u/Lemontine_

(Apologies for some vagueness on my job however the specific office I work at is one I can get in trouble for posting about)

I (26M) got a job at the end of last summer (September 2025) after graduating with my masters degree. I was very excited to receive this offer because it is in the exact line of work that I am looking to be in and most of my friends at similar points in their careers have been struggling significantly to find roles that they actually want. The job itself required me to relocate to a new state where I did not really have much of a support system but because of the poor job market I decided to take the leap and try and make it on my own for a bit.

The way the office works is because of the high learning curve, standard practice is to sign all new hires to a one year contract and either terminate their contract at the end of the year or to promote to a higher up position that is permanent; this is what has happened with every single other employee who started here under the same circumstances as me. While the job was extremely challenging and demanding the first few months, I made a conscious effort to improve and excel at my assigned duties and as I got the hang of it what seemed like a lot of work in my first month turned into not a huge amount of work by 6 months, and most of the time I am able to get all of my work done by the end of the week. At multiple points during all this management expressed satisfaction and commended me for my work. Flash forward to about 2 months ago we reach the point in the year where performance reviews occur and my bosses give me a glowing review along with a 10% raise, significantly more than some of my more senior coworkers received. At the end of the performance review my director gave me a very long and warm speech about how she wanted me to stay with the office for years to come, that all of my coworkers they have spoken to have nothing but praise for me, and that she has been impressed with my work.

About 2 weeks later one of my more senior coworkers announces that he is leaving, leaving an opening for me to move up right on time for the exact role that I have been trained for 10 months to do. At this point my director calls me, and tells me that instead of the standard practice of promoting from within, they will now be looking to hire someone from outside the company and that while I am welcome to apply, I am not promised the job. According to my other coworkers this has never happened before and no reason was offered for this change by management. Regardless, I apply through the proper avenues and go to my interview, where my director again tells me that not only did I perform fantastically in the interview, but that I speak about technical aspects of the job in a way that some of her employees who have 5+ years of experience can not articulate. However less than 24 hours after this interview, my director calls me into her office to inform me that they are hiring someone from outside, and that they had made an offer to this person before they had even interviewed me. In the same meeting, my boss offers to extend my current contract by a year and expresses again that she wants me to stay and that I will be considered for any future openings. While I was disappointed, I accepted this offer and went about my day. About a week ago, a second one of my coworkers in the same role submitted his resignation; and within 24 hours of his announcement, my director announced that they have hired a new person from outside the company, with no discussion of whether I was interested in applying again or even any announcement that there were going to be interviews for the role. My coworkers have told me they do not know why this has suddenly happened and that they can’t think of any instance where something similar has happened, however they have commented that our boss is ageist in many ways and has done several things in the past to make working here more difficult for 20-30 somethings in the office (I have no way of proving this from a legal standpoint).

So the situation I find myself in is that I have been passed up for promotion twice in 2 months, despite the fact that when I was hired I was verbally promised multiple times by management that I would be promoted at this point in my time. Not only that, but they are signing me to a second trial year, something that they made up especially for myself and one of my other coworkers in the same position (he is planning on quitting over this). The money is just barely enough to get by and now that I have been fully trained for a more senior role in this office, my weekly responsibilities are complete by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest and I am left sitting for days doing nothing with no extra work even when I ask for it. The big draw to this job was how much of a resume booster it was and the immediate track to a higher paying position, however that is now not happening based on the actions of my director. My current lease is has about 8-9 more months on it, should I stay until I am able to move again? should I try and leave sooner? Should I stay and hope the next vacancy they decide to promote me?