[Job] Offer I can't refuse?

Post date: 2018-04-24 06:58:02

Please help me understand if an upcoming work "opportunity" that's being offered to me is patronage or patronizing.

So, I've been gently asking for a new role / working with my Boss to determine next steps for me within my company. Now it comes to pass that a Higher Up powerful person in Department X (not my department but people with whom I work frequently) has a new role planned for me (as part of a multi role mini re-org). He has gotten buy in from HR and my Boss, but neither Boss nor Higher Up is ready to tell me what this new role will be. Higher Up has a lot of clout within the company.

I came to know Higher Up's plans over drinks but coudn't get details from him. I mentioned that I like to have agency and control in what I want my next move to be, and got back drunken indignation that I wouldn't want his guidance and blessing within the company. He claimed to know the kind of work I'd be interested in. (I realized afterwards he must have had discussions with my Boss. However Boss doesn't know all my thoughts-- some of which are I don't really want to work for Boss any longer.)

With much emotional labor from me, Higher Up and I ended our chat on a good note. I also discovered that this mini reorg will not fly if any of the people involved turn him down, so I have some leverage here. I'm imaging a variety of roles I could get placed in (or shunted off to). Some I'd be happy about and some very not. But I can't lose the bad taste of "Higher Up thinks I'm his puppet".

I know my blue collar roots are showing here, and I'm a woman in a male dominated field. Is this kind of thing common? Should I be pleased to have Higher Up's spotlight? Or are they assuming I'll smile and take whatever is handed to me? In digging around Ask a Manager
I came across the idea of _Good to Great Company_ and "moving people to different seats on the bus", so I guess this happens, but I haven't experienced this in my career ( which has been 20 years in various cubicles -- most recently having a boss steal my ideas and his boss ogle me, so not a great foundation of well run bizness norms.) So far my current company has been great though.

The other shoe should drop later this week. I intend to ask for time to think, offer compromises (if I need them) to the role offered, and negotiate the hell out of salary. But I have no idea what my best alternative would be if I say no. I think I have enough contacts in the rest of the company to find a place to land if I burn a bridge and I have enough savings to rage quit but do like the company as a whole, so would prefer to find a third way if these machinations turn out to be insulting bullshit.

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