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How to Tell Your Boss the Job Isn’t What You Were Hired For

Every other conversation here — a raise, a title, remote working, a transfer, one deadline, one incoming task — argues about the termsof a job both sides agree you hold. Even disputing a review rating contests an assessment of work everybody agrees was yours to do. This is the only one where what’s in dispute is what the job wasin the first place. Three things follow. The evidence is a conversation nobody wrote down: this page wasn’t in it and hasn’t seen your advert, so it won’t tell you that you were misled — and it won’t tell you this is normal and to give it six months either; the reassurance is the more expensive of the two, because you accept it, say nothing for a year, and the wrong job becomes the job on your record. The person you’re telling is usually the person who described it, so nothing here opens on them conceding their own account was wrong — and nothing here has you apologising for raising it or conceding you may have misunderstood. And raising it disclosesthat the job as it stands may not hold you, which early tenure is exactly when that’s heard loudest. You get what to work out first, who to say it to, what raising it discloses, the spoken opening at no more than 110 words, the five things to leave out, the four replies that come back, the note to send afterwards, and the four questions this page won’t answer — each with the person, function or document that holds it.

Sample role mismatch plan

Generated for: Hired as a Data Analyst four months ago to build the reporting function; the reporting project was shelved in week three and the work has been manual spreadsheet clean-up for another team ever since; nothing said to anyone yet; manager is the person who ran the interviews

Work this out before you open your mouth — A gap described as a feeling is answered with reassurance; the same gap described as a share of the week is answered with a decision. None of these five steps costs anything or discloses anything. Write down what each of the last [number] weeks actually consisted of, next to what the role was described as. Find whatever written version exists — the advert, the description sent with the offer, the objectives agreed at the start. Work out whether the described work still exists here at all, and who holds it now. Identify who actually sets and signs off your work, which is not always who you report to. Then decide the single specific thing you want, because a conversation without one is the one that ends warmly and changes nothing.

The real one is written against the role you were actually hired as, what you have said it was described as, and what your weeks have actually consisted of — and it never invents a fact about what was said at interview, never quotes an advert back at you as though it were the document, and never rules that you were misled or that this is simply normal. The first one is free — no card. See what a credit costs.

First one is free — no card needed.

Credits

— credits available

This is the single input that most changes the advice, because without it there’s one account of the job and nothing to compare it to. Summarise it in your own words — and if you can’t find anything in writing, say so. That comes back as go and find whatever written version exists: the advert, the description sent with the offer, the objectives agreed in week one. It never comes back as a description of the role this page has decided you were sold. Nothing here treats what you type as the document, quotes it back as though it were, or rules that you were misled. Whatever you type comes back as your account of it, and everything you don’t comes back as a bracketed placeholder telling you what to check.

Worth stating, because how long you’ve been there changes how loudly the disclosure lands and whether the record has already started describing the wrong job. It comes back as context for the timing, never as a ruling that it’s too early to say anything or too late to bother. Neither of those is this page’s call, and it won’t make it.

These aren’t the same conversation, and which one you’re in decides whether this is an allocationquestion — the work you were hired for still exists and somebody else is doing it — or a what is this job now question, where asking for the old one back is asking for something nobody can give. What I was hired to build was cancelled is that second one, and it comes back as a proposal rather than a request. I’m still inside my probation periodis where raising it costs most and where waiting costs most too — both are named, and neither is decided for you. My manager isn’t the person who hired mecomes back as a reintroduction, because leaning on what was agreed asks somebody to honour a commitment they never made. Nothing here will tell you that you were misled — and it won’t tell you this is just how jobs go, either.

This decides which section gets written, and it’s the field people skip — which is why so many of these end in warm agreement and no change, because a manager can’t act on dissatisfaction, only on an ask. The job backis the largest and usually needs somebody else’s work to move, so it comes back with a first instalment attached. One defined piece alongside this is normally the winnable one: a named piece of work with a share of the week and a start date is something somebody can approve in an afternoon. Whether this is temporary or permanentis the cheapest and discloses least, and it’s the right opening when you don’t yet know whether the described job still exists anywhere. Get it recorded protects the next review and can be added to any of the others.

Give both halves, because they do different work: what you’ve actually spent the weeks on as a share of the week, and what you wanted the job to be. A gap described as a feeling gets answered with reassurance; the same gap described as a share of the week gets answered with a decision. Plus anything already said and to whom, with dates. No name is needed and none goes into the draft: not whoever interviewed you, not the manager who replaced them, not whoever is doing the work you were hired for. Nothing here assigns a motive to anybody, or says that anybody knew, intended or planned this— a sentence like that turns a request somebody could grant into a claim somebody has to answer. We never invent a fact about what was said, advertised or agreed, so anything you don’t supply comes back as a bracketed placeholder telling you what to check and who could tell you.

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Also explore:

Asking to Move to Another Team →Asking for a Title Change →Performance Review Self-Assessment →Declining Extra Work →Why Are You Leaving? →