Ask a Manager

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. My new boss wrote a poem about our team … but only some of us

My company has an annual team-building outing, which is traditionally the occasion for higher management to express their gratitude to the employees. At least, that was what I was picking up from the trip, as I’ve only started working here recently.

One of the gestures my grandboss made to express her thankfulness for us was to write a poem about our hard work. The thing is, she manages two teams— let’s call them team A and B — and her poem was only about team A.

I’m on team B. To be fair to her, my team was part of team A until pretty recently, and we are comprised mostly of newbies, my boss included. Because of the nature of our work, we do not interact with our grandboss as much as team A. Still, it’s hard not to feel slighted when her poem listed out the names of every single member in team A, and not once mentioned the people in team B. All her other gestures addressed her employees as a whole, but the poem made me wonder if she only intended her praises and encouragement for team A.

She’s been a stellar supervisor otherwise, and neither of my teammates nor my boss seem to be bothered by the, in my opinion, preferential treatment. Should I just let it go?

I feel like it’s something important to bring up though, mostly because it reflects poorly on her as a manager. How do I bring this issue up delicately? Should I speak to her privately or should I give my feedback during the annual manager review? Or again, is it this worth making a big deal at all?

Let it go. It’s true that big public expressions of appreciation shouldn’t favor only some of the people a manager manages (unless it was specific to a project they did or something like that). But I can see this happening if she knows Team A well and has worked with them a long time, and those things aren’t true yet of Team B. It still wasn’t very graceful, but it’s not a big enough deal to raise with her; if you do, you risk looking a little precious, especially as a new employee.

You say she’s been a great manager otherwise, and that’s more important.

2. Employer is requiring us to install software on our personal computers

I am a doctoral student at a major U.S. university. Everyone in my grad program is employed by the university in some capacity: some of us teach classes; others are hired as researchers. However, this doesn’t function like a normal workplace in many ways, including that there are no work computers provided. This is a huge expense for people, and unfortunately it’s very common in academia.

The other day, we received an email from IT that all university devices will be required to have a particular antivirus software installed on them. I thought, no problem, I don’t have a university device. But then I read the fine print and realized their definition of “university device” covers any personal device used for university business — which includes all of our personal computers.

Apparently if we don’t comply by a certain date, our devices will be locked out of the campus wifi and other essential campus IT infrastructure. The justification given is that other devices in a network could be compromised if one insecure device is hacked. That may be true! But the particular software (there are no alternative options) brags of its AI virus detection, and apparently, if the AI erroneously blocks a legitimate program we’re trying to download, we can contact IT to have it unblocked within 48 hours. (48 hours???) It also says that the software does not share personal data … except in cases where “adverse events” are detected, and they are extremely vague about what would constitute an adverse event.

I am deeply uncomfortable with this. As a matter of principle, I’m grossed out by the lack of ethical oversight of AI and would like to opt out as much as I can. More to the point, this is my personal computer! I use it for, well, very personal things that I really don’t want my employer to see (outside of work time, of course!) The university has not given me reason to trust their judgment in the past, and I don’t trust that this software will keep my data private. I also have my own risk tolerance for downloading open-source software from the internet, and I don’t relish having to go through IT to get downloads unblocked, especially if they have nothing to do with work.

Do I have any options? Obviously, this is what work computers are for, but there’s no funding for them and I can’t afford to buy a second laptop. (Nor can most of my peers! People are already using absolutely ancient laptops because they couldn’t afford new ones in the first place.) We do have a union, which I am active in, and there’s a possibility that we could push back collectively on this, but the timeline for getting it resolved is likely to exceed the time they’ve given us to comply with this order.

Also, nobody else seems to be upset. Did they just not read the email? Am I wildly overreacting? Maybe this is just a necessary change to the technology … but I feel very trapped.

You’re not overreacting; this is a massive overreach with significant privacy implications for your personal devices. It would be different if these were work-provided computers, but they’re not. And I suspect the reason no one else is upset is because they didn’t pay much attention to the email or haven’t thought through all the implications.

Legally, you don’t have much to stand on. Employers can require you to use your personal devices, and they can require you to install all sorts of invasive programs when you do. But you potentially have power in numbers, if enough of you push back on this. Talk to your union, and talk to your colleagues. Spell out exactly what they’re agreeing to if they install this software. (And why is it not an option to simply agree to install anti-virus software on your device that you select and control? That’s what I’d push for.)

3. I doubt my boss’s nephew is really a genius

My boss has hired her nephew to work part-time in our department. He’s 18 years old, fresh out of high school and I believe this is his first job (we do accounts receivable for a 2,500-person company). There are two supervisors in our department, me and another person. My boss made her nephew my direct report (without even discussing it with me!) and he is my only direct report; the other supervisor has no direct reports at all.

My issue with is probably not a big deal, but I’m still annoyed. At least once a week my boss refers to her nephew as a genius (“Genius Nephew has come up with a more efficient way to do X!” or “Nephew had a genius idea about Y!”) and it really annoys me; sure he’s smart enough I guess, but I doubt he’s actually a genius.

I am very hesitant to bring it up to my boss herself because when I’ve brought up other issues regarding the nephew in the past, she has justified his behavior even though one example of what he did (pushing off his research onto another department) is something she has expressly told the rest of us that we are not to do.

With some recent reorganizations, my boss has a new boss and honestly I would love to bring this up with him and hopefully he would see this situation as problematic and then we could hire someone other than my boss’s nephew, who would be able to work full-time AND not be the boss’s nephew OR my direct report.

Should I even bother to bring this up with my grandboss or should I just internally roll my eyes and let it go?

The issue is less that your boss thinks her nephew is a genius and more that she hired her nephew to work under you, which puts you in an impossible situation as far as managing him goes. The genius stuff is a subset of that larger problem; it shows a bias in his favor that’s probably connected to their familiar relationship, but even if she weren’t so effusive about his incredible brain, hiring him into her chain of command would still be a problem.

So yes, talk to your boss’s new boss! He may not even realize that your boss hired her own nephew and stuck you with managing him, so lay out the situation for him and whatever problems you’ve seen so far.

4. Hot desking and when to clock in

I recently started working at a place with a hot desk, and clean desk, policy. At the end of the day, we put our laptop, notebooks, etc. in our individual lockers, and at the beginning of the day we take our things out of our lockers and set them up at our usually-new desks. I have no issues with this: we only have to be in the office two days a week, and get to work from home the other three days, so this like a perfectly fair compromise to me.

My question is: should the time I spend setting up my things when I arrive, and putting away my things when I leave, be counted as working time? We use timesheets to clock in and out every day.

In past jobs I’ve counted my clock-in time as being when I’m logged in and online, but that’s in jobs where I’m always at the same desk so am not required to set up every day. It doesn’t take that long (probably five minutes on either end), but I’d still like a definitive answer. Thoughts?

It should be paid time. Federal law requires you to be paid for activities before and after your work shift if they are “an integral and indispensable part of the principal activities” for which you’re employed. An activity is integral and indispensable if it is “one with which the employee cannot dispense if they are to perform their principal activities.” You need to set up your work station in order to perform your job, and you are required to put things away when you leave, so doing that should be paid time.