Need help to talk with Hiring Manager in positive way. What to do?
Hi everyone, my joining date is approaching and I saw Lead position is available on their career website. I have prior lead experience and have more than 8 years of experience total.I will be joining the company as a Senior Associate. I want to know should I ask the HR to reconsider my role for Lead. Its been 45 days I accepted the offer letter and now I am worried should I ask this or not or even if I do is it going to portray in a negative way or positive way. What would be the consequences if it went the other way?
Jobadvisor
Here's my take on your situation:
You absolutely can ask — but how you frame it matters enormously.
45 days after signing is a delicate moment. You haven't started yet, so you haven't proven yourself internally, but you also haven't burned any bridges. The key is to position this as curiosity and enthusiasm, not as dissatisfaction with what you already agreed to.
What works in your favor:
- You have 8+ years of experience and prior lead experience — that's legitimate
- The role is publicly posted, meaning it's a real, open need
- You're bringing it up before you start, not after — which is more honest
What could go wrong if handled poorly:
- You could seem like someone who immediately wants more than they agreed to
- HR might flag you as a flight risk or difficult before day one
- The hiring manager might feel you're going over their head by looping in HR
The smart approach is to contact the Hiring Manager directly, not HR. HR manages process; the hiring manager makes decisions and has context on team needs. Frame it as excitement about contributing at a higher level, not as renegotiating.
Here's a message you could send:A few extra tips:
- Be prepared for "let's revisit after 3-6 months" — that's actually a good outcome. It means they're open to it.
- Don't mention salary or compensation in this first message. Keep it about role and growth.
- If they say no, don't push back. Accept gracefully and deliver excellent work — that's your best path to the Lead role anyway.
- Worst realistic outcome is mild awkwardness, not a rescinded offer. Companies rarely do that over a polite, professional inquiry.
You're not asking for more money before you start — you're asking about a growth path. That reads as ambition, not greed, when done right.
Unexpected HR meeting right after vacation + maternity leave return… should I be worried?
Hi all, I could really use some perspective.
I’m just coming back from vacation, and before that I had recently returned from maternity leave. My request to extend working from home was denied, so I’m expected to be back in the office.
While I was working prior to vacation, I had raised concerns about one of my direct reports due to lack of performance/deliverables. That employee was terminated about two weeks ago.
Now, on my last day of vacation, I received an email (to my personal email, which already feels a bit odd) asking me to come into the office tomorrow and confirming I’ll be in person. In the same note, they scheduled a “check-in/follow-up” meeting at 4:30 PM with HR and several managers.
The timing + HR involvement + end-of-day meeting is making me really anxious, especially since I’ve been out and this seems to have come out of nowhere.
Does this sound like a standard check-in / return-to-work conversation, or should I be preparing for something more serious? Has anyone been in a similar situation?
Jobadvisor
Your instinct to pay attention here is reasonable — the combination of factors you're describing (HR present, multiple managers, end-of-day timing, personal email contact) does stand out from a typical return-to-work check-in. That said, there are genuinely plausible explanations on both sides, so here's how to think through it:
Signs it could be something serious:
- HR + multiple managers at once is unusual for a casual check-in
- End-of-day meetings are sometimes chosen to minimize workplace disruption after a difficult conversation
- Reaching you on personal email while on vacation suggests some urgency or deliberateness
- The timing after your direct report's termination could be related (they may want to debrief, or there could be fallout from that situation)
Signs it might be routine:
- Companies do sometimes schedule formal return-to-work conversations, especially after extended absences
- Your WFH denial may have prompted a structured "let's realign" conversation
- They may want to update you on what happened while you were out, including the termination
What to do before the meeting:
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Document everything now. Write down a timeline of your maternity leave, your return, your WFH request and its denial, your concerns about the employee, and any related communications. Do this tonight.
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Review your employee handbook if you have access — specifically any policies on return-to-work procedures or performance management.
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Know your protections. In many countries (and several US states), there are strong legal protections against retaliation for employees returning from maternity leave. If this meeting turns out to be a termination or demotion, the timing creates a legally significant paper trail in your favor.
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Go in calm and neutral. Don't tip your hand that you're anxious. Let them speak first — "I appreciate you setting this up, I'm happy to be back" — and listen before reacting.
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You're allowed to ask for time. If something unexpected is presented to you, you are not obligated to respond on the spot. "I'd like to review this and follow up" is a complete sentence.
The honest answer is: you can't know for certain until you're in the room. But preparing as if it could be serious costs you nothing, and leaves you in a much stronger position either way.
Wishing you a genuinely boring meeting. 🤞
Ugh… I got fired yesterday and feel lost!?
I’m 47 and was recently fired from my job after about 12 weeks. The feedback was that I wasn’t picking things up quickly enough and that I wasn’t the right fit for the role. I understand that’s important, but I had no prior experience and it was a senior role far beyond my capabilities (management knew this going in) and very little onboarding or training, it felt like a sink-or-swim situation where I was told to figure it out. I really did try, and I honestly thought I was starting to improve, so this hit me harder than I expected and really blindsided me. There was no warning or PIP.
I’m still in shock and feel so ashamed. What’s been weighing on me more is that this doesn’t feel like a one-off. I’ve struggled for a long time to find where I fit career-wise. I’ve tried different paths, put in effort, and hoped something would click, but it never really has in a lasting way. It’s getting harder not to internalize that as something being wrong with me.
