Ask a Manager

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

1. My job made me a shocking counteroffer

I just had a bizarre experience. I’m an IT analyst at a global org, and we’ve been going through a painful and poorly executed agile implementation for the past 14 months. I could write a book about all my complaints, but long story short: I got another job because agile is driving me nuts, the dysfunction here is bad for my health, and I’m paid below the market rate.

I’m in my notice period, and was just pulled into our director’s office today and asked if I’d be interested in a senior management position, reporting directly to a VP, managing a team of 15-20 people (my current colleagues!). I’ve never managed even one person. I’ve got “senior” in my job title, but I’m not very senior in the structure here. I’m just not junior.

I know I am above average as an employee, I’m trusted and have good relationships, I’m a smart worker and good at articulating issues, and I’ve been here for over five years so my leaving is a blow. I tend to be modest and underestimate my impact, but come on. Senior management? Me? Why? Figuring out how to reestablish relationships with the team, many of whom are currently senior to me (!!!) as their manager feels insane. It feels like a trap.

The guy who was in the same role for the past year was just fired for being ineffective. There is so much political maneuvering going on, it’s hard to trust anyone — and the master manipulator is the director who floated this option to me. It feels like I’m being used as a pawn. But it’s also made me start second guessing myself — am I undervaluing myself so much? — and it’s coming right at the time where leaving feels very real and change is scary, so I feel vulnerable to this nonsense. How am I even supposed to react to this?

Trust your gut. You’re in the process of leaving, you made a decision you felt good about, and now someone who you describe as a master manipulator is offering you something that doesn’t make sense to you to try to change your mind.

I don’t want to discount the possibility that you’re some kind of wunderkind — the rare person who could leapfrog over several layers of advancement to walk into a senior management role and thrive — but that person is very rare. You’ve never managed anyone, and you’d be managing a large team; that in itself would give me pause. The first year or two of managing is very difficult, managing managers is a whole other level of learning and difficulty, and this is a place that just fired the last person in that job for being ineffective; I’d be awfully concerned about walking into that job without experience. I’m also concerned that the “master manipulator” who offered this sees it as a short-term solution to two problems (you leaving, and the vacancy created by firing the other guy), not as something in your best interests.

Plus you were leaving for reasons that wouldn’t go away just because you moved up; if anything, the dysfunction you’ve already identified as bad for your health is likely to be worse in a more senior role.

Stick to your original plan and don’t be this person’s pawn.

2. How can I talk to people at my new office?

I’m three weeks in to a new job that requires office presence (hybrid), after four years of working from home. I work from a satellite office and nobody on my team is located here. About three times a week, I drive to the office, badge in, sit at the desk I’ve reserved, and do my onboarding work. I stop by the pantry for tea and snacks occasionally. I eat lunch at my desk. I haven’t spoken to another human. It didn’t bother me at first, but now I’ve realized that I’m in a bad mood on office days and I think I’m starved for human interaction. It doesn’t help that I don’t have much work yet and rarely talk to my coworkers on calls either.

For the office people, it’s a different mix every day. I see some of them talking to each other about work sometimes. But I also see a lot of people who never talk to anyone. I suspect they’re also just here to get their badge swipes. Any advice for talking to strangers in the break room so I can feel like a live human? Or not and just being okay with it?

Introduce yourself to people! The break room is the perfect place to do it. It is completely socially acceptable to walk up to someone in the break room and say, “Hi, I’m Jane! I just started recently and no one from my team is based here, so I’m trying to meet people!” Most will be happy to introduce themselves in return and you can ask questions about what they do, how long they’ve worked there, etc. If you sense a particular rapport with someone, ask if they’d be up for getting coffee sometime and telling you more about the company. This is how work friendships are made! (They’re easier to make if you’re thrown into contact via doing actual work together, but this will work too.)

Also, try eating lunch in the break room sometimes rather than at your desk; it will put you into contact with more people.

3. Can discussing salaries be an anti-trust problem?

This no longer affects me as I’ve moved on, but I am wondering if something a company I worked for previously is doing is on the right side of the law (and, if it is technically legal, if it’s as shady as I think it is).

The company I worked for was purchased by a much larger company. Literally everything I learned about the larger company after that was somehow been worse than their already questionable reputation in the industry led me to believe. I left not long after we were purchased, as their business practices were concerning and they seemed to treat employees more like liabilities than assets.

Before I left, we all had to do some training with the larger company. Some of the training was solid, but the thing that stuck out to me was the section on anti-trust concerns. The training material said that discussing salaries can violate anti-trust regulations, but it did not say how or under what circumstances this would be the case; it was just included on a list of things that could pose a liability.

I understand that sharing salaries with competing companies could possibly be an issue, but they did not expound upon the situations in which sharing salary information might be in violation of anti-trust regulations, which I imagine would lead a lot of employees to assume that discussing their salaries amongst themselves is potentially illegal. Does this seem as deliberately misleading to you as it does to me? Could this be interpreted as them illegally prohibiting employees from discussing salaries? Or is it just legal enough for them to squeak by? Am I thinking about this the right way?

It’s hard to say without seeing the specific wording on the materials. If they were implying that discussing salaries with fellow coworkers could be an anti-trust issue, then (a) that’s an extraordinarily audacious bit of bullshit and (b) it would indeed put them at odds with the National Labor Relations Act, which prohibits actions that cast a chilling effect on workers’ ability to exercise their rights under that law.

But sharing salaries with other companies in your industry (not coworkers within your own company) can be an anti-trust concern if it’s used to keep salaries down, and I suspect/hope that’s what they were referring to.

4. HR wants me to sign up for their disability and life insurance

It’s benefit elections time where I work. I signed up for pretty much the boilerplate options last year, which was health insurance and a few other items, including a life insurance policy and a disability insurance policy.

This year I decided to waive the life insurance and the disability, because I’d rather have the money and the plans don’t seem very good. After submitting my selections, I got an email from our HR person asking me if I was aware that I waived them. It felt a little passive-aggressive and weird. Why does she care? Also, I think she knows damn well I didn’t waive them by accident. What do you think?

I wouldn’t be convinced she knows you didn’t waive them by accident; you’d be surprised by how many people do things like that and then are surprised/upset when the insurance isn’t available to them later. By confirming you intended it, she wards off those complaints later. It’s also possible that your company needs a certain percentage of employees signed up in order to offer the rates they offer. And/or she may just think it’s a good deal that you should take advantage of. (For what it’s worth, while not everyone needs life insurance, especially if you don’t have dependents, disability insurance is usually a good idea if the plan is right, although this one may not be.)

If you don’t want them, just confirm that you intended to waive them and don’t worry about it beyond that.

5. Making sure job postings are legitimate

I work for a large company in a medium-large city. Due to our size and industry, we are always hiring. My responsibilities include managing our LinkedIn presence; in that capacity, I have noticed a concerning trend.

In the past couple of months, I have received several LinkedIn direct messages from job seekers questioning the legitimacy of jobs for which someone posing as us contacted them. The messages usually included a job description and an invitation to download an app to participate in an interview. Very often, the name of the “interviewer” is the name of one of our HR executives or recruiters.

I heard from at least 10 people who, thankfully, contacted us before downloading any software. I shudder to think of how many job seekers believed the offer to be real and downloaded malicious software, thinking they corresponded with my company when they were instead being scammed.

Readers, please go directly to a company’s website to confirm that a job posting is legitimate. Apply for the job directly from that website. Do not download software of any kind that is sent to you by someone you don’t know. The scammers are getting more sophisticated when it comes to taking advantage of job seekers. Please be careful out there.

Thank you.