When the Job Is Not What You Were Sold

Six weeks in, you know. The role you interviewed for and the role you are doing are not the same role. The platform work is one afternoon a month and the rest is a maintenance queue. The team you were joining has lost two of its four people. The interesting project you were hired for was cancelled the week your contract was signed, and nobody thought to mention it.

There is a sinking feeling that comes with this, and a strong urge to do one of two things. Resign immediately, which feels decisive and usually is not. Or say nothing for eighteen months, because leaving early looks bad on a CV.

Do something slower and more useful than either.

Start by writing down the gap precisely. Not the mood. The specific differences between what you were told and what exists. You will find three or four items, and they are not equally serious. Some are the ordinary noise of joining a company mid-flight. Some are a genuine change of what the job is.

Then sort them into fixable and structural. The scope of your work, who you sit with, what you are measured on, how much of your week goes to the queue, all of these are fixable, and companies fix them more often than people expect because replacing you is expensive. The product, the salary band, the market they are in and the way the place treats people are structural. No conversation moves those.

Then have the conversation, with the person who hired you, while the goodwill of a new joiner is still in the room. It is a bad idea to save this for month nine. Say it without accusation: what I came here to do was this, what I have been doing is that, and I want to work out how to get closer to the first one.

Give it a named date. Three months, in your own notes. If nothing has changed by then, you have a decision, made calmly, with evidence.

And if you do leave inside a year, the explanation is short and unbitter. The role changed shape after I joined and I said so at the time. Interviewers hear that constantly. It is far better than staying somewhere for two years and having nothing to point at.

– Asael Shinder