my job made me a shocking counteroffer, how to meet people at a new job, and more

by Alison Green on November 18, 2024

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.

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{ 302 comments }

{ 302 comments… read them below }

  1. Certaintroublemaker*

    #5, this is yikes! I hope you’ve added info on your company’s LinkedIn that directs people to your Jobs webpage and notes that you do not recruit or interview through specialized apps.

    1. econobiker*

      Yes #5 poster needs to reference that wording as above. LinkedIn and their InMail connection service is trending as a cesspool of scammers both as in the described fake job postings and pig butchering scams (make friends with target and then get them to invest in fake crypto currency trading schemes).
      Scammers use LinkedIn InMail service paid communication to get around having to be actually connected to someone’s profile in order to send messages to them. One can only surmise that the scammers are using stolen or scammed credit card gift cards to fund their purchase of the InMail service.

    2. roisin54*

      We’ve had a similar issue where I work lately, only in our case it’s people being solicited to do transcription work. In some cases people actually do the work and when they inevitably don’t get paid, they complain to us.

      We do have a notice on our website about these scams, but there’s really not much else we can do. We can’t stop random people on Craig’s List from impersonating us.

    3. Jackalope*

      Yes, part of the issue here is that some companies do NOT have info on their own website about their current open positions. If the only way to apply or find out if there’s work available is on a third-party webpage I can understand how people couldn’t be fooled.

    4. Smurfette*

      If these job ads are being posted on LinkedIn (and it sounds as though they are), OP’s recruitment team should contact LinkedIn to advise them that they are fraudulent.

    5. TooTiredToThink*

      #5 – several years ago I got a recruiter trying to recruit my for Boeing. Something about the email seemed fishy (it fit my resume way too closely); so I reached out to Boeing HR – who was very intrigued as they didn’t show anything but weren’t 100% sure. I responded to the recruiter that their email seemed a bit fishy and could they provide verification. I got told to mind myself; which made me laugh. I knew then that it was 100% a phishing expedition to get my personal details.

      I hope folks stay on the lookout for such things.

      1. Momma Bear*

        Some companies look very slick, but if you dive into them it quickly unravels. For example, a company that refuses to do at least a phone screen, passes you off to multiple people, or sends you a link for a website that’s just a few weeks old and registered via another country (WHOIS can be your friend). 100% do your research, especially if they want you to download an app or enter personal information in a form.

    6. OP*

      OP here. The fraudulent postings were actually on Indeed. We have information on our LinkedIn page and on our website letting people know that we are aware of fraudulent postings and encouraging them to come to our website to apply. We also supply a phone number they can call to confirm the legitimacy of any postings they see.

  2. Jessica*

    LW1, Alison is right. This is a poisoned chalice: don’t drink. Run away and hopefully restore your sanity at the new job.

    1. learnedthehardway*

      Agreed – on top of all the serious problems that the implementation itself is having, you’d be also having to establish yourself as a manager, when you haven’t led even a small team before, and with people who are more senior than you.

      It really sounds like the Director might be setting the project up for failure, with you as the fall guy, so the company can just axe the entire initiative. OR, it’s possible the Director will put you in the role to keep the lights on with the project, but will plan to replace you when a more qualified candidate can be found. Colour me paranoid, but I think these are both valid concerns.

      1. Ellie*

        If I had to take a bet, it would be more on the side of the Director doesn’t have a clue what they are doing. It feels too convenient that they just sacked one manager and offered the role to a senior who is leaving. It feels like a blatant attempt to get OP to stay, without any reference to how successful they will be.

        OP – if you are destined for management, you will find yourself there through some other means. If you take this job, all of the problems and frustrations you were having will suddenly be on you to solve. I wouldn’t walk into that kind of a role without having at least two things: firstly, the confidence that you can fix at least some of the problems (or at least make them more tolerable), and secondly, the mutual respect and backing of the manager you will be working for. It doesn’t sound like you will have either of those things here.

        Take the other job.

        1. OP 1*

          It’s very reassuring to read Allison’s response and these comments. I reached out to a senior manager I trust to discuss this offer, and he also confirmed my gut feelings and gave me excellent advice about how to go back to our manipulative director with honest feedback. I also have a call today with my VP to escalate this, because I have a feeling she’s not fully aware of how rogue or director is. At least I have nothing to lose, so I can do my best to help the team get the attention they need.

          2. HonorBox*

            Good to hear. Not only the reassurance from the response and comments, but that others who know your organization have given you good, actionable feedback too.

            If you’d have written in and said that the director asked you to stay and offered you the senior position, even if you didn’t have direct management experience, I think you’d be hearing different thoughts. But the word manipulative is pretty telling.

            To be honest OP, I don’t know that you owe the manipulative director anything in the way of feedback. Go to the VP and follow her lead. If she thinks you should say something to the director, that’s one thing. But this really isn’t your situation to handle. You’re leaving, and while that gives you a little more freedom, it may not resonate with the director as much as informed feedback from higher up.

            1. Ellie*

              Yes, I don’t think I’d bother talking to your director again, except to politely decline. Manipulative people for the most part do not deserve feedback. There is too much risk that they will twist your words against you. They are best fought with your hat, i.e. you put it on and leave.

              I admire you OP for contacting your VP, you clearly genuinely care about your co-workers. If you trust the VP, then go for it. If you’re not sure though, I’d start soft and see what kind of a reaction you get. If you’re basically told to STFU, then at least you tried. You can leave with a clear conscience.

          3. Me... Just Me (as always)*

            My advice, depending on your career goals, is to consider the offer carefully. This could very well change the trajectory of your career if you want it to. Be smart about it, if you do accept & have a timeline to find a new role after a year. But, if you can do the new job for a year, it could really bump your career to a whole new level. These opportunities don’t present themselves to everyone & can be a huge stepping stone. But, think carefully & weigh out if this is where you want your career to go. More money, more respect, more decision-making ability, but more work, more stress, more responsibilities.

            1. Llama lamma workplace drama*

              I think this is bad advice. If OP goes down in flames then this job will give bad reviews when they start to interview for another position. Get out… take the new offer.. don’t look back.

              1. Ellie*

                Yes I wouldn’t trust the director to give OP a good reference, or to set them up for success in the new role. OP could be fantastic, but no one above their manager is going to know about it if you can’t trust them to be honest. It is really hard, potentially soul destroying, to work for a manipulative manager who you cannot trust to make good decisions. You end up having to be a buffer between them and their worst excesses, you take the blame when you can’t prevent disaster, and get none of the credit when you do. The people underneath you might respect you, but it is very hard for anyone higher up to see what’s really happening. OP is clearly someone who cares about people. This is going to eat away at them.

                I guess if the VP comes back and tells OP that that director is on the way out, that might change the equation. But without knowing who will take over, I’d be very nervous about staying.

            2. Jellyfish Catcher*

              That could be reasonable, If….
              – the company wasn’t dysfunctional;
              – the person offering this “opportunity” wasn’t a known sleazy manipulator;
              – OP had a background in managing. Learning to be a manager in a dysfunctional
              place, will create more stress and bad managing habits.
              – Then, SM (sleazy manipulator) will fire you and give you a bad rep as well.
              – Trust your gut, OP and get out NOW.

