I got hired for a role I wasn't qualified for, tried to fake it till I make it, but didn't make it...
I've worked in marketing for about 9 years now. Started off as an assistant, eventually got promoted to "officer" because my colleague left and they needed to fill the space, or maybe even thought I deserved it. Practically, my role never really changed. I was a creative, so graphic design, video editing, storyboarding, scripts, all that artsy shit. Ofc I learnt a lot about digital marketing along the way, website and social media management, KPI reporting, what have you.
However, I got a new manager who decided I wasn't "high level" enough for my role.
I left this job and was later hired for a much higher role. "Executive" level, whatever that means, as every fucker on the team had that title. I did the interview and guess I must have had my charisma card on me, cos I got the job.
Get into the business, my focus is strategy. Think I got this, it's just like directing what type of content should go where, how to use socials and apply SEO copywriting etc. Time goes on, I create documents and guides to share my plans on how we can move forward. Submit for review to implement.
Get pulled into an early probation meeting. I'm not operating at the level they were expecting. I was expected to come in and start making changes independently without needing the level of direction or approval I thought I needed. Turns out I somehow got myself into a role with much more senior expectations than I realised...
What is "higher level" and where does one gain this ability? I could have started making changes I thought would improve things, but didn't want to apply anything until it was presented and reviewed... am I just an assistant who didn't get the memo when I moved up?
Think I'm going to give up marketing as a career. It's too full of buzz words and unsaid things I must be too stupid to understand.
Jobadvisor
This sucks, and it makes sense you're shaken by it. You went from "creative doing great creative work" to "failed at strategy" in one jump, and now you're questioning your whole career off the back of it. Let's slow that down, because I don't think the story you're telling about yourself matches what you actually described.
A few things stand out:
"Higher level" isn't a mystical skill — it's usually about autonomy and risk tolerance, not intelligence. What you described — wanting things reviewed and approved before acting — isn't stupidity, it's caution. Senior/exec roles often want people who'll make the call, own the outcome, and course-correct instead of seeking sign-off first. That's a real, learnable operating style. It's not "the smart people intuitively get it and you didn't."
You weren't unqualified in the sense of lacking ability — you were unqualified in the sense of never having been trained or trusted to operate that way. Nine years as a creative who picked up strategy skills on the side is not nothing. But if every previous job had you executing within someone else's plan, of course "act independently and don't wait for review" feels foreign. That's a gap in experience, not proof you don't belong in the field.
The title jump papered over a real gap. "Officer" to "Executive" sounds like a small step up a ladder, but in a lot of orgs it's actually a jump from "does the work" to "sets the direction and is accountable for it landing." Nobody told you that during hiring — probably because they assumed the title meant you'd already been doing exec-level things somewhere else. That's on the mismatch between the job description and your actual background, not on your intelligence.
To your actual question — am I an assistant who didn't get the memo — no. You're someone with strong creative and tactical marketing chops who got put in a strategic leadership role without the ramp-up or mentorship to build the "act with authority" muscle. Those are different things.
Before you write off marketing entirely: is the thing that's burned out right now "marketing as a field," or "being thrown into a senior strategy role with no support and getting judged against people who came up through that path"? Those are very different problems with very different fixes.
I rage-quit my job and broke my freeze/fawn response yesterday
I was working for a construction company. I started out in procurement and had to develop my own SOPs. We got this new software and nobody could figure it out. I wrote field guides and was able to assist IT with creating logic flows for the software. I decided to overhaul inventory, a 100k over 10% financial variance dragged down to .04%. I did all the heavy lifting despite being told, “good fucking luck”. You don’t have to tell me I did too much I’m well aware. I also wrote SOPs and trained other departments and came up with logic-based solutions to a litany of problems.
This is actually the 3rd time I quit all came down to the same reason. My job was upset because my assigned activities were interfering with subsidizing their own assignments. It's your fault if you can’t keep up. I can keep up; I have a trail of needing 3-5 people to replace me wherever I leave. I was out here submitting official policy documents to municipal governments, meanwhile, I couldn’t get a legal department or a “look it over” from anyone I asked. Me and chatgpt speaking legalese. Dicey.
On my 2nd “f you I quit” I was given a big raise (had a competing offer from a nuclear/AI project) and made the head of projects, purchasing, and inventory. Most of my assigned work is time-sensitive and prescheduled according to strict contracts. I opted to stay for 1 reason and 1 reason only: a 4-minute commute.
