So, I'm struggling with talking to the person in management about a new role that I was recently passed over for. The person I would have been working for would have been my boss's boss. I do have regular opportunities to chat with her, today was one of them. In response to the reasoning she gave me via email a few weeks ago, I was very crushed. I didn't feel like it was a real reason, and at the time I didn't know who the position was going to. I did respond and say thank you for the consideration, but I was failing to see why I wasn't the right fit. At the time, I was told the person had experience with a "complex" project. And I just keep feeling more and more raw. The news came out about who got it just a few days after her email. And yes, the individual does work on many different projects which working on that many projects in itself could be complex I suppose. However, this person seems to have it all. Same amount of time in the industry as I do (but has only been at our current company and I have worked at 2 others), but she also seems to have the benefit of work life balance in her prior group and our group doesn't seem to have that luxury. (And honestly, it was a big reason why I wanted the job. I wanted some control of my workload.) However, I feel very unseen. I have notes from my boss's boss from several years ago thanking me for my years of work on critical and complex projects. So, there is another reason why this feedback does not make sense. I even mentioned this to her in my initial response. And she basically said that we need more people like me, but that was it. The workers in that specific group get smaller duration projects to work on and lots of space to take on improvement projects. They get to work from home more as well. Our group gets the larger and longer ones, and I'm often stuck doing the intense physical work that has to be done in person on top of other random things that most people in my department can't do because they "don't have time". It can lead to unexpected or planned 14 hour days or varied hours outside of a 9-5, and boss makes it known that he expects overtime from each of us. There was one very big project I inherited when I joined the company in 2015 that had been going since 2004. I finally got it to completion during the pandemic. I also sacrificed my health, my graduate degrees and countless other things to get it done. At first it seemed like a big accomplishment, but now I feel like that has been forgotten. I often try to work as efficiently as possible while getting a lot of things done. I try to delegate where I can, but her boss's expectations are very different. Also, there was no interview for this position. The director chose the individual based on previous performance reviews. From an HR standpoint, many colleagues were wondering if they had already chosen someone for the job before advertising and they worried that if people wanted it, there wouldn't be a fair shot. I just feel so raw, and I'm wondering if not bringing it up in my meeting today was the right action or not. I likely might bring it up to my boss first and see what he says. But even as I write this I feel pretty upset. I worry that my accomplishments have not been adequately captured even though they have been very visible to management. I don't think they understand the depth of work that went into it.