'Today I see my job posted': Overworked employee comes to an agreement with boss about workload, then discovers a job posting for her position

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Aug 7, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

We all know how hard it is to advocate for yourself in the workplace. It's so easy to take on more responsibility than what your job typically requires of you, and before you know it, you've set a precedent that you can take on all this extra work for no extra pay. Eventually, you burn out, and you realize that there is not much you can do to salvage the situation unless you talk to your boss directly about your workload and your pay.

You finally psyche yourself up to have this meeting. You walk in and you tell your boss that you feel overworked and that something needs to change. Your boss is surprisingly receptive, and the two of you come to an agreement that you'll try to make things a bit better and if in three weeks you feel similarly, then you can begin the discussion to either step down or move laterally to a different position. You seem content with this resolution… that is, until you wake up one day to discover a job posting for your current position on LinkedIn with a higher salary. Yikes! Wow, your boss isn't even subtle about it. Sounds like another conversation is necessary.

So, in case you haven't realized, this is what happened to this Redditor, and after thinking about the whole debacle from their perspective, we have some thoughts. First of all, the demands should have been clearer: if you want to be paid more, you should throw out a number. Clearly, OP's boss did not take the salary part of their concerns into much consideration. Secondly, and most importantly, the deceptiveness with which OP's boss handled this says everything about what OP should do next: step down.

For more stories like this, check out this post about an employee who was shamed for leaving the office too early.