Reading this article made me reminisce about that event.

That promotion would have been to “senior” CSR, answering phones in a financial services company. Accepting the promotion would mean more money, but it also would ‘lock me in’ against lateral movement inside the company for 12 months – and by this point, I knew I wanted to become a computer programmer!

This was way back in 1997.

Mind you, I didn’t know what I wanted to do career-wise until right before this decision. But that decision allowed me to move into my new target/dream career within weeks.

My next declined promotion came around 2006. I had been serving as the unofficial Application Architect for a stack in a Fortune 100 company for several years by this point.

As the ‘official job title’ was to be rolled out, I got the sense that things around my day-to-day role would change. I thought about what I enjoyed, and what put me more in control of my options with regard to those factors.

I considered all of the interviews and annual employee reviews that asked “where I saw myself in X years.” My answer was never climbing a ladder; it was always about getting (even) better at what I was doing.

I had also seen the most valuable people on my CSR teams either reluctantly take promotions because CSRs don’t make a lot, or else stay where they were both happiest –and, in my opinion, most valuable to the company– but continue to be underpaid with regard to the value of their contribution. (Fixing this is a key, strategic advantage waiting to be leveraged that I have yet to see a CxO/HR dept. recognize.)

So, I scheduled a meeting with the CTO. I asked about his vision and the nature of the official role.

After listening, I told him I didn’t want to spend more time in meetings and PowerPoint than in my code editor, so I elected to “drop down” to a tech lead role.

I have never regretted it. Not for a second.

If I had taken the title, maybe I’d still be at that company (I left in 2009). I’d probably be spending my days reading IBM white papers and pontificating about the merits of “well-established (safe!) technologies”, scoffing at the risks of the cutting edge. Not to demean it, but it’s not what I wanted then, and still not what I want today.

That’s how I imagine it, anyway. In other words: making more, steady money (at least potentially over the long term), but being less happy, with less freedom of movement within the marketplace.

I’ve found (to my surprise, honestly – but that’s for another post) I enjoy forging my own path far more than following a more comfortable path someone has already laid out for me.