              1. Elsewise*

                Your third point really rings true for me! I learned to manage in an extremely toxic and dysfunctional company. I did my best to protect my team from the worst of it, but a lot of the toxicity got to them, and a lot of it got to me. I very distinctly remember sitting in a managers meeting about how compassion makes you an ineffective leader and realizing that this was not where (or who) I wanted to be.

                I wound up being pushed out after a conflict with my manager, which I don’t regret. My next job was also a manager position, and I realized I had a lot of stuff to unlearn. I wound up moving into a non-management position not long after that, and I haven’t worked in management since. Maybe one day I’ll feel ready for it again, but right now I feel like I’m much better as an individual contributor.

            3. MigraineMonth*

              There may be people who could leverage the offered role role into a career boost, but I suspect they’re either the wunderkid Alison mentioned who can walk into senior management with zero management experience and still thrive, or they’re so politically gifted they can navigate the coming shitstorm and come out smelling like roses. The vast majority of us, though, would take a career hit from attempting a role where we were set up to fail (and possibly be the fall guy) from the beginning.

              Though I agree that it’s a good question for OP: do you even want to go into people management? I’ve actually had multiple managers take a pay cut so they could go back to software development at the individual contributor level.

            4. Bess*

              I think this is good advice in a vacuum but seems like a setup to make OP into the scapegoat for whatever the next agenda is that the director wants to achieve. Way too much potential to be put at the helm of a sinking ship and go down with it.

              I do think you’re right in a more mixed context. You can get some great experience in dysfunctional environments if you’re careful about it. I think that falls apart when you take someone with no management experience whatsoever and put them in a major leadership role where there’s a significant change in hierarchy for multiple people on that team. That isn’t done out of the blue unless the person offering that is incompetent, or they want to cause further division or discontent (possibly getting people to quit or sabotage OP).

            5. Kevin Sours*

              Faceplanting here is not going to be a career boost. This is a parade of red flags starting with the fact that this management position magically materialized after OP gave notice. The best case scenario is that the person making the offer has no idea what they are on about and are making bad decisions. It gets worse from there.

              It’s a drinking from the firehose sort of situation which is to likely to succeed even given a well run environment with a ton of support. (This isn’t just a reach promotion, this is a least a step above a reach promotion). This isn’t that environment.

              But, mostly, there is a significant opportunity cost. Namely OP has a offer on the table. Presumably at a more stable and less toxic place. Pursuing that and being successful is likely going to advance their career more than flailing around with a fancy job title.

          4. iglwif*

            Good luck! I also came here to say that you should take the other job and leave this workplace full of bees behind you.

            Once upon a time I changed my mind about quitting a workplace because I was offered a big promotion and (what seemed like) a lot of money, and a year later I quit anyway, but only after 12 full months of stress, anxiety, and being miserable 90% of the time. Not worth it!!!

          5. Bess*

            Relieved you didn’t take this bait! Who knows what would have been in store for you, but doubt it would have been good, healthy or productive.

          7. Bananapants Modiste*

            Many moons ago, I was a senior system administrator at Large Company.
            I gave notice with no new job lined up because of too much work and there being no technical director.
            Well, I immediately was offered the position of tchnical director and a salary bump.
            I kept working there with the new title, got zero training or other duties, no contact to other management etc.

            Three months later, I was demoted back to sysadmin, and an incompetent bank manager was hired as technical director (he played management games with me which he lost). It was a total ploy to keep me working there.
            A year later, Large Company went down in flames.

            In a nutshell: OP, take the new job and get out of there! Trust your instincts!

        2. bamcheeks*

          Yeah, I would pick incompetent-flail-over-malicious-cunning-plan. But that’s not an argument in its favour!

          1. BellaStella*

            This for sure. The VP sounds like they do not have a clue. Which is partly why, I bet, the project is painful and failing now, too.

          2. Falling Diphthong*

            I will put my token down on “Thinks it is a brilliant and cunning plan, masterfully manipulating all around them, when it is just flailing.”

          3. Smithy*

            10000%

            A lot of time when folks are paid a lot under market rate, and a new job with a moderate title step up can easily offer a lot more – the only way to be competitive with a counter offer is to also include a far more senior title than the place would normally consider. In this case, it was something easy at hand to offer – but accidentally bad and intentionally bad can both be poison.

            A while ago I left a job at the moment of a reorg at a Sr. Officer level. On my team instead of having two Sr. Officers to make happy with the new structure, they now had just one. It was very easy for them to offer the remaining officer the remaining “Senior” part of my salary and a new title and replace my role with another Officer. Ultimately this was just a low hanging fruit option for those in charge, but unlike the OP’s situation didn’t include a massive leap in duties/seniority.

        3. Coffee*

          Can we even trust the story about why previous person isn’t there anymore? Doesn’t sound like place that would be transparent about stuff like that

        4. Curious*

          sounds like Hanlon’s razor — don’t attribute to Malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

        5. el l*

          Manipulators are all about “the move.” They love solving two problems at once and don’t care whether things last. This is no different.

          Boss needs someone in the management role, and doesn’t want to have to replace you. Getting you to sign up for this solves both problems at once. Whether you’ll be successful in it almost doesn’t matter – it gets it off their plate now, and they can always fire you later. That’s the mentality.

      2. Antilles*

        I don’t know if it’s actively malicious or completely incompetent, but either way, OP is being set up to fail if they take this job.
        Going from never managing anyone to managing 15-20 people is an enormous change. That’s enough people that your entire job will be management – people management, project coordination, budget management, etc. The skills you’ve learned to this point (e.g., coding) are going to be either very very minor parts of your job or completely irrelevant. That’s why this sort of jump is completely unheard of, because you’re effectively developing a brand new skill set, which is a process that takes a couple years *and* much more effectively done when there’s lower stakes.

        1. Sloanicota*

          Plus, you would need the patient support of a mentor with reasonable expectations – which it does not sound like OP could expect in this role.

          1. Great Frogs of Literature*

            Yeah, OP, even if you could somehow make this work out well, you’d be learning how to manage from THAT GUY. Nothing in your letter makes me think that you want your management role model to be Ineffective Machiavelli.

        2. Smithy*

          Completely agree with this.

          My sector is one with absolutely zero title consistency, so it’s not been unusual to have recruiters contact me for jobs with massive management leaps. In one of those interviews, I remember hearing that the expectation was to manage a 20 person team with no hierarchy – everyone reported into the position I was hiring for. It’s the only time in my life I seriously considered ending an interview early, because the insanity of that for the nature of the work…..absolutely not. In addition to that, my experience at that point had only been to have one direct report.

          So these types of management opportunities that just do not feel right – they can come from loads of places.

        3. LifebeforeCorona*

          I totally agree with the managing people part. I started out with managing 2 people and made many mistakes that fortunately I learned from. Even with that experience I’d refuse to manage that number of people especially ones who are your peers Friday and Monday you are their boss. It’s a recipe for disaster.

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Suddenly becoming manager of some of your peers can be awkward, but it’s a pretty normal part of getting promoted to management.

            Suddenly becoming manager of your *managers* is pretty bizarre. It should be rare, handled delicately, and should have a clear, easy-to-understand reason. (E.g. Sam has decided to retire from management and she wants to go back to being an individual coder, so you’re now her manager.)

