Man, 2019 was a mess. You know how it is when you’re just grinding away, keeping the lights on for the whole team, and yet every time you bring up the subject of a raise or a promotion, management suddenly develops selective amnesia? That was me, trapped in middle management hell. I’d been promised a Senior title bump for eighteen months straight. Every quarterly review, they’d nod and smile and say, “Q3, definitely Q3.”
I hit August 2019 and I was absolutely fed up. My rent had just jumped, and my savings looked like a desert landscape. I needed something to shift, and honestly, I was desperate enough to try anything that wasn’t just sending another passive-aggressive email to HR.
The Setup: Searching for External Pressure
Now, I’m not typically an astrology guy. I mean, I know my sign—Virgo—but I usually skip those sections in the paper. But one night, drinking lukewarm coffee at 2 AM, I was doom-scrolling through LinkedIn and kept seeing these weird clickbait articles about career shifts. I don’t know why, maybe the algorithm was sensing my existential dread, but an article titled “Check the virgo career horoscope for september 2019 (Will you get that promotion?)” popped up. It felt ridiculous, but I clicked it. I needed a deadline, even if it was a totally random, cosmic one.
I dove into the text. It was standard astro-babble: talk of Jupiter transits and Mercury retrogrades, but I zeroed in on the actionable parts. The article essentially painted September as a month of inevitable conflict and forced breakthroughs. It claimed that if Virgos didn’t proactively demand what they were owed, the universe would impose uncomfortable change instead. It specifically mentioned “a clash with established authority figures.”
I decided right then that I would use that horoscope as my personal project mandate and timeline. If the stars said September was the month to fight, then I was damn sure going to fight. I treated the prediction like a project brief that needed immediate execution.
Executing the “Stellar Mandate”
My first practical step, taken immediately after reading that goofy post, was documenting everything. If I was going to clash with authority, I needed ammunition. I spent the next week, burning the midnight oil, gathering hard data that quantified my contributions since the last promotion promise. I wasn’t just listing tasks; I was assigning dollar values and measurable impact numbers to every single project I had managed.
Here’s what I systematically pulled together and finalized:
- Metrics Compilation: I dug deep into the analytics dashboard and cross-referenced server logs to show how much load my optimized scripts had shaved off the daily operations—we’re talking saving the company thousands in cloud computing fees.
- Rate Benchmarking: I secretly reached out to three recruiters and two former colleagues to get solid, current salary ranges for a “Senior [My Role]” in our city. I didn’t want to ask for a percentage raise; I wanted to demand the market rate.
- The Presentation Build: I didn’t just write bullet points. I constructed a six-slide deck (PowerPoint, of course, because that’s what they understood) detailing my value proposition and justifying the exact salary number I was going to ask for.
By the second week of September, I was ready. I didn’t wait for my manager to initiate the conversation. I scheduled the meeting myself, sending a calendar invite with the deliberately vague title: “Discussion: Role Alignment and Q4 Strategy.” That was the professional mask I put on the negotiation.
The September Clash and the Real Breakthrough
The meeting was brutal, exactly as the stupid horoscope had predicted. I walked in, presented my case calmly, and stated my demand: the Senior title and the benchmarked salary. My manager, bless his heart, started with the usual song and dance: budget constraints, Q4 freezes, we value you, etc. I countered every point with a slide of data. It was relentless.
Did I get the promotion in that meeting? Absolutely not. He said he needed two weeks to “discuss with leadership.” But I knew, deep down, he was just stalling again. The clash was real, though. I had put my cards on the table, and they were heavy.
I left that office feeling defeated, but also lighter because I had finally stood up for myself. I figured I had two options: wait two weeks for a rejection, or start applying with the newly polished presentation deck I had created.
I chose the latter. I fired off applications to three competitor companies using my self-created promotion deck as a proof-of-concept portfolio, detailing my successes and the measurable savings I generated. I didn’t even mention my current title—I just focused on the Senior level work I was actually doing.
Then came the real plot twist, one week later, still in September. A headhunter who saw my updated LinkedIn profile (which I only updated because I had prepared all this data) called me out of the blue. He saw my recent metrics activity and said, “You’re clearly pushing for something big.”
We talked for forty-five minutes. I sent him the deck. He connected me to a rival firm. By the end of September, my old company was still “discussing the budget,” but I had already completed three rounds of interviews at the competitor.
The Final Score
I didn’t get the promotion in September 2019 at my old job. Instead, because I used that silly horoscope as an iron-clad deadline to force proactive action, I secured an offer at the rival company in early October. The offer was for a title two levels above my stalled position, and a salary 30% higher than what I had even dared to ask my old boss for.
I handed in my resignation on the day my old manager finally came back to me, sheepishly offering a small, below-market raise and the promise of the Senior title next year. I just smiled, shook his hand, and walked out.
The lesson here isn’t that the stars know your future. The lesson is that if you give yourself an arbitrary, external deadline—even a ridiculously silly one like a Virgo career horoscope—it can force you to do the hard preparatory work you’ve been avoiding. The universe didn’t grant the promotion, I executed the necessary steps during the predicted window of conflict, and that execution delivered the real breakthrough.
