A Social Media Manager's Rant: Looking for a 6 in 1 Superhuman

Rant Incoming

You've been warned.

Got a an email today for what was labeled a "Social Media Manager" position. I asked what the role involved and what followed was "description" that read as a manifesto of delusion.

Hiring an Unicorn on a Donkey's Budget

Strategy. Content creation. Reels shooting. Graphic design. Copywriting. Influencer marketing. SEO. Video editing. Meta ads. Reporting. Engagement metrics. Analytics. I started wondering if they'd also need me to water the office plants and troubleshoot the printer. Side note: I could indeed water the office plants and troubleshoot the printer... but please make sure to add that to the Scope of Work and pay me accordingly then.

For a fleeting moment, I genuinely considered asking if equity came with this Voltron-level responsibility stack. Instead, I went with something along these lines:

Just to clarify: are you hiring a Social Media Manager, or assembling the Avengers under one salary?

The silence that followed had weight. You could hear their internal justifications crumbling in real time.

Real Talk Now

Here's the reality check some companies desperately need: A Social Media Manager is not a full-stack marketing agency compressed into human form. We're not your budget hack for avoiding five separate hires. We're not miracle workers with infinite bandwidth and immunity to burnout.

We manage. We strategize. We collaborate with teams. We're the glue holding campaigns together, not the entire toolbox doing every job poorly because you refused to staff properly.

Louder For The Employers and Recruiters in the Back

This Social Media Manager rant is super valid. This trend of role inflation is exhausting and insulting. It devalues expertise, burns out talent, and produces mediocre work because nobody can excel at ten disciplines simultaneously. You wouldn't ask your accountant to also run HR and fix the Wi-Fi. So why is this acceptable for marketing roles?

Respect the position. Respect the specialized skills it requires. Respect the actual human being you're trying to exploit with a fancy title and an impossible task list.

The audacity is almost impressive, but the outcome is predictable. You'll either hire someone desperate enough to accept, watch them flame out in three months, or keep cycling through candidates wondering why "nobody wants to work anymore." Spoiler: they do. They just want to be paid fairly for the work of five people, not gaslit into thinking it's one job.

*This is a reinterpretation of a LinkedIn post.