          2. Bess*

            It’s also somewhat researched/documented that new management roles are not just challenging, they’re often linked to a decrease in morale and satisfaction as the managers adjust to the role (often associated with an increase in responsibility but not autonomy or wider organizational influence). So you want someone’s first management position to be one where they can take that hit and learning curve and, ideally, rebound.

      3. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        I have my doubts that they really want him to have the job. I think it’s a way to get him to turn down the other job and then he won’t get the manager job.

        1. Dancing Otter*

          That or they already plan to fire him from the manager job as soon as they can find someone else to hire for it. As Antilles said, OP is being set up to fail, but I think it’s deliberate.

          1. Ellie*

            Well I think its a win win for the manipulative director. If OP succeeds in the role, the director will take all the credit and come off looking like a genius. If OP fails, they’ll be painted as incompetent and fired. A manipulative director isn’t going to lose any sleep over having to do that, but OP sure will.

            I expect the offer probably is genuine since OP is senior enough, the vacancy really does exist, and the director probably doesn’t comprehend what it takes to be a good manager anyway. But there’s always a chance OP will get screwed over regardless. There always is with someone like that.

        2. OP1*

          OP here- had the same thought which is why I wanted to talk with my VP asap. It surprised me that she was aware of the idea and overall I got more weird vibes and feeling of desperation, which really reaffirmed my gut feeling that this is not the right move for me. I think my “leaders” just think “oh OP is good at her job and communicates well, maybe she will stay if we offer this shiny flashy role, and we won’t have set off alarms about this retention issue!” (I am not the first to leave) Our VP told me she will continue to try to change my mind, but I doubt they will manage to find a role for me that makes sense and feels exciting.

      4. Venus*

        I don’t think this type of situation – someone being given a manager position with 15-20 reports – is necessarily bad if the hiring manager is clear about why this would work and they offer strong support.

        In this situation, I completely agree with Allison and others that the Director is likely using you to keep the lights on and will replace you soonest. Run!

        1. Varthema*

          Genuine question, is 15-20 reports ever a good idea? How could you ever be a good manager to that many people?

          (Direct reports, I mean, not direct+skip-level)

          1. A Significant Tree*

            Having been one of about 15 direct reports to a rotating slate of first level managers for multiple years (they changed often but didn’t increase the ratio of managers to reports), my personal experience is that it works okay if the reports are independent and given a decent level of autonomy. That’s from a productivity perspective. I almost never got a direct assignment from a manager other than “do the things your position does.”

            Career-wise, I found the managers offered little to no support. No individual advocacy in general, no real familiarity with us and our skillsets. No one-to-one meetings and rarely any manager-led staff meetings. When you have that many people to cover, who has the time?

          2. MigraineMonth*

            It seems like a bad idea to me. I’m sure it’s done, and it probably works okay as long as there aren’t any issues. I think it would fall apart the minute you needed to do the kind of intensive involvement/coaching Alison suggests when there’s a thorny interpersonal problem, inconsistent performance, etc, and I’ll bet a lot of problems would go undetected until they became massive. (What employee feels comfortable talking about sensitive issues with a manager they see once a month?)

            It can’t be good for the reports, either. Yeah, not being micromanaged is good, but how much feedback are they getting about their work? How much help are they getting progressing their career? How effective can a reference from your manager be if they only saw you once a month and keep mixing you up with the other two Janes they were managing at the time?

    2. JSPA*

      Agreed. Advancement should be about developing your strengths, not about someone either planning to exploit a power void, or setting you up as a sacrificial lamb. What they could realistically get from you right now, they could get from self-reflection (which they’re not doing), ceasing to manipulate (ditto), hiring the strongest / best qualified candidates for jobs (which, apologies, but ditto), and prioritizing the ability of their employees to do their job, rather than the theory- and terminology- driven own-goal psy-ops of a forced Agile implementation. Let them choke on their own mismanagement.

      1. I Have RBF*

        Yeah, the top down Agile implementation is a major red flag in my book. I suffered through one of those – implementing Scrum in an operations group. Sprints were never completed, because most of our work was problem solving on an immediate basis, or very long slow projects that took a back seat to keeping the lights on. Scrum tried to make the projects the priority, because those could be planned and pointed, but the majority of our work was reactive, and not able to be planned. Every sprint turned into a mini death march, with the asshole manager yelling at us when we didn’t finish our tasks, saying we “committed” to do them, nevermind all the shit from other groups that we had to do.

        I advocated for a Kanban approach for our team, because it more properly suited our work, and got told that Scrum was what management said we were to use.

        Top down “Agile” is stupid, IMO, and Scrum for operations teams is insane.

        1. OP1*

          Omg, don’t get me started. You understand exactly how it’s going on my current team based on this comment.. the top down implementation has been so painful and awful that I never want to hear scrum mentioned again. Another reason I couldn’t imagine accepting this offer… manipulative leaders aside, I can’t drink the koolaid so how in the world am I supposed to “enforce” the scrum nonsense on my team?? No thanks.

    3. Person from the Resume*

      No, no, no.

      You might well be undervaluing your technical skills. Lots of people do. Also you probably have subject matter expertise about this company and its products that a new hire would take months/years to acquire.

      But if you stay, you’re still involved in a badly done agile implementation. You’re trying to escape that, and they’re trying to lure you back to it.

      No one knows if you’ll be a good manager since you’ve never managed anyone. Both you and company hiring you would be better served with starting you with managing a fewer number of people and also not people who used to be your peers and seniors. That’s a very difficult situation for anyone who has some management experience and isn’t already at least a bit burned out.

      The VP might be a master manipulator (that’s a red flag too), but he could also just be trying to keep you by promoting you to the vacant slot he’s got. Or he’s thinking he’s killing two birds with one stone.

      You want to get away so follow through with it.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I do totally understand OP’s temptation here, and if a few things were different about their situation I might have had a different answer for them. I mean, having “Deputy Director of Finance” on your resume when you’re job searching, even if you can only stick it out for a year, is going to put you in a different category of candidates, and could potentially leapfrog you over a lot of lower-paying positions in your next role – it could be an impact felt over the entire rest of your career. *But,* you’d have to actually like it and be good enough at it that you would want to continue that trajectory, and you’d have to be able to hold the first role for at *least* six months, ideally a year, without losing your mind. I don’t think OP has the set-up to even hit that low bar here based on what we know.

      2. Tau*

        Hell, they’ll now probably be part of rolling out the badly done agile implementation, in the position of needing to defend it and argue in its favour to their team, but *unlikely* to be able to do anything about it. Like, at this point in my developer career I’m convinced that implementing agile so it actually works well takes a *lot* of attention to company culture, buy-in from the top, willingness of upper management to be hands off and give teams a great deal of autonomy, etc. Bad agile often reflects larger dysfunctions in the company culture, and that’s not something you can fix from a middle manager position.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          It feels like one of those “Oh yeah, if you’re going to complain why don’t you try doing it better!” retorts. As if the myriad systemic and culture issues with the project’s implementation can be fixed by one person (who isn’t given enough power to actually fix anything).

          As the numerous people of color who have been forced to take on DEI roles they never asked for (and aren’t paid extra for) can attest, it’s a sucker’s game.

    4. Annony*

      Yep. Even if you felt 100% ready for that level of job, don’t take it at this company. You don’t want to be the responsible for the success of changes that you disagree with enough to want to leave. That is being set up to fail.