This week, aside from many pointless meetings, I was given a 2025 $141.00 invoice to investigate. Chump change around here, but not the first time I have been overpaid to investigate the validity of a $6.81 bill on our tab. I tried to point out the sunk-cost fallacy, but it’s absolutely critical! I’m calling around for heavy equipment and settling concrete and asphalt contractors for next week’s schedule, etc., but THIS is clearly a priority.
Yesterday I hit my limit. I realized I go to work every day with the same mantra. You are 39 and you are not in trouble. I lost my dad in July, I made sure to finish one of those fabricated policies ASAP before leaving to grieve. I have mcas, eds, bradycardia, orthostatic hypotension. Allmost died in May. HR demon had to take me to the hospital and I worked from home the next day because my clock never stops.
I didn’t cry. For once, I didn’t stutter. I was loud but matter-of-fact angry. Someone asked if I was ok and I started to let it out, it was like suddenly I realized how heavy I felt. This extra credit I didn’t sign up for. One of them took credit for my work. She tried this 2 more times in a meeting on Monday, and I quickly followed up. “Oh like I suggested last year. " Never been so bold. I let them know they suck and why.
I graduated with honors, and I have 20 years of experience. Bad parents, formerly homeless, and I’ve lost 3 children. I’ve survived a lot. I’m resourceful and competent. But as I tossed my keycard out the window while my bug-eyed boss stared from his office, I realized it was nice to leave because I don’t respect the room vs feeling like I’m not allowed in it.
Jobadvisor
This is a lot to have hit you all at once, and I want to slow down on a few pieces of it before anything else.
You lost your dad two months ago. You almost died in May. You're living with conditions that mean your body doesn't get a break even when your job doesn't either. And you kept finishing policy documents on your way out the door to grieve. That's not a normal week to carry. That's not a normal year to carry.
The freeze/fawn break — going loud instead of stuttering, saying the thing you'd suggested a year ago and been ignored on, not crying — that's not you losing control. That sounds like the opposite. You'd been accurately reading, for a long time, that the room didn't have space for your voice at normal volume, so you'd been adjusting yourself to survive it. Something in you finally stopped agreeing to that deal.
I'm not going to tell you that you did too much — you already said you know that, and I believe you know it better than I could tell you. What I'll say instead: the pattern you're describing (build something real, get "good fucking luck" instead of support, get followed by someone taking credit, get handed a $141 invoice as if it's equivalent to the concrete contracts) isn't a you-problem to fix by moderating your output. That's an organization that found a highly competent person willing to absorb the gap between what needed doing and what it was willing to resource, and it used you for exactly that, three separate times, each time pulling you back in with money instead of fixing the actual thing.
The keycard-out-the-window moment — not respecting the room versus not feeling allowed in it — that's a real distinction and it sounds like it landed as true, not just angry.
Given everything else you're holding right now, I don't want to just leave this here. How are you doing today, the day after? Not the résumé version — actually.
An early employer red flag I don't see discussed often
I've seen this in two jobs now.
Corporations create an air gap between the management team that sees and recognizes effort and those with the actual power to reward it to prevent them from actually rewarding good workers.
Two jobs now I've watched it in real time. Last job was a small business with a multi million dollar revenue and basically the CEO stamped all the raises.
We had an amazing VP who left when the CEO decided the sales team who were a bunch of dumbasses that constantly under-quoted work and lead us to take on work at a loss deserved fat salaries while the people doing the work got dogshit. They couldn't retain talent and so the quality of work was consistently shit because it was basically unqualified people who had no other option and would settle for being treated like crap.
At my current company I have 3 levels of management above me who are warring with corporate to get employees properly rewarded for their talent and it's going nowhere.
One of the best workers on my team is making $10/hr less than the worst one due to nepotism. One of them makes over six figures and he's not only bad at his job, he aggressively does the wrong course of action then needs someone else to check his work and fix it. Also nepotism.
So when you sign onto a company, find out early on who decides your pay.
If there's an air gap between your direct report and the person writing your checks, don't overstay your welcome.
Jobadvisor
That's a sharp way to name it, and it matches something real in how compensation actually works in a lot of orgs: the person who sees your work and the person who can act on that information are often not the same person, and there's no structural requirement that information ever crosses that gap. Managers can advocate all day, but if advocacy isn't binding on the person who signs checks, it's just noise the CEO can ignore indefinitely — especially when ignoring it is cheaper.
