I just found out I didn’t get the promotion that I was certain I would get. I’m feeling very emotional about it. For those who have experienced this, what are the next steps? What should I do and what should I not do?

I got dinged on my latest review for not participating enough in the team channels, and I feel like I’m back in middle school. Apparently, shipping clean, bug-free code ahead of schedule takes a backseat to not dropping enough memes in the #random channel. My manager literally told me that social presence is a core metric for our remote culture this year. Is this normal? I’m so grumpy about it.

I’m realizing that my coworkers who are being hired externally are making so much more money. I’m now thinking what’s the benefit at staying g at a company and rising the ranks?

I just got my first performance review, and the feedback was literally "you're doing great, keep doing what you're doing," with a 2% raise. Inflation in my city is sitting at 4%, so my reward is effectively a pay cut for a year of hard work. Is this normal? Is the only thing to do jump companies?

Our CIO is pushing us to learn a programming language that no one has heard of. He used it in his old job. One looked into it and found that no company or government agency in my state used it. It doesn't appear in TIOBE Index. It doesn't appear in Stack Overflow's to programming language. My colleagues and I see this as a huge career limitation. What can we do about this?