A bit stuck with the dangled carrot?
Long post warning lol
I work for a very large tech company in Data/Business Analytics. I’ve been at this company for about 9 years, the first 4 years in a different organization, doing more engineering work, and during COVID I made the jump to the business side of the house.
In the 5 years I’ve been on my current team, I’ve gotten quite proficient at what I do; I’m the SME on my team for the a specific business strategy program that we run analytics for. Over the past 2 years our team had layoffs and we went from a team of 6 down to 2, and thankfully I came out unscathed. For reference, let’s say I’m a data analyst level 1. The other analyst on my team is a level 2. We started at the same time (he was promoted to a level 2 early last year).
This past September, our team needed to hire new people to increase bandwidth. We hired two new level 2 analysts, with the promise that I’d be promoted to a level 2, as well. During onboarding, it was my job to train both of these new level 2s to get up to speed.
Q4 at this company, as with many others, sees alot of budget tightening and hiring/promotion freezes. At the end of Q4, my director approaches me with an opportunity to do an “analyst swap” with an adjacent team we work closely with. This level 2 analyst lives and works on the west coast (as does the rest of my team), and I work on the east coast (as does the director of the “swap” team). It was posed as an opportunity to learn a new side of the business while getting to level 2. The transition to this “swap” team required that I be promoted to level 2, before the transition could occur.
The “swap” was agreed upon by all parties during the first week of January, and I was told my promotion is “imminent”. I begin doing knowledge transfers about my role with the swap analyst and vice versa, without a true transition timeline defined. Come February, she goes on PTO for 3 weeks. I continue learning the swap teams BAU and my role. While also supporting my current team.
By the end of February, my boss goes on maternity leave, and I’m beginning to create deliverables for my new swap team. The swap analyst I’m training, is drowning in the work on my new team. Her old role was more data engineering focused rather than business analytics, and with the 3 weeks missed, her learning curve is steep.
I’m getting antsy at this point. I’m doing double duty on both teams, completing deliverables at a level 2 position and I have no clarity from my leadership about my promotion or swap transition.
I have multiple meetings with my swap director and AVP about clarity on timelines and I’m met with “I don’t have an update for you” and “well know more by mid April”. At this point I’m frustrated and begin applying for other roles within the company. End up getting an interview, nailing it, and connecting well with this third team. This would be for a level 2 analyst role.
Third team wants to move quickly and send out an offer. Given the transition to swap team and progression I have a conversation with my AVP (who ostensibly is the one able to push the button on both promotion and swap) one last time for a timeline and am told there’s still uncertainty based on higher level shuffling amongst VPs, so timeline is unclear. I later tell her with uncertainty, I’ve been applying to other roles , and she’s a little pressed, mentioning that she’ll de prioritize my promotion if I’m going to leave anyways.
Third team director is still looking to get me on his team, but needs sign off from swap director and AVP; and they’ve been icing him out a bit this week.
Is there anything I can do to expedite this process? Has anyone been in a scenario like this before? I feel like I’m shouting into the void at work looking for answers, and leadership can’t tell me much. Thanks in advance for guidance!