I just started at a new company, but the job description doesn't match my role. What do I do?

🙋 Questions
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Dear Agony Ant,

I just started at a new company, but the job description doesn’t match my role.

What do I do?

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Is it some sort of an AI joke? :sweat_smile: It doesn’t seem like a real genuine question :slight_smile: sorry, I don’t mean being harsh but I got this vibe from reading this (and I’ve seen quite a similar type of a question here recently)

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Agreed. And who on earth is agony ant?

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I was just thinking the same on the AI stuff, when I gave some of my time , experience and thought to another question.

If there is genuine interest, please add some context.

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It’s not AI, it’s for a project we are working on that won’t make sense until later :sweat_smile:

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Good to know. I was about to report all these “anonymous accounts” as spam :rofl:.

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ok, got it but anyway, this

I just started at a new company, but the job description doesn’t match my role.
What do I do?

looks like a pretty strange question/situation with zero context, so even if I want to answer I don’t know what to say except ask for elaboration :sweat_smile:

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Alrighty, I like broad questions, since they can go anywhere so I’ll give it a shot!

I would address it with the manager, tell them you signed up for X and Y as discussed in the interviews and that you are not doing the things as promised.

They might come up with " it will be like that in a few months" but that’s never true XD

If you are open to what you are doing now then it’s fine I suppose but if you really wouldn’t want to do those kind of things, then I would also address it and tell them if we don’t meet the things we discussed, that I would quit.

Because there is nothing worse then doing a job you didn’t sign up for/don’t like.
And you start looking for a new job opportunity.

The example:

Imagine you are a C#/.NET programmer and they force you to code in Java :rofl:
yea I wouldn’t be happy either. Even involve HR if it’s needed.

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The vaguely worded sentence in the job description of ‘other duties as required’!

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Context here is important, because at start ups or scale ups it’s normal to actually be asked to pick up things that are outside your “description”. In fact many contracts will have a “picking up reasonable things that are outside the role” kind of caveat.

If you’re finding that this is becoming an issue then here are some points:

  1. Talk to your line manager about it and ask what’s up.
  2. Politely push back on requests taking you outside your role by stating what you’re there to do.
  3. Contact your people team to address the issue and get support.