    5. LaminarFlow*

      Yes! I went through this once, and I am sooo relieved that I stayed the course of leaving. I didn’t even realize the full extent of the dysfunction of the former company until I was contacted by the IRS for an interview about the company financials 6 months after I left. Turns out the CEO was cooking the books, and eventually went out of biz. I believe the CEO and a few others were slapped with fines & got themselves a criminal record. Get out!

      1. CM*

        I was also in this situation once! (Except without the criminal activity, just run-of-the-mill dysfunctional workplace.) Got a counteroffer of a much higher-level position. I was tempted for a moment, but reminded myself why I was leaving — I was not invested enough to stay and try to make this organization better. I had tried that for several years, and now I was ready to go make more money and try something new. No regrets whatsoever, leaving was definitely the right move.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        “We understand you’re quitting the frying pan, but before you go, we’d like to offer you an exciting promotion to the fire!”

    7. Pescadero*

      Yep…

      The only way to take that job is with an ironclad employment contract with some sort of golden parachute for when they inevitably fire you.

    8. Pita Chips*

      +1000

      If they wanted to keep LW and fast-track them to management, it would not have happened in this form at this time.

    9. Momma Bear*

      Hard agree. My immediate thought was if this was the path they wanted LW to take, it would have been mentioned before the notice period. This is not in LW’s best interest and they should listen to their gut and take the other job. Get out of this house of bees.

    11. RagingADHD*

      I think it was the flagon with the dragon that had the pellet with the poison, and the chalice from the palace had the brew that was true.

      Or was it the vessel with the pestle?

  3. FunkyMunky*

    I don’t understand #2 – what exactly is the point of hybrid if none of your team mates are present? it’s like going into a random office with strangers lol. would anyone even notice if you never come in? I have all the questions

    1. In the same boat*

      I’m in OP’s situation. I am the local widget support for the office, but my teammates are all in other offices supporting widgets there. Occasionally I work with someone at my office, but not regularly. Yet I still go in to obey the RTO policy, which is aimed at the rest of the office who does collaborate with their local colleagues.

      It is very weird like you say! And I often wonder what is the point of going in!

      For OP, some things that work for me are working in a visible place like communal tables that people walk by a lot–others have congregated there and sometimes we chat, however this does impact my workflow sometimes… Also someone started a regular “coffee break” in the afternoons, so people gather in the break room to chat and drink coffee once a week.

      Sometimes I come up with icebreaker topics or questions in advance. Like asking about a local sports team, asking someone for advice on nearby restaurants or the best way to commute, lowkey gossip about how things are run at the company (like “how often do the CEOs visit this office? What are they like?” level).

      Having a goal of talking to 1 or 2 people, or setting something else as a goal (wearing clothes that make me feel fancy, or getting a special drink at Starbucks) makes me feel less grumpy about having to go in for no reason.

      1. Lexi Vipond*

        I can imagine a situation a bit like yours where it does make sense to have one person from a certain team in each office each day – reception cover, local IT support, maybe HR, maybe building management.

        And the OP might end up a bit like that, because they say they’re still doing onboarding work. But in that case it would be nice if there was someone who could act as local onboarding buddy, showing off the building and introducing people and having a brief chat from time to time. (I know this isn’t something the OP can fix personally.)

        I don’t always chat much in the office, but I like being there – partly change of scene (literally, I suppose, because my office has a nice view of Georgian buildings), and partly just having other humans around me. So the people not seen chatting may not be miserable, just quiet!

      2. Richard Hershberger*

        I have been fascinated the past few years by the discussions around RTO. The drive more often seems to be driven by ideology than practicalities. Butts in the office is taken to be inherently good as a matter of dogma. What the employee does while in the office simply doesn’t enter into the discussion. Notably absent, I rarely if ever see discussions of how different jobs have different requirements. Instead we see blanket directives from the CEO for everyone, regardless. I thought for a while that we weren’t seeing discussions of different job requirements because the business press is largely useless, but that doesn’t explain those blanket directives. I often see the explanation that this is a de facto layoff. Maybe? It seems an obviously bad way to go about this, but it is a question of which stupid motivation is behind the stupid directive.

        In any case, the entirely predictable outcome will be that for those jobs that work just fine remotely, companies that insist on in-person will find themselves at a recruiting disadvantage. That may not matter in the short term if they are a downsizing phase, but the day will come when they need to hire.

        1. Malarkey01*

          I think it’s really complicated. We tried to do job based RTO and it creates a LOT of resentment where some employees were viewed as better because their job was complete remote, cliques and resentments formed with hybrid versus remote and we had some real disparity in how some managers classified hybrid versus remote.

          We then found that a move was happening to constrict hiring to HQ cities to encourage RTO where your whole team was together and that really cut into our talent pool. If the argument is I don’t have to RTO because my team isn’t here the response is often I guess we should hire the team geographically and make people relocate.

          We may be at a hiring disadvantage later but I’ve been our remote lead for 5 years and built up a big network of other companies and based on everything we’re hearing it’s going to look more like 2019 everywhere and remote will go back to be a unicorn. It’s just too hard assimilating new employees remotely over time.

          1. bamcheeks*

            I’ve seen a few reports saying that we’re not seeing similar RTO pushes here in the UK as in the US, and I wonder whether that’s because we’re talking about smaller distances and a much more dense population. And I don’t think fully remote has ever been a statistically significant working mode here outside of full lockdown, or jobs which always worked that way because it was a requirement of the role to be based in a specific region to support clients/events/other activities there.

            About a quarter of UK workers are now hybrid, which typically means working in the office between 5-80% of the time – from once a month in the office to four days a week, with the vast majority meaning 1-3 days. In practice, this means that organisations that traditionally recruited most people within an hour’s commuting time can now recruit people within 2 hours commuting time, but not much more. Maybe 3-4 hours if you really are “once a month in the office” rather than “two or three times a week”, but those jobs, like fully remote jobs, are still pretty usual.

            So from the employers’ side, I think moving from 100% in-office to 1-3 days a week in office has made a significant increase in talent pool, but beyond that, the gains diminish rapidly. There are relatively few places/sectors/roles in the UK where recruiting people who are more than 2-3 hours away would significantly increase your talent pool.

          2. Richard Hershberger*

            I have no sympathy for the complaint that different jobs have different requirements, and if you don’t like your job’s requirements it will make you sad that other people have jobs with different requirements. Expand this logic more broadly. Some employees might need to wear steel-toed boots. So do we make the people in accounting wear steel-toed boots too? This is obviously ridiculous, but follows the same logic. Making people follow rules that make no sense for their actual job is not the solution. What we have here is a transitional state where people are internalizing that remote vs. in office is a new part of an old phenomenon.

            Onboarding new hires is a much better argument, but I’m not entirely convinced even here. Partly I think it is generational. The kidz nowadays are far more comfortable with building entire social lives around remote interactions. The other part is that it should be unsurprising that onboarding procedures designed to be done in person don’t work well remotely. The question is how much of this is inherent in onboarding, versus merely requiring some thoughtful redesign?

            1. hi*

              This argument is always kind of silly to me. Of course it’s illogical for people to be mad that someone else’s job has different requirements – but people will still get mad. Management is then going to go the easiest route, which is push RTO to everyone. If you come along and tell someone to stop being annoyed by something, now they’re just going to be annoyed at you. A good manager can navigate those conversations, but most of the time it’s not up to those managers about whether or not their teams are being forced to go back to the office.