I feel lost and pretty discouraged about my direction at this point in my life, and I don’t know how to figure out what actually suits me instead of just trying things and hoping for the best. The job market is impossible for people with tons of school and experience and I have neither
For anyone who has felt stuck like this later in life, how did you start to find a direction that genuinely worked for you?
Jobadvisor
That sounds genuinely brutal, and I'm sorry you're going through it. Getting let go always stings, but being blindsided — with no PIP, no real warning, in a role you were under-equipped for from day one — that's a particular kind of pain. It makes sense you're shaken.
A few things worth sitting with:
What happened sounds like a structural failure, not a personal one. A senior role, no prior experience, minimal onboarding, sink-or-swim expectations — that's a setup that fails a lot of people, not just you. The shame you're feeling may be real, but it's not necessarily pointing at the truth.
The pattern you're describing is worth taking seriously — but not as evidence of being broken. Struggling to find fit isn't the same as being unfit. A lot of people in their 40s are in exactly this place, especially if they've been adaptable, taken risks, or just never had someone help them map their actual strengths to real opportunities. That's a navigation problem, not a character flaw.
On figuring out direction more deliberately:
- Think back across everything you've done — jobs, side projects, even informal things — and ask: when did time disappear? Not "what was I good at," but what actually absorbed you. That's usually a more honest signal than credentials.
- Consider working with a career coach, specifically one who works with mid-career adults. Not a resume service — someone who helps you do the diagnostic work. It's genuinely different from just trying things and hoping.
- Tools like the Strong Interest Inventory or even a good therapist who works with identity and career can help surface patterns you can't always see yourself.
At 47, you have more runway than it feels like right now. The job market is hard, that's real. But people reinvent meaningfully at your age all the time — often into their best work, because they finally stop trying to fit someone else's mold.
Right now you don't have to solve the whole thing. You just got hit yesterday. Give yourself a few days before you try to figure out the rest of your life.
Is there anything specific — the immediate next steps, the emotional weight of it, or the longer career direction question — that feels most pressing to think through?
I joined a startup to learn fast… why does it feel like I'm just wasting time?
When I joined, I was genuinely excited.
I thought I'll learn a lot, grow fast, and be part of something meaningful.
But right now… I'm just confused most of the time.
There's no real structure. Work comes from everywhere, random WhatsApp messages from the founder, scattered Notion pages, quick calls where decisions are made and then never written down.
And somehow I'm expected to keep track of all of it.
Half the time I don't even know what actually matters, what's already being worked on, or what I should be focusing on right now.
I try to take initiative. But I end up working on something that wasn't actually a priority — or priorities suddenly change and nobody tells me.
The worst part? There's no tracking. Things just… disappear.
Then a few days later someone asks: "Why wasn't this done?"
And I'm sitting there like… I didn't even know this existed.
I want to do good work. I'm putting in the hours. But it honestly feels like the system is set up to make me fail, like no matter how much effort I put in, it just turns into chaos.
I keep wondering if I'm the problem. Maybe I'm not senior enough to handle this ambiguity yet. Maybe this is just what early-stage looks like and I need to adapt.
But I also can't shake this feeling that this isn't normal chaos, this is just bad management that everyone's pretending is a feature.
Has anyone else been through this? Was it the startup, or was it you?
Jobadvisor
What you're describing is genuinely hard, and the fact that you're questioning yourself so honestly says a lot about your character — but I want to gently push back on that self-doubt.
The chaos you're describing isn't ambiguity. It's dysfunction.
There's a real difference between the two. Healthy startup ambiguity sounds like: "We don't know yet which market to prioritize — let's run experiments." That's uncomfortable but productive. What you're describing sounds more like: decisions made verbally and never written down, priorities that shift without notice, accountability that appears only when something fails. That's not a feature of early-stage companies — it's a management debt that compounds until it breaks people or the company itself.
On the "maybe I'm not senior enough" thought — seniority doesn't make this easier. Senior people in chaotic environments don't magically know what's a priority when priorities aren't communicated. They've just usually developed enough confidence to push back harder, or they've been burned enough times to protect themselves better. What you're missing isn't experience — it's information that simply isn't being shared.
The "Why wasn't this done?" moment is the tell. That's not a growth environment. That's a blame environment. Those are very different things.
Here's the harder question worth sitting with though: Is the chaos improving, or has it been static? Early startups are messy, but good ones are directionally getting less messy over time — processes forming, communication improving, lessons getting captured. If you look back three months and it's the same entropy as when you started, that's a signal.
A few things that might help you figure out what's actually going on:
Try creating your own paper trail, not to cover yourself (though it does that too), but to test the environment. After any call or WhatsApp decision, send a quick "Just to confirm — the priority here is X and I'm owning it, right?" If that gets ignored consistently, you have your answer about whether structure is even possible there.
Also worth asking yourself: Is the founder aware this is happening, or do they think things are running fine? A founder who's blind to the chaos is a different situation than one who knows and is actively trying to fix it.
You're not the problem. But you might be in a place that isn't going to give you what you came for — and the sooner you get clear on that, the sooner you can make a real decision about it.