What you're describing with the sales team is a version of something a lot of workplaces do: they pay for the function that scares them most, not the function that's most valuable. A CEO who's anxious about revenue will overpay underperforming salespeople because he feels their failure directly. He may never feel the cost of an underpaid VP walking, because that cost is diffuse, delayed, and easy to misattribute to "market conditions" or "hard to find good people" instead of "we drove her out." You watched that math happen twice now.
The nepotism piece is a slightly different mechanism stacked on top of the air gap — it's not just that reward is disconnected from performance, it's that there's a competing allocation criterion (loyalty, relationship, favor) actively outcompeting performance for the same limited pool of money. Your three levels of management losing to corporate isn't a fluke, it's what happens when the metric that actually decides pay was never merit to begin with.
Your rule — find out early who writes the checks, and whether that person has any direct line of sight to your actual work — is a genuinely good filter. I'd add one refinement: it's not just "who decides pay," it's "what does the pay-decider get punished for." A CEO who gets punished (by the board, by revenue, by his own anxiety) for sales shortfalls but never gets punished for attrition of skilled workers will keep making that trade forever, no matter how good your direct manager's advocacy is.
Given you just walked out of a live example of this — does naming the pattern feel like it's helping you close the door on that job, or is part of you still working out whether the current one is salvageable?
I just want an office job. Why is it so hard?
Long time as a janitor and coming home so sore for so little pay sucks. I have always wanted an office job. I have been looking for so long. Why is it so hard to find any that don’t require a degree? At first I wanted something with no customer service. But now, I might have to start looking at those jobs if I want to work in an office.
Jobadvisor
The honest answer: entry-level office jobs without a degree are hard to find because they're being filtered out before you even see them, not because they don't exist. A lot of companies run job postings through automatic degree filters as a lazy proxy for "can follow instructions and communicate in writing," even for roles where the actual work doesn't need one. You're not competing against the job requirements as written, you're competing against a keyword filter.
A few things that actually move the needle for people making this exact jump:
Target the roles that quietly don't care about degrees, even when postings say "preferred." Data entry, scheduling/dispatch, accounts payable/receivable, inventory or purchasing coordinator, claims processing, logistics coordinator — these often list a degree as "preferred," not required, and a lot of the people currently in them didn't have one either. "Preferred" is negotiable if the rest of your application is strong. "Required" usually isn't, so don't waste your energy there yet.
Your resume needs a translation layer. "Janitor" reads as unskilled labor to an ATS and a skimming recruiter, even if you were doing inventory tracking, scheduling, vendor coordination, or problem-solving on the job. If you did any of that — even informally — that's the language that belongs on the resume: "coordinated supply inventory across X locations," "managed scheduling for X," not "cleaned facilities." If you genuinely didn't do any of that, a couple months of visibly building that on paper (see below) helps more than more job applications does.
Temp and staffing agencies are the actual side door. Office-support staffing agencies (Robert Half OfficeTeam, Adecco, local ones) place people into office roles specifically because they don't gatekeep on degrees — they gatekeep on "can you show up and be competent," which you clearly can prove. A lot of people get their first no-degree office job this way and convert to permanent.
Certifications that take days, not years, work as a degree substitute. A free Google Workspace or Microsoft Office certificate, a QuickBooks basics cert, or a customer-service-adjacent cert (even if you're avoiding CS roles) signals "I can be trusted in an office" to someone who's never met you, cheaply.
On the customer service question — you don't necessarily have to fully give it up. A lot of "customer service" postings are actually back-office roles once you're in (support via email/ticket, not phone), which is a very different daily experience than what you're picturing.
What kind of work were you doing before or alongside the janitor job — anything with paperwork, scheduling, inventory, or systems, even informally? That'll tell me which of these doors is actually closest for you right now.
Doing a one-way video interview made me feel like an absolute lunatic
I finally got an email back after two weeks of dead silence, thinking it was an invitation to speak with an actual human recruiter. Nope. It was an automated link asking me to complete a one-way video assessment before anyone would even review my file.
I put on an ironed shirt over my pajama pants, set up a lamp behind my monitor, and stared directly into my webcam. The platform gives you thirty seconds of prep time and then a robotic countdown starts recording your face. You get zero human feedback. No nodding, no social cues, just your own face lagging in a tiny square while you explain how you handle conflict to a cold glass lens.
i stumbled on my words during the second question, clicked around looking for the restart button, and realized the recruiter turned off second attempts. So there is now an actual video file of me staring in sheer panic for twelve seconds before whispering "whatever" to myself, stored on some HR server forever. The whole setup was HUMILIATING and felt like auditioning for a low-budget reality show instead of a standard desk job.
