Two years after that mailroom, I'd already been promoted three times. Three promotions in two years sounds like a success story, and depending on who's telling it, I guess it is. But three promotions came with three new sets of responsibilities and roughly one raise's worth of actual pay increase. I was doing more, carrying more, getting trusted with bigger problems — and going home every night doing math that didn't add up. Titles kept climbing. The paycheck wasn't keeping pace, and neither...