This is giving me flashbacks.

Years ago I applied for a C-level position at a company I worked for, somewhat to my surprise sailed through the interview process, and was officially offered the job.

A few days later the CEO stopped by for a chat and told me they weren't going to offer me the job. He seemed surprised when I told him I'd already been offered it despite that everyone involved in the process had met and agreed to offer it to me.

Cue shenanigans, partly self-inflicted, because I really wanted that job.

Turns out they had someone else in mind they wanted to give it to (I'm not sure at what point they'd realised this) so they added some additional selections stages that were basically engineered to ensure I'd fail so they could give the job to this other person.

With hindsight I should have quit there and then, and sued them for constructive dismissal.

I didn't do that because a relative with whom I was close was terminally ill and I didn't think it was a good time to act in a way that felt rash with everything around that going on. I was also concerned about having to deal with a potentially protracted legal case in the midst of all this, and how I'd keep paying my mortgage with no income.

Still, this was a mistake. I should have done it. I'll explain why below.

I ended up staying for about another year, although I'd obviously made the decision that I was going to leave at the first opportunity. For part of that year I worked for the person they'd given the job to. It was shit. For the rest of it I was in a different team, where I actually worked pretty hard, but that work was targeted (by me) at skilling myself up to enable myself to find a new position. I'm not saying it didn't benefit the company, but any such benefit was very much a secondary objective.

As you can imagine, this was by far and away the most humiliating episode of my career, and I came away from it extremely disillusioned, and with my confidence in tatters. Even all these years later, typing this now and in some limited form reliving the experience, I find myself surprised by how angry I still feel. The one positive is that it's had a profound impact on the way I choose to deal with people, and obviously particularly when hiring. A key lesson is know what you're looking for and be clear about that.

After I left - with nothing else lined up - I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I ended up contracting for about two and a half years, just because the money was decent and I just couldn't tolerate the thought of being somebody's employee. I got over it eventually.

I'm now a CTO at a growing company that's maybe 30% larger than the company where I was originally offered/de-offered a C-level job was at that time, and have been since the beginning of 2020. For political reasons my role in 2019 was an EVP position, but you could squint and say I've been doing this role for getting on three years.

Nonetheless, that episode, and particularly the decision I made not to quit and sue, probably cost me 5 - 7 years in my career. That's time and money I won't get back. And it was, I think, that decision (or perhaps lack of a decision) more than anything else that led to the loss of confidence and disillusionment, because what I was mostly disillusioned with was myself. If I'd acted I think I would have felt quite differently because, even though the situation would still have been deeply unpleasant, showing that agency would have made it easier for me to own the outcome.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that if you're not progressing the way you want to with your current company, don't mess around: find a role with a different company where you can progress the way you want to.