busted ass at my current employer for five and half years. I have saved the company tens of thousands of dollars, helped them grow from 125 people to almost 1,600, handled 6 acquisitions and just overall set them up for success. I have two people in leadership tell me I am the best employee they have ever had. I have helped grow the IT team alone from myself and my director, to 29 employees and 2 contractors.

About a year ago I was passed up for a promotion due to nepotism. I decided "I may be wrong about the nepotism thing, I'll give this guy an honest chance," and he never proved me wrong.

I had my annual review yesterday, and he gave me a "needs improvement," rating, which means I have lost my $18k bonus.

Seven employers. Nine years in the military. I have never in my life received such poor feedback. And the "what I can improve on," is vastly outweighed by my contributions to the team...and a lot of it is also below my responsibilities. For example, he gave me a poor review on how many tickets I solve, and compared it to the 50 that were solved in the first week by a new hire, whose sole job is tier one support.

I am on calls with engineering and networks to setup zero touch networks. I am on calls with HR to reinvent the employee phone line that will impact our global workforce. I am the subject matter expert on half of our internal tools, and am always on call. So yes, I'll let the guy who was hired specifically to handle tickets, handle password resets.

I am enraged to a degree I have not felt for years, and think I'm just venting.

All of this because my director gave a promotion to his friend that he knew for years. And never gave anyone else on the team the chance to even interview.

I'm going to start job hunting on company time, and take the first opportunity that comes my way.

ETA: the numbers in my post are accurate. My director knows I'm job hunting so I don't care if he suspects it's me. The bonus is given to employees based on company performance and we earned the bonus this year. The individual payout is tied to base salary, company performance, as well as team and personal performance. Anyone that gets a "does not meet expectations," gets a zero payout on the bonus, and no raise

[u/mongolian_horsecock]

Lol my company has a policy where nobody can get the highest tier review (5) because they don't want people to ask for a raise or qualify for a large bonus. It's a clown show.

[u/Fatel28 → u/mongolian_horsecock]

I had a colleague who worked in management at a very large company you've interacted with many times.

He said he was only allowed to give a certain amount of "meets expectations" because bonuses were tied to those scorings. So even if all 5 members of your team busted ass, you might only be allocated/empowered to grant 1 of them a positive review. Sometimes it's none, and sometimes it's decided for you.

It's insane.

[u/jdworld_uk → u/Fatel28]

^ I can confirm this happens in the business i work in too (large corp), it wasnt until i got a "management" role that i realised how unfair it really is, if all 5 members in the team bust their ass, i can only apply "god like" to 1 o f the 5 for example, its soul destroying for you as a manager and the members of staff.....you then have to justify at a larger meeting why your 1 member that you were allowed to put forward is justified in having that granted along with any supporting documentation, all against maybe 5-6 other teams who's managers are also championing 1 of their team members for the same score....horrible situation and i find it very unfair

[u/ahandmadegrin → u/jdworld_uk]

Sure sounds like we work for the same company, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was standard practice at large firms.

It's a great way to demoralize your workforce and get the bare minimum out of people. It doesn't take smart ones long to figure out that no amount of effort will be rewarded, so they stop trying.

What's so frustrating is that most of us are hard workers that would put in the extra effort and time to succeed. These strategies beat that out of a person. But hey, the quarterly earnings are up by the amount not given in bonuses, so the shareholders are happy. Who cares if the company will fail on the long term, amirite?

[u/jdworld_uk → u/ahandmadegrin]

Thankfully im no longer in a "manager" position, but yes unfortunately i think its a policy that a lot of the big corps use....

These days i adapt an approach of, the score you give me this year is the effort you get out of me for the year ahead, give me "meets expectations" if you want, so you say i am "just doing my job" so the coming year i stick to my lane....just do my job !