How You (Tragically) Get Promoted at Most Companies

Here’s the real way to be successful in your career and outperform.

Photo: Anni Peng/Unsplash

Corporations sell us the snake oil of the elusive promotion to keep us motivated, and to make sure we stay away from side hustle dreams.

Most of us are smart enough to understand a job title won’t make us happy. But we want the promotion because the cost of living is skyrocketing, thanks to record-high inflation.

Tragically, the promotion path in most companies leads to some interesting behavior. Here’s what it looks like.

Engage in office politics

In every company there is hiring and firing that occurs on a daily basis. When a new person comes in you can speculate about their failure.

Sounds like this: “The last schmuck couldn’t do it. She certainly can’t.”

Then there’s the factory worker KPIs that if you fail to hit them, they could cause a Friday afternoon sacking. Speculation on this topic thrives in most companies. A good ol’ fashion sacking is like a spectator sport such as football. The chumps crowd around the office floor and gossip about who’s next. There’s always a “next.”