Her Boss Ignored Her Design Work for Years—Then Announced She Was Quitting for a “Marketing Job” to Hide Her True Talent
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There’s nothing quite like leaving a job where your contributions have been consistently overlooked, only to discover your employer apparently can’t even get your next job title right.
One designer is sharing their frustration after resigning from a startup where they’ve spent years juggling creative responsibilities alongside web management and IT.
Despite having a decade of professional design experience, the employee says their coworkers rarely acknowledge their creative contributions.
They regularly handle the technical aspects of design projects, only to watch colleagues make last-minute changes and occasionally take credit for the finished work.
And when something goes wrong? Suddenly, everyone remembers who the company’s graphic designer is.
After growing increasingly concerned about how this arrangement could affect their professional reputation, the employee finally landed a new job focused entirely on design.
But when their boss announced the departure to the company, she described the employee’s next role as something completely different.
Now, they’re wondering whether the misrepresentation was an innocent mistake or one final attempt to minimize their work.
My boss lied about my next career move
I work at a company where about 50% of my job is in design, and about 50% is in web management & IT (it’s a startup, surprise.)
I am a professional designer who has an associate certificate and 10 years of work experience, whereas web/IT is something I’ve really learned on the fly off the side of my desk.
There’s 4-5 people working in “design” at the company, but none are trained. My coworkers churn out a lot of posters and simple signage.
Seems simple enough.
I do anything even remotely technical (anything requiring Photoshop or Illustrator, large signage built at scale, newspaper ads with special ink requirements, etc, as well as preparing ALL of the design materials like creating logos and colour grading photography etc.)
Basically what happens is that I put a lot of files together, get them to about 85% of the way there, and then someone else takes over and makes a few changes (nearly always for the worse) then sends to client.
However my work is rarely if ever credited to me EXCEPT when someone makes a mistake on a file and a client notices, in which case they CC me into the email thread and say “our graphic designer” will fix it.
Oh brother.
It’s also happened on occasion where a piece of design I’ve done has been complimented by a high-profile client, and then a specific coworker (always the same one) will step in and take the credit, despite barely having been involved.
The company at large does not often acknowledge my design work, usually saying I am “the IT person,” despite that being only half my job.
This is actually a huge part of why I’m leaving. I’ve started to feel like this cycle of not getting credit for my good designs but having my name specifically attached to designs that have been changed for the worse, is probably negatively impacting my career.
Truly need credit where credit is due.
I was recently hired as a designer somewhere else. In my resignation conversation with my boss we had a long chat about all the design work I do and how we’ll probably need a production designer AND a separate web manager to replace me.
Then, when she announced I was leaving to the company by email, she said I was moving on to do “marketing” for the other company and thanked me for my “digital and IT work” at this company.
The word “design” did not appear anywhere in her announcement.
No way.
??? I never mentioned “marketing.” I’ve made it clear to my boss, and in every conversation with everyone who’s asked me, that I’m going on to be “the designer.”
If my workplace didn’t have a long and very pointed history of deliberately diminishing my role in design, and if a huge portion of the company’s deliverables weren’t design, I’d be more inclined to think “Oh, well, maybe they don’t know the difference or misspoke.”
This is really startling to me and I can’t wrap my head around it. I’d gotten used to the narrative about my role at this company being misrepresented, but I’m kind of shocked that they would try and misrepresent my role at my next workplace. Everyone is going to see the LinkedIn update eventually. Has anyone else had this happen to them???
The employee has understandable reasons to feel frustrated, especially given the longstanding pattern of having their design contributions overlooked or attributed to others.
When someone spends years developing specialized skills and producing professional work, recognition matters. It’s not simply about receiving compliments; it’s also about building a reputation that can support future career opportunities.
The boss’s announcement is particularly strange because the employee had explicitly explained that their new position was in design.
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Describing that move as a marketing role while thanking them exclusively for IT-related work reinforces the very perception they’ve been struggling against.
However, it’s difficult to determine whether the misrepresentation was intentional. The boss may have misunderstood the distinction or simply written a careless announcement.
Either way, the employee could reasonably request a correction or clarify their new role directly with coworkers.
Fortunately, the most important development is that they’ve secured a position where design will be their primary responsibility.
Their former employer may have struggled to recognize their professional identity, but that doesn’t mean their next workplace will.
This person has some questions…
This person says they’re better off leaving.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a grocery cashier who gets into a standoff with a customer who hasn’t paid for everything in their basket.
And this person agrees…leave and be done!
They spent years designing everything but their job title, and apparently their boss couldn’t resist one final rebrand on the way out.
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