              1. MigraineMonth*

                I am curious about the culture in places that have a lot of resentment between roles. I worked at a toxic company that had vast inequality between roles. We had role A that worked 60+ hour seeks and were expected to travel 75% of the time. We had roles B and C that worked fewer hours and only traveled a couple of times a year, but role B was paid double what role C was.

                I worked with and chose to eat lunch with coworkers and friends in all three roles. So far as I’m aware, there wasn’t significant resentment over the vast pay differential, or the fact that people in role A got to travel internationally and eat out at fancy restaurants.

                I admit, part of our getting along was trauma-bonding because we were all just trying to survive working at the toxic company. But if even that level of inequality didn’t cause resentment, why does one team working remotely *because they’re able to* and another team having to come into the office *because their job requires it* predictably cause strife?

              2. JustaTech*

                See, the funny thing at my work is that my department is in office most of the time because of the nature of our work (can’t take the lab home) while another department is majority WFH.
                No one in my department resents the other folks doing WFH.
                What we resent is our director deciding that we get zero WFH even when we don’t have in-office work, apparently as his personal response to the other department only being on-site one day a week.

                It’s like some kind of weird collective punishment, but it isn’t even being directed at the people who are “wrong”. (Their director seems totally fine with their on-site schedule so why the heck is it our director’s business?)

          3. Richard Hershberger*

            To add: It seems likely that part of the impulse for RTO is a sunk cost fallacy, what with those expensive commercial real estate leases. Once the pre-Covid leases run their course, what then? Renewing those leases will be an unnecessary expense. The result will be to put the company at a double disadvantage: they will be limiting the recruitment pool, while paying handsomely for the privilege.

            1. GoodNPlenty*

              My last company built a huge home office campus about 20 years ago. Lovely building and grounds, tons of amenities (on site banking, dry cleaning, UPS, free meals, gym etc). Very nice but for the “associates” it was still a cube farm. No one wants to work there anymore and RTO has required a lot of overt pressure. The powers that be just don’t get it.

              1. MigraineMonth*

                Yeah, one of my former employers sunk an astonishing amount of money into their “office campus.” The company actually got reprimanded by the county health department for forcing their employees to keep coming to the campus at the beginning of the pandemic when the employees could have been working remotely. They also tried to keep sending their employees across the country to–get this–work in hospitals.

          4. Smithy*

            I think for workplaces where full or near full remote was largely forced on them – the onboarding piece remains a massive hurdle, particularly for junior employees.

            I’m also in one city with an office but where the bulk of my team is in another city. I don’t have mandatory in the office days, but do go into the office semi-regularly and have noticed a massive change in carrot approaches to getting folks into the office for onboarding purposes.

            My desk has been intentionally assigned close to the desks of a team with a lot of new, more junior hires. While our work does overlap some, on the days when I am in the office – I will get a number of questions from them and the types of questions are far more broad to our employer or industry. In one case, it was about how to prep for attending an industry happy hour event and another was about how to pack for an upcoming business trip.

            There are definitely teams that have always been all remote, and have figured out onboarding remotely. But for organizations and teams that haven’t, it’s just really clear this type of onboarding support or mentoring hasn’t been as easily replicated. I’m not saying it can’t be, but I think there is a calculus around some pieces not working and this feeling like the fix they prefer as opposed to investing in better remote onboarding.

          5. NotPrepandemicNorms*

            Remote was not a unicorn in 2019. But it may well be now. Companies that were fine with remote before the pandemic are getting told butts in seats now. As someone who needs remote for medical reasons it’s depressing.

        2. Coffee*

          Flashback to time when small factory got rid of flexible starting time to ensure my new partner was never alone with the machines. Rule was scrapped next day because boss found that I was giving my partner a lift to work every day. All that stress because they didn’t talk to us

        3. Rosacolleti*

          I’m frustrated that we never hear why companies are reverting to in-office workforces. We only ever hear one-sided opinions and everyone is left to make assumptions.
          My business will continue if the team are remote but won’t thrive and develop, and neither will the teams’ careers. There are so many reasons for this and they are real.
          The alternative solution is to become fully remote in which case profits are high because we would offshore but personally I have no interest in running that business – I want people around me who are growing and flourishing

          1. bamcheeks*

            That’s interesting, because you’re basically saying that you want your business to fulfil your needs. I think it absolutely makes sense and is completely legitimate when you’re a small business owner– you should get a sense of satisfaction and joy from your work, and if you find that in working with people face to face and supporting them to flourish, that sounds great.

            But somewhere in the transition to a larger organisation and the different power relationships that brings, I think it becomes very illegitimate: the goals of a larger organisation should not ever be “to satisfy the emotional needs of our senior leaders”. I don’t know quite where and how I’d draw that line though.

            2. Grimalkin*

              Yeah, I find it very telling that while the comment says “There are so many reasons for this and they are real”, the only specific reason we’re actually given for in-person work here is because the owner likes managing people in-person more…

          2. Learn ALL the things*

            But in a case like this letter, how exactly is this person growing and flourishing if they’re not interacting with anyone on their in-office days? I was in a similar position earlier this year where a restructure made me a team of one, and I was driving over an hour each way to get to an office where I had maybe 15 minutes of conversation with other people each day, if that. My managers would usually call to check in on me on our remote days (we’re a hybrid office where staff are in office the same three days every week, so everyone’s remote days are the same), so in-office days were just me fighting traffic to sit alone in a cubicle. I wasn’t building relationships, I wasn’t engaging in collaboration, I wasn’t learning from my peers or my supervisors, I was just isolated and alone in a building where my colleagues were doing those things with their teammates.

            Thankfully, when I brought it to my manager, they did another mini-restructure so I could be on a team again, but this was one of the loneliest years of my career and I would never want to do it again.

            1. Jackalope*

              I’ve had coworkers who were in similar situations; located as solos from their team in a different office, who had no reason to come in to the office at all. They were very frustrated because there was no point to them being in the office, but they had to come in anyway because of :: handwaves vaguely, butts in seats :: reasons.

          4. Kara*

            May I ask why your teams or their careers won’t thrive and develop? You make a bold assertion, but don’t delve into any points supporting your position other than that you -personally- prefer in-office.

        4. RTO driven by ideology*

          We read plenty of stories in the news about business owners who are surveyed at 95% of them FEEL that on-site workers are more productive, but there doesn’t seem to be any actual evidence.

          It seems to me that if there were two comparable businesses (similar products, services, size etc.), and one was fully remote (so no expenses for offices or parking) and the other was hybrid or 100% on-site … somebody would have been able to produce an analysis that proved which one was more profitable. There are probably dozens of such cases that could be studied. But all we get in the business press is listicles based on Survey-Monkey results about how managers FEEL and how their employees FEEL. Who cares about that?

          1. JustaTech*

            Overall, I agree with you that some good data analysis would really help everyone understand the situation a lot better. And I think that it’s likely that there are plenty of people who are afraid to do this analysis because it won’t support their position (either way).

            But how people feel does matter to their work output to some extent. If I feel that my employer is an amoral corporate monster, then my work output is likely going to reflect that I don’t feel the need to go above and beyond, where if I feel that my employer is neutral, or a positive force in the world, then my work output will reflect that as well. (I had a coworker say that flat out to me once “I would have died for [old management], but eff these new guys”.)

