Promotion Memes

Ah, the classic "promotion" trap. You're happily coding away, solving problems, delivering features, when suddenly management decides your reward for being competent is... more responsibility with barely any compensation increase. That moment when you realize "great opportunity" translates to "we need someone to handle all the meetings while still doing their regular work." The cat's face says it all - from peaceful contributor to panicked manager in four panels flat. The real kicker? Six months later they'll wonder why your code output has decreased. Pro tip: sometimes the best career move is staying exactly where you're happy.

Remember that glorious day you got promoted to Senior Engineer? Your brain filled with visions of complex architecture designs, mentoring juniors, and making critical technical decisions. Then reality hit like a null pointer exception. Turns out "Senior" is just corporate code for "Professional Meeting Attendee." Your calendar transformed from blocks of focused coding time to an endless parade of standups, planning sessions, retrospectives, and those special meetings that could've been emails. The only code you write now is the occasional email response typed between back-to-back Zoom calls while desperately clinging to your coffee mug like it's the last working node in your cluster.