If you are one of these hardworking people who mostly aced their academic career, seeing someone in your peer group advance ahead of you can be unnerving. Even if you’re happy for the other person, it still feels like losing, and losing sucks at any age. About a year into my first job out of college at a consulting firm with a couple of thousand employees, I thought I was doing great. My manager thought my work was good, I was getting the hang of our business, and in my head I was at the top of my group. Then one day I found out that “Michael” (not his real name), another analyst in the group I started with, had been promoted.