            But again, that’s secondary to actually seeing the data.

        5. MigraineMonth*

          I started at my employer during the pandemic. The first year they said people in my role would return to the office as soon as it was safe to do so. The second year they were discussing hybrid plans.

          In year three, someone in management had the epiphany that with COL in our city going up so fast and our starting salary so low, remote-only work was the only chance we had when it came to recruiting. No one’s talked about trying to force us to return to office since then.

      3. Me, wanting to retire*

        This is my situation too — at Exjob, at least I worked directly on projects with people in my location. It was a smallish office so you had ample opportunity to talk to people, and we had in-person activities, food, etc.*

        My new team is in a completely different state. The office is one whole (mostly empty) floor of a massive building. A couple of people have come up to me because they put my picture in a newsletter (despite my protests), but I’m only on one project with someone in this office and I never see them. We’re supposed to go in at least two days per week and we get a desk of our own if we go in four days. That might as well be the entire week. I despise hotdesking, but why would I want to go in that often when there’s almost no one there and I’m not even working with them?

        *I spoke briefly via text with a former coworker — according to them, the company is still monitoring downtime and has not replaced me. So going back is not an option (at least now), and it seems they’re not doing well. :( I need to start buying lottery tickets.

    2. The Minotaur*

      My partner is in this situation. His giant company ordered everyone back to office. In practice this means people go to an office just to talk to people across the country on zoom. Zero of his teammates are in his office. In this company’s case it’s because of real estate and to get more people to leave so there isn’t yet another round of layoffs.

      1. BellaStella*

        The best kind of incompetent management – the kind that wants all of us in office just to use zoom. Butts in seats mentality is so annoying and so disruptive and shows just how bad managers can be.

      2. Marcela*

        My husband has a similar situation. He is required to be in the office a certain number of days a week and spends it on Zoom meetings with people either at home or in different time zones. He tries to chat with other random people in the break room or wherever or to meet friends from other offices for coffee, so the commute isn’t a total waste.

      3. The Starsong Princess*

        That’s my life. I’m on the same Zoom calls in the office after driving an hour into the office. I can see wanting why they want us to come in – we have newer people who have never been to the office and never turn on their camera. Their engagement is low and they aren’t developing their career. But for me, I’m great at developing relationships on Zoom and everyone I work with is in another location. I like going in one day a week and I’m waiting until they force me to do more.

      4. A Simple Narwhal*

        Same, the only in-person meeting I ever have is the 10 minute team check in first thing in the morning, and mayyybe once a week is everyone actually in that meeting. There’s usually at least a couple people remote on any given day so we’re still having a video meeting.

        I don’t actually collaborate with anyone else on my team (we all have different, non-overlapping roles) so the rest of my day I take zoom calls from my desk to talk with people in different time zones. It’s infuriating the extra effort it takes to come into the office just to either be working on my own thing or talk on a zoom call, all of which can be done from my home.

        Upper management blathers on about collaboration and whatnot, and if they could point to some hard evidence like productivity or profits being down or at least one concrete example of something that is made harder/worse by remote work I would at least understand why they have the push to return to the office. And I’m sure there are some jobs that are made better in person, like the sales team. But I’m not on the sales team. My manager has even said that he knows our team works great remotely, but upper management doesn’t care, they want everyone back. And it really makes me think less of them.

      5. Cinnamon Stick*

        In this company’s case it’s because of real estate and to get more people to leave so there isn’t yet another round of layoffs.

        There are way too many stories like this.

      6. Turquoisecow*

        My husband’s company tried to do the same. We are in the NY metro and his teammates are in Texas, Boston, Florida, California, and Poland. He had one person also in NY but he moved to a different team. It would have been roughly a 2 hour commute via train to get to the office in Midtown Manhattan, and the other people working there had zero to do with what Husband was doing. He would have been sitting at a desk on zoom meetings the entire time, which he could do perfectly well from home. Plus they would lose productivity from him, because working from home he often would be in meeting until 6:30 or 7:00, but if he had to then commute home, he would not be working and he would not be taking meetings from the train (and he told them that). With so much of his team in other time zones, it was basically impossible to not work that late, but he wasn’t going to *begin* a two hour commute at 7:00pm! Thankfully they backed down and he’s still fully remote.

    3. Viki*

      In this situation, it depends on how management is counting days in office.

      I know that for us it’s the badges in/out of the office. I also know that as the only one on my team in my time zone, I come into the office to check an email and then go home (my office is a badge in/no badge out).

      When there is sweeping RTO, management generally does not have/want the push back to c-suits for this.

      1. ZoeyWiggler*

        Be careful just swiping in!
        My friend works in IT for a large well known company, and he says they track IP addresses locations and time! They know how long you’re in the office (via your computer being on the building’s network)

        1. Viki*

          Lucky for me-I have to be on VPN even when in the office vs at home. The joys of merging two huge companies.

          The IT guy who is in my home office was Company B and has no ability/or desire to do Company A tech issues like this

          1. Russ*

            Obviously I can’t comment on what the IT folks will or won’t do at your particular company and you will know far more about that.

            But as someone who works in computer security, I do want to warn folks here that using a VPN does not help and in fact makes it even easier for the company to tell whether you’re in the office or not. They know what IP address was used to connect to the VPN and it is completely trivial to determine whether that was from the office or from your home / a coffee shop / whatever.

            I think these sorts of hybrid requirements are often pure pettiness on the part of the company and morally I completely support people working around them, but just be aware that if the company wants to figure out how long you spend in the office and you do your work on a computer, they probably can and there probably isn’t going to be a way for you to prevent them from doing so.

    4. Ellie*

      I’ve had that situation where the network is not accessible from outside, or there’s a physical system that needs to be monitored and maintained. So essentially, you can’t do a large part of your role from home. But most of the time, its more like that’s the policy, and although it doesn’t make sense to enforce it everywhere, that’s what ends up happening.

      OP – is there anything like a social club that you can join? Any way for you to get involved in training or a community of practice, mentoring, or anything else that would allow you to meet a few people? If not… well, I cope with the disappointment of working in the office by giving myself little treats. On Monday (the worst day) I buy a curry for lunch. Another day, I call into the shops on the way home to pick up fresh fruit/veg/bread, etc. for the week. You can make one of the days into a gym or a yoga day, and have your clothing in the car ready to go. It makes me feel like there’s a point to leaving the house.

      1. Sloanicota*

        Yeah, when I go in-office, it’s to do physical things that require tools and equipment that are stored at the office, not to collaborate with my coworkers, and it sounds like that could be OP’s situation also. The other reason I know people go in is because of secure devices or networks in fields related to defense. They are also not going to collaborate with coworkers, in fact the person I know who does that is the only one on his team in the state. There ARE other reasons.

    5. Beth**

      I have a colleague in this situation, except that the majority of the time she goes into the satellite office, she’s THE ONLY PERSON THERE. The other people based in that office mainly have field-based roles, so most of their jobs are being out and about all day.

      My colleague goes in the mandatory 40% of the time because she’s based at the satellite location because it suits her for personal/family reasons and she doesn’t want to give our employer an excuse to require her to relocate back to where our main office is (which is also where all of our team is). But it really is completely pointless for her to go into an empty office and sit alone all day when she could WFH .

