What would you do if this came up again? Would you still demur, but perhaps give a different reason (family needs right now, etc.)?

True, you don't want to burn bridges.

But taking the description of your situation at face value, I would have quit that company. Its values are so different from mine that I'd feel I have no business being there.

I can empathise. Telling them that you didn’t want a management-style position was probably the right move given all the reasons you laid out, but it’s also an implicit rejection of everything that the people around you are striving for. They equate management with productivity and respect. You’re thinking of it like the difference between a pilot and an air traffic controller. Jobs with vastly different purposes. But still, your decision called their value system into question in a very profound way. It’s not like saying that you don’t want that kind of job, it’s more like you didn’t want to work with them more closely. And most people, myself included, don’t have the emotional intelligence to handle rejection maturely. It all gets very petty.

> You have to be careful how you do it. I was punished for turning it down.

Not only that - you may be perceived as a threat to anyone who takes the post that was offered to you and, since you turned it down, you have no actual power to control what happens.

I think I have the same type of brain as you. I say things all the time which to me are just obvious logic. And the reaction sometimes has been extremely bad.

I realized my “logic” brain scares the crap out of normies. I learned to ask other people for help with complex negotiations involving politics and emotion.

I realized I don’t process information the same as most people and this has been at the root of numerous career mistakes. Some of those mistakes were extremely damaging.

I recommend learning to run your decision making past people who are better in these areas than you. When it is a political issue especially. If you know you are not great at politics, you need to improve your decision making and avoid this problem in the future.

I learned after YEARS of stepping on landmines accidentally to be far more careful navigating internal politics. The costs of getting it wrong are devastating.

For example. If you indeed did the math and calculated (logically and truthfully) that management was a +7% increase in pay for a +13% increase in work that’s fine.

But if you used those exact words and numbers to a superior; they will view that as arrogant, selfish and entitled. Because their view is you should want to be the best you can be for the company and make a personal sacrifice to show you want the company to do well. That is basic “salary man 101” and doing the opposite of that (analyzing the exact math) is putting a target on your back as a “free thinking non team player individualist.” It’s career lethal to get that label

I suspect you may have a lot more Aspergers than you realize. Or maybe it’s a generational culture thing. And the most irritating thing about people who are on the spectrum is the refusal to introspect and self reflect about it.

I tried to coach a co worker who was similar. Dude was angering everyone. All the time. He didn’t want to hear that he had a problem.

I strongly recommend developing friends you can run these decisions by. It was literally a life saver for me. I realized I was like a blind person wandering around with a cane when it came to navigating politics and needed watch dogs who could analyze the situation for me so I didn’t blow my leg off.

In terms of this situation. It sounds like you did not prepare well for a long term career discussion. That is an extreme red flag. And didn’t take it seriously that a higher level authority was asking you for your plan.

You were being checked on whether you have a future at the organization. You failed.

I have failed these tests myself. I was late to a critical call with a VP. It ended my career. It showed lack of care or preparation and a lack of respect.

One late meeting ended my career.

I can’t blame you. If you are hyper logical in your mind you we’re probably just telling them that “2+2=4.”

The entire political career metagame that normies play does not have anything to do with logic. I personally don’t like it either.

It may also be generational. A GenZ who plans to coast and just get a paycheck while turning in a solid 30% effort might have given the same answer you did.

Some Aspergers dude wouldn’t know that this is career ending as an impression to give: “my plan is to do the minimum ser.” Is what your skip level hears.

It wasn’t what you said it was what they heard.

“I love the company and support you and want to grow into doing more, I’m so optimistic of the future.” That’s what they want to hear.

If you want to coast, at least say what I just said and give that impression. And you can probably carve out a way to mostly get left alone and negotiate your wants and workload. Or negotiate a project that allows you to coast. But holy shit don’t start doing comparative math on working hours versus pay.

Your company might not be doing well. If you don’t know that (they might not even tell you), they may really have needed you to do more.

I recommend working on your likability also.

Suspect your delivery and demeanor are just labeling you as an Aspergers robot.

Companies will tolerate incompetent, lazy, shiftless, unambitious workers who are positive, pleasant, non threatening, supportive, not “too smart,” keep their mouths shut, not crafty or aggressive. They will tolerate that forever. In fact they love it.

I suspect your demeanor and likability are bad. It starts with how you enter every discussion. Keep things light and funny. Never criticize, complain, bicker over hours or workloads.

Negotiate for what you want and have a clear plan and do it lightly and in a gentle way and watch the demeanor of those around you.

Doing Aspergers math on how much work they want you to do versus how much work you feel like doing: Holy shit. Don’t make that mistake again. That was me. Get a clue, learn to softened and likable. Don’t be logical. They hate that and they will hate you.

Be optimistic and clueless and get your job done.

It depends on what "senior developer" means, though. With my last 4 jobs, I was hired with the title "senior developer" -- but what it indicated was my pay grade, not my responsibilities. I was just a regular developer in them all.

You don't become a true senior developer until you find a way to get out of those meetings.

As big as 20% of their RSU grant + the bonus they would get at another company would be? If not, not misleading at all.

I mean, not quite. My performance at the same level went from high performer to low performer. So I was doing the role very well for a while, even getting good reviews for filling the role above mine (intermediate dev filling tech lead role). Performance gradually atrophied following my disenchantment and mistreatment.

Things that changed: subdivisions/teams, tech stacks, managers, areas of the business, enterprise procedures/processes. Basically everything. They even outsourced my job, then laid off my entire old department to ship that entire business unit to another contract company.

Then at home, kids and multiple family health issues. I guess my age plays a role too.

Yep. This wasn't about low performers, at least not in my company.

While you're generally right, you'd be surprised. You can go pretty far by throwing out a few buzzwords and sitting through youtube how-tos.

IME, it's when the crunch time hits, or an outage, or some other nasty surprise or fire, where you see the competency show itself (or not).

Low-performers are not relevant to this discussion.

The accusation is that the companies hired more people than they knew what to do with / could apply productively in their business.

If such a basic task is beyond the capability of decisionmakers, who is to say that they are capable of collecting the feedback from rank-and-file employees required to assess who needs firing?

Mangers have many concerns apart from Performance, suppose we have Steve and Bob, and Bob is 50% more productive than Steve, but Steve is in the middle of delivering a critical project, millions of dollars are on the line. Meanwhile Bob is in between projects, and today they decided they must fire some staff, who do you think will get fired?

Also, is performance one metric? Suppose Steve writes worse code, but the business folks love his presentations, he is really good at explaining the issues facing the team. They can put Steve in front of a corporate client and win business. They never see much of Bob, even thought he is doing most of the 'real' work, so who is more valuable?

Unless you are dealing with someone totally incompetent, these questions are usually 'which skillset do we need most' and they are not so simple.