Here's a secret: your resume is whatever you write on a piece of paper. You can just get a volunteer role if you want to be a director or lead something.

Don't ever work for free unless you care about the end result. And definitely don't ever work for free for your own company. You can't be paid what you don't ask for.

Maybe you get paid the same but work half the time? (won't happen, but would be a 'dry' promotion I would take)

Is there a risk of more responsibility and more risk in general? Meaning if something goes wrong, you can get fucked easier?

That's not how this works at all.

You keep doing all your current responsibilities. Then you get these more with no additional compensation.

Do it for the exposure!

This works great for highly educated white collars!

Not for the other 70%+ of the workforce though.

This is the way.

Always take the promotion. Then update the resume and start hunting.

Preach it. I fought and fought to get my ASQs and CQEs (quality certs) as an automations guy. I worked in fda/dea/gmp environments with those systems so why they hell not. Took 2 years to finally get both and bailed immediately. Did all my bs six sigma bullshit along the way.

If it's a smash and grab for them then it's a smash and grab for me.

Except Capitalism 2 is actually quite a fun computer game…

I handed in my notice a short while later and everyone was, to my surprise, surprised. I really didn’t understand why the shock…until I learned in due course that most people don’t follow through.

When I was a young adult, I used to work as a lab tech in a plasma center. That involved taking liter bottles of plasma, checking the computer system, filling out paperwork, drawing fluid and taking blood vials to run in a centrifuge, and frequently having to redo paperwork because the barely-trained phlebotomists kept sending them to me covered in drops of blood. Of course, this not only took longer, but meant I had to sanitize the entire area, change PPE, and get shit from the rest of the team for not just taking their biohazard-contaminated paperwork regardless. The room held 50 to 100 donors at a time, and the lab team was just two people.

My immediate boss would routinely just fucking disappear or taking random lunches, even during rushes, leaving me to handle everything on my own. She'd get pissy over small things, and spent time chatting with management in the offices, just hanging out, while I did all the work.

One day, she did something like this and left. I muttered to myself that I was going to quit. I finished the sample I was working on and went into the -40 degree biohazard freezer to store the sample.

Cut to a minute later, I came out of the freezer to see someone from management in the lab, saying "I heard you're quitting?"

...what?

She said "Fine then. Go ahead and go." (or something like that.)

I was stunned, but realized that my shitty manager must have heard me on her way out, and fucking told on me. I hadn't planned on following through, and was mostly just upset at being used, but now?

"Fuck it." I thought. "I said I'll do it, so I'll do it."

I'm not a good speaker, but I basically stumbled over some short apology like that I would have finished the work day first, but would leave now if she wanted to. Her reply was to get all exasperated, as if she hadn't expected me to do anything but crumple at being confronted, and she told me "Well, have a nice life then!" as I walked out the door. Never saw her or my shitty manager again. Years later, I did hear my shitty manager had gotten fired or something, for being shit at hear job.

I think I made the right choice.

(Edited for typos, so many typos....)

I want the games to end. Fun time is over

And their promises mean nothing.

Good luck, but when you are turned down you should recognize the red flag and start looking for your new, better job, leveraging your new title to get paid what it is worth.

Your “marriage” doesn’t come with love.

That part doesn't sound all that ridiculous, to be honest.

The other two...

Haha! I worked for a contract cleaning crew for some time. Turnover was very high since the hours and wages sucked. The only people who hung around long enough to become managers were eminently unfit to be managers. Seems like managers are destined to suck for a large number of reasons.

Well you can do the route of getting some PM experience and then doing that.

Increased responsibility = increased compensation.

Nah, fuck that. Promotions should be coming with a reasonable wage increase in every job.

You need to join a union.

What your spouting is corporate propaganda, designed to make you value your labor less. As is the "not making more than the others"-lie which oppressors have used to control their populations for ages.

But there are different perspectives to the situation, so for academical purposes, let's explore a few:

Labour market model; If you're doing work that requires skills, knowledge and/or combinations thereof that are harder to acquire, your rarity and thus value increases - you should be paid more in cash and/or benefits.

This includes institutional knowledge, how things are done at the specific workplace, including who to talk with and how.

Economics/value capture; If you're doing work that brings the employer more profits, such as organising, costing, budgeting or taking over tasks to let the employer scale up - you should be paid a part of those increased profits.

The case for cooperatives; If you truly would be equal, and comfortable, in a workplace there's much to be said that wage differences disturb that harmony, and you could see it as playing different parts in a commune.

This does however assume that you are all equally invested in the goal, it is profitable enough to compensate all of you fairly and equally, and enough that you are not wanting, or at least equally lacking. This is the case for situations like homesteads, communist society, and anarchist societies like Star Trek or The Culture.

Hmm...

From my perspective, the only reasonable way to get a promotion without increased pay is if you're working less (which 4-day week studies show isn't connected to weekly hours), and getting benefits to compensate.

And you're still saddled with responsibility for the whole crew, the whole job and coming in on budget. Mental work saves the body but at mental expense. Maybe C-suite and board should take pay cuts so everyone gets decently paid for quality work with quality tools and quality materials.

This is a very interesting take and observation, thank you for sharing

Hatred of intellectual elites is one of the signs of fascism, BTW.

Anyway, you are not paid for breaking your back, you're paid for having a valuable skill. If that skill is just being a grunt, everyone can do it, you are replaceable. If that skill is managing grunts, only few can do it, you are less replaceable, thus can get a higher pay.

If you really think, moving into a superior role doesn't deserve more pay, you are being fucked by your employer. You don't understand the system you're working in and you're lashing out against those stoopid office workers because you don't understand that they are not responsible for your misery, your boss is.

Obligatory plug for STAR Voting, not Ranked Choice Voting. STAR voting better avoids situations where voting for a preferred candidate can cause a less preferred candidate to win.

By giving you a dry promotion, it becomes easier to give you a fat raise during the compensation review season.

Easier for who? And how exactly? The idea that some schedule is stopping corporate from giving the lowly worker a raise becomes completely laughable when you see how they treat their top management, and has no validity either way - they make the rules, their hands are never tied by this kind of bullshit.

You're not being "contrarian", you're just regurgitating corporate propaganda, actively acting against your own interests by swallowing any of it, and serving them by repeating it to us as if it has any legitimacy.

By giving you a dry promotion, it becomes easier to give you a fat raise during the compensation review season.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It might be hard for the supervisor, but only because they are also part of an exploitative system not compensating labor fairly.

Pay ranges determined by title isn't fact, it's decided by the company. Having promotions given once per year as well, as is the decision to raise salaries at a different time.

Just as they can make sure to pay their bills on time every month, they can make sure to promote and pay their workers on time every time.

Yes, the supervisor is working from inside the system, but that means you're in this together and should rise together against the system. You both need to join a union.

… especially if it does not involve a change in job responsibility.

Key point. That would be worth considering.