I accepted an counter offer at a situation where my manager had been wanting to promote me for 2 years. The worst part was that I had no idea why it was not hap

I accepted an counter offer at a situation where my manager had been wanting to promote me for 2 years. The worst part was that I had no idea why it was not happening. I was asking at every performance review about areas where I need to grow to get it and my mgr had no idea - he said that I performing at a more senior level in all areas, and that I should be promoted. I did get a nice raise, but not the title. Don't get me wrong here, the title wasn't that important, what bothered me was the totally dysfunctional communication between the management layers where I was left in a limbo where felt that promotions were apparently not based on merit, but something secret. Limbo wasn't fun, so I was happy to get a +20% offer from a another company. However I ended up accepting the counter offer when I was certain that it was too late to offer me anything to stay. I got a honest (I hope) personal apology from my managers manager, the department head, who said that he had been the one deciding not to promote me, and that he now understands that he was not clearly communicating his expectations to my manager. That was a bit over a year ago and while it might sound that the situation was beyond repair, I'm actually happy I ended up staying. It actually changed my managers manager behaviour to take a much more visible role in many other areas and start communicating more directly to us instead of just the layer in between.