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        I have a colleague in this situation, except that the majority of the time she goes into the satellite office, she’s THE ONLY PERSON THERE.

        I’ve seen this so many times that it’s starting to feel like a meme.

    6. JSPA*

      I assume either someone in upper management is scoring political points (large or small “P”) for their own reasons, or it is something tax-related, or to make someone’s pie chart look better. Workers with clout successfully continuing to WFH, despite a company mandate? Then get other warm bodies into an office space, somewhere, and tout the increasing percentage of in-office workers.

    7. misspiggy*

      I’d assumed a lot of the drive for getting people in the office was just to use the office property.

    8. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      If it’s just that everyone else in the team needs to access something on site but you don’t. it’s daft & unfair to make you come in too.
      Rather than real estate, I’d suspect it indicates a lack of trust, sometimes from their past experience but often not justified, e.g. they found people – not their own employees – boasting on social media what they get away with on wfh.

      It could be to try to check – e.g. via badging in/out – that you are doing the expected number of hours work and not working a 2nd job in another location.

      Or that you are not sunning yourself on a beach while someone you subcontracted in the Philippines/India etc is doing your work.

      Or that you are not doing childcare in parallel with your work.

      Or to be sure that you are working in a seecure location with noone outside the organisation looking over your shoulder at your screen.

      With some jobs, the deliverables can be hard to measure more than every several months, so they want an early heads up if you are just working elsewhere at a 2nd job or goofing off online all day (even people from another team might report you if they are working hard and you are blatantly not)

      1. RiL*

        We have measurable deliverables, we need to deliver X cases per year, do Y consulations and so on…

        But we still have no trust from upper management, we have a 60% on premise rule which means that you have to be 60% of your total working time in the office. However, your “total working time” is calculated by removing, besides the normal things like holidays and sickdays, also days that you are representing the company at external functions (think conferences or exhibitions) or when you visit customers in other districts than your own or, my personal highlight, if you have to attend offsite training (mandatory btw). The reason given was that we need to “collaborate” with our colleagues onsite – but all of us have our own projects and have a lot of customer contact over phone (one hour meetings are the norm)… in an open office concept with at least 12 people per block and no walls to the hallway.

        It’s fun!

    9. MsSolo (UK)*

      It’s standard where I am too – in reality, even when everyone was 5 days a week in the office the odds that you’d share the same building with your immediate team mates was relatively low – a lot of the teams are small, and we have a large estate across the country – though you’d probably have some work ‘cousins’ around who report to the same great-grandboss (who’s invariably based in London, where none of the rest of the team is). With hybrid, you don’t even see the ‘cousins’ very often, and your desk mates vary each time you go in. It doesn’t stop you from getting to know people, and there are definite benefits to talking with people working on entirely different projects – either because they overlap more than anyone realises, or because it gives you insight into where you might want to take your career next – but you do spend most of your time sat at the desk with your headset on taking calls it would have been significantly less disruptive to take at home.

      (but on the plus side, at least you’re not trying to find a table in the breakroom because there are no meeting rooms left so you can take the same call with the one other person in the meeting who happens to be in the office, squinting at a tiny powerpoint on a laptop screen while everyone complains about background noise because you felt obliged to leave your nice desk with its nice big monitor and individual headsets)

      1. Person from the Resume*

        In the old days, it was likely you came in because the company did not have infrastructure, VPNs, policy for anyone to work from home. Or only enough support for a limited numbers of employees to work from home in special cases ie VPN was not robust.

        1. A Simple Narwhal*

          Yea my company’s infrastructure pre-covid was pretty crap, it was genuinely hard for anyone to work remotely more than infrequently. Now that we’ve had Teams and other tools in place for ~5 years you don’t need everyone in the same building in order to communicate.

      1. ZoeyWiggler*

        Be careful just swiping in!
        My friend works in IT for a large well known company, and he says they track IP addresses locations and time! They know how long you’re in the office (via your computer being on the building’s network)

    11. Seeking Second Childhood*

      I’ve been asking that for YEARS. Before the pandemic I was the only one on my team supporting a sister company in another time zone, and there was only the occasional project where i even talked with other teams in my state. But I had to drive to sit in a specific seat to do the job.

    12. Person from the Resume*

      Butts in seats.

      1) don’t believe people work hard enough at home

      2) some people do need to be in the office for collaboration with other people in the office and it’s “fair” or simply easier to make a blanket rule for the whole company

      3) the company owns or rents these offices and they’re underutilized (empty) if employees are allowed to WFH every day.

      1. Cinnamon Stick*

        For most of them it’s butts in seats. There is still a huge bias of “people are only working where I can see them” even though so many people did it for a few years.

        While it may very well be true for some people, it’s not a guarantee for everyone. People are just as capable of not working when they’re in the office as they are when at home.

        1. JustaTech*

          Two observations:
          First: During early COVID my in-laws still owned their small distribution business. They wanted their sales people back in the office (to make phone calls because customers were not accepting visits) because they could not believe that they were actually working. They also had zero systems for tracking their sales people at all.
          Said in-laws also constantly asked about how bored we were, no matter how many times we explained that there were days when my husband was in meetings 8-6 with no lunch break. But no, we must be bored because *they* were bored. (And also mostly retired.)

          Second: long before COVID and WFH there was a guy at my work who regularly spent the whole day watching anime off Crunchy Roll rather than doing any of his work. Like, openly not working. I’ve also worked with people who were in the lab 7 days a week and used up tons of materials and accomplished nothing.

      2. Filosofickle*

        I’m also partial to the idea (that I see echoed elsewhere in this thread) that it’s more fulfilling and interesting for managers to manage in person — they simply like working that way better — so that creates a top-down drive to bring people in. It sounds simple but it’s the kind of human motivation that can be really sticky and underpin the more “rational” arguments.

    13. Another Kristin*

      As someone who came into the office today and most likely will not see another living soul except in passing – I have my own office and am in a small, underused building – I also wonder this quite a lot. The cynical answer is “real estate”, companies paid a lot for their corporate leases and they need butts in seats to justify the expense. There is definitely value-add in getting to know your colleagues face-to-face, but that can be done effectively with, idk, bi-weekly in person team meetings or monthly on-sites. But in big orgs, the “come in 2-3 days a week or else regardless of your team’s location or your responsibilities” thing seems to be the norm.

    14. LaminarFlow*

      I work in big tech. We scattered about the country during the pandemic, under the guise of WFH/let’s forge a new way to work. It has been great. My org shifted to 100% remote about 6 months before the pandemic hit, so it was biz as usual for me.

      However, my husband (also a big tech employee) was formerly in-office, and has had to RTO/RTH for 3/5 days for the last 6 months. He will return to 5 days in office starting in January.

      You are 1000000% correct about the “make it make sense” portion. My husband goes in 3 times per week to have calls that he could have at home. All of the really expensive office buildings are siting empty – er, I mean they need to collaborate more.

    15. JMC*

      I was going to say the exact same thing. It’s stupid and pointless. There is zero reason to not do it from home every day. RTO mandates are just a bid for control.

      1. I Have RBF*

        Plus they need to justify their expensive real estate, appease local government officials who want worker money for their small businesses, and make sure that their CRE portfolios don’t tank. None of this benefits the workers themselves.

        I have run the numbers on office spend per employee based on type of environment. 90% of the reason that companies went to open plan noise pits is cost of real estate per square foot. Yet the actual cheapest infra spending is all remote workers with only a token office. But these calcified execs “feel” it is better to be in office. It is actually financially stupid.

        The companies that are doing it to avoid layoffs are pretty dumb too. If you impose an RTO mandate, the best employees with just find another job, and you’ll be left with only those who can’t find a remote role. It’s better to do actual layoffs and eliminate the positions that are underperforming or are no longer needed. But a lot of upper management is of the opinion that bodies are interchangeable.

    16. possibly*

      My company has a mandated 3 days/week RTO. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s supposed to be because we work better in person, but people are mostly in zoom meetings. There’s a couple of managers who require in-person meetings. As far as I can see, it’s 100% personal preference. But half the people in my cube section are on zoom meetings all day. This doesn’t increase my productivity. And we rarely speak to each other.

      1. Salty Caramel*

        Same here. I am really tired of the “better together” spin that keeps getting put on it, especially when most people are on Zoom anyway.

        1. I Have RBF*

          Seriously.

          I found out the other day that people at my company who live near an office have to RTO. Yet my entire team is pretty much remote, except to go into a data center. It does explain why my manager, mostly remote, recently moved across the country, far from any office…. Mind you, we do have labs that are always in-person, because you can’t do biochemistry from home.

          But for people who support people all over the country world, it doesn’t make sense to have them come in just to spend their day on Zoom. You can do that from home, FFS, and with a good VPN, it’s just like being connected to a data center from the office.

    17. metadata minion*

      There may be things they need to do that require in-house materials/equipment/etc. I’m coming from a position that really just can’t be done from home (I spent COVID lockdown doing training and record cleanup, which was useful, but not urgent and it was understood that our normal jobs were straight-up not getting done in a way that couldn’t be sustained indefinitely), but even in more standard office work there might be preparation of physical documents, confidential materials that can’t be accessed off-site, or other things that require individual people to be in the office regardless of whether their team is.

    18. I Have RBF*

      … what exactly is the point of hybrid if none of your team mates are present?

      IMO, there isn’t one. It’s being imposed by upper management to a) flex control over their workers (dance, puppets. dance), b) kowtow to local governments at workers’ expense, c) stabilize their commercial real estate investments, or d) carry out a stealth layoff. None of these are actually about “collaboration” or “culture”, and none of them give a shit about the actual employees.

      If you want a team to work face-to-face, they all have to live in the same area and come in on the same days. Otherwise, the team just spends time and money going in to an expensive office (even open plan costs $$) and spending all of their meeting time on Zoom anyway.

      Yes, there are jobs that you have to be in-person for. Jobs where you are not colocated with your team or dealing with the public or physical stuff aren’t among them.

  4. LizWings*

    I suspect that if we were to get an update in a year (yes please!) from #1, they would say that they settled in nicely at their new job, and while it didn’t pay as much as they were counter-offfered to stay at Old Job, they are nonetheless happy to have less stress and have avoided the absolute mess at old job which promptly fired within 6 months and threw blame at the person they hired in the Sr. management position!

    1. OP1*

      I can give an update since I submitted my question on Thursday :) On Friday, I reached out to a senior manager on a related team to get his opinion- he confirmed my gut feeling and gave me some excellent advice about how to offer honest feedback. I also asked for a call directly with my VP, which I have this afternoon, to understand how much she is even aware of this. Also talked to my dad- he has 30+ years of corporate management under his belt- and he also agreed with my gut assessment. Since I have nothing to lose, I can at least exit while trying to shine a light on the team’s dysfunction in hopes that things improve for my colleagues who stay. It’s very reassuring to read Alison’s thoughts as well as the comments here on top of everything- not one person has been like “wait, but that sounds like a good idea!”

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Yes, so glad you aren’t getting sucked into the clusterfudge! Remember that you don’t owe the company you’re leaving any more “feedback” or “shining a light” than you’ve already done. You don’t work there any more, so you should prioritize protecting your own reputation/references.

          Interesting detail that the person who offered you the position may not have had the VP’s permission; did he even have the authority to give you the promotion?

    3. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      I so hope the update isn’t bad news – that they succumbed to fear of changing employer, accepted the counteroffer and were soon fired for not coping as a senior manager.

      OP; please leave this disfunctional org in your rear view mirror.

    4. N C Kiddle*

      Settled in well at NewJob and never gave another thought to OldJob after leaving for the final time is another strong possibility. Not so karmically satisfying to read about, but LW would probably be better off not devoting any mental real estate to it.

  5. Daria grace*

    #1 this whole situation is full of bees. It sounds like a role that as talented as you no doubt are does not set you up for success, even more so now that you’ve got that you’d intended to leave potentially colouring your relationships at work. If they do not usually make promotions like this and have people be successful in them, you should be incredibly skeptical about why they are doing so now

  6. Bilateralrope*

    LW1: I don’t think this promotion offer is because your employer wants to keep you long term. It’s because they want to transition you out of whatever work you are currently doing on a schedule that is convenient for them. Then they will fire you for not being able to handle the role they have promoted you into.

    If they are competent, it might even cost them less than whatever disruption you’re causing with your current notice period.

    Stick to your current notice period.

  8. Adam*

    LW4, I think it’s probably company policy to confirm any reduction in insurance coverage, and that’s a very reasonable policy to have. Dropping coverage by accident isn’t super likely, but the effects could be enormous if it does happen, so better safe than sorry.

    1. Salsa Verde*

      This is what I came here to say – this is totally normal and best practice – when people make changes to something they only do once per year and only have two weeks to complete, it’s very normal for HR to send out confirmations. Not meant to be passive-aggressive at all, just CYA for HR.

    2. Chauncy Gardener*

      Came here to say this. And also to agree with Alison about the disability insurance, unless the plan isn’t any good.

      1. Strive to Excel*

        I’m curious how much money the life insurance is costing! Last time I got that it was literally pennies for a 50K payout (which was just the baseline payout they gave, and for a higher policy you paid more).

        That said, I’m not in a statistically likely range to be at high risk, so maybe it gets more expensive over time.

    3. Orora*

      Yeah, I’m an HR pro in a small organization. If someone drops coverage, I usually check to make sure they meant to do so, especially if it’s something they only can get into at open enrollment. With our life insurance, employees can enroll without a physical when they first are hired but even during open enrollment, if they didn’t enroll upon hire, they will at least need to answer health questions. That’s why I confirm that they did, indeed, mean to drop the coverage and understand what they’d need to do to reinstate it later.

    4. Always Tired*

      An HR who just wrapped open enrollment here. I had someone I reminded THREE TIMES call me in a panic asking me to reopen the enrollment window. The good news is he thought it closed at noon but it was closing at midnight, so I pretended to make an exception and told him to get in there by 5, which he did. I also had one guy accidentally switch insurance plans because he didn’t remember the name of the plan he had been on. Which was listed at the top of the screen where it said, “Your current plan is INSURANCE PLAN NAME PLATINUM HMO B.”

      We confirm because we have absolutely laughed at this joke every year prior. It’s not condescension or paternalism. It’s experience.

      1. len*

        Why not just… give the correct information, instead of lying as a weird power