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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you don't climb the ladder when opportunities become available - you'll be left behind and ultimately dependent on others for your professional survival. You may be comfortable today in this family-friendly workplace, but eventually you will be passed over by younger employees who are unlikely to be paternal towards you.

You may become vulnerable and dependent on the kindness of supervisors who won't understand why if a person was good at their job; they were never promoted.

If they were promoted over you, it will be difficult for them to fully respect you. If you are to survive in the workplace you need to seek and take promotions when your time has come.

One way or another, spoken or unspoken the concept of "up or out" still exists in almost every workplace. [/quote]

I don't think this is true.

I've discussed this with friends, covering  the government sector, nonprofit/nongovt. sector and private sector (but NOT law firms).  In each one, there are people who didn't pursue promotions (especially those involving managing other people) and actually ended up just fine.

As long as you do your job well, maintain good relationships with coworkers/managers, I don't think people get punished or sacked because they don't pursue promotion.  And between close friends and I, we know of several people like this.  I have some coworkers like this.  They liked what they did, stayed in that job and had outside interests, such as family.  No problem.  In fact, in some cases, they were valued more b/c the boss knew he could rely on them (i.e. they weren't going to hop ship any time soon).

What I have seen, though, are people who pursued promotions because they wanted the prestige or money, but they couldn't hack it (either because they just weren't cut out for it or because of other responsibilities, like family), but they found it difficult to return to the job they had before, the one they liked.  And in some cases, they ended up leaving the promotion for a job that paid less than the job they had before the promotion.

The moral of the story is don't pursue a promotion because you feel that is what is expected.  Only pursue it if that is what you want for your career and your life and if you're willing to really do it well.  If you are happy with the job you have and the work-life balance you have, then don't feel bad about staying with that.

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