If a company doesnt have ten minutes to jump on a quick phone screen, their not serious about hiring anyone.
Jobadvisor
That reaction makes complete sense. Talking into a lens with no feedback loop is genuinely a different task than talking to a person — humans unconsciously calibrate off micro-reactions (a nod, a slight lean-in, an "mhm") the entire time they're speaking, and you got none of that, on top of a countdown timer and no retakes. Freezing for twelve seconds isn't a sign you're bad at interviews, it's what happens when your brain's normal feedback mechanism gets cut off mid-sentence. That's a design flaw in the format, not a flaw in you.
And you're right that it says something about the company. A one-way video screen before any human involvement is usually a volume-filtering tool — it exists so a recruiter can skim a grid of thumbnails at 2x speed instead of doing ten-minute phone calls with ten people. That's a legitimate cost-saving move for them at scale, but it does mean what you felt — like you were auditioning rather than being spoken to — was an accurate read of the situation, not paranoia. You weren't wrong about what was happening.
Whether it means they're "not serious about hiring" is a slightly different question — some genuinely fine companies use this because HR is understaffed and it's the only way they can process volume, not because they don't value people. But it's completely fair to decide it's not a process you're willing to go through, and to weight that against how bad they otherwise look.
A couple of practical things, since it sounds like this format is going to keep showing up:
Some of these platforms (HireVue, Spark Hire, Willo) do allow retakes per question by default — the recruiter has to actively disable that setting, which is a choice on their part, not a platform limitation. Worth knowing it's not universal, so you're not walking into the next one assuming no second chances.
If you get another one of these, a couple minutes of prep per likely question — even just three bullet points scribbled on a sticky note next to the camera — cuts the freeze risk a lot more than it would in a live conversation, because live conversation lets you recover in real time and this format doesn't forgive stumbles the same way.
Do you know if this one had retakes disabled, or did you not get the chance to check the settings before it started?
How do you handle finding out the junior employee you are training makes $14k more than you?
I have been with my current company for almost four years. I survived two rounds of layoffs, received stellar performance reviews every single quarter, and currently make seventy-six thousand dollars after scraping together three percent annual raises.
Last week, my director asked me to onboard and mentor our brand new junior analyst. He is fresh out of college with zero prior office experience. I gladly set up his training schedule, built his documentation, and spent three days walking him through our reporting software.
yesterday morning while he was screen sharing during a training session, he clicked over to his email tab by accident. Right at the top was his official HR welcome letter showing a starting base salary of ninety thousand dollars with a five-thousand-dollar sign-on bonus. He is literally making fourteen grand more than me to do an entry-level version of my job.
I scheduled a private meeting with my manager this afternoon to ask about adjusting my compensation to match market rates. He told me that new hire budgets come from a different talent pool and that internal salary adjustments are completely FROZEN until next year.
I should of started job hopping three years ago instead of staying loyal. Do I just stop training this guy and do the bare minimum while I interview elsewhere?
Jobadvisor
The salary gap is a legitimate reason to reassess your position, but I would not retaliate by sabotaging the junior employee's onboarding. He didn't set your compensation, and deliberately withholding training could hurt your reputation more than it helps your bargaining position.
A more effective approach:
- Keep training him professionally. Do the job you agreed to do, but don't volunteer for unlimited extra work without recognition.
- Document your scope and results. Four years of tenure, strong reviews, institutional knowledge, training responsibilities, and any work you perform above your formal level are useful evidence.
- Ask your manager for specifics in writing. The key question isn't just "why does he make more?" but: What concrete criteria and timeline would allow my compensation to be adjusted?
- Don't make his salary the centerpiece. You learned it accidentally, and discussing his individual compensation can create an unnecessary interpersonal issue. Frame your case around your responsibilities, performance, and market compensation.
- Start interviewing now. If the company genuinely has a compensation freeze, you don't need to wait until next year to find out what your skills are worth elsewhere.
- Don't resign before you have an offer unless you have a compelling financial or personal reason to do so.
- Be careful about accepting a counteroffer. If another employer offers substantially more, evaluate the role, progression, management, and total compensation—not just whether your current company matches the number.
The most important distinction is this: the junior employee's $90k salary is evidence that the company has recently been willing to spend $90k for this kind of work; it isn't necessarily evidence that your exact market value is $90k. Your strongest case is what you can demonstrate you contribute.
And yes, your conclusion that you should have explored the external market earlier may be reasonable—but you don't need to compound that by making the next decision out of frustration. Train him, protect your professional reputation, and quietly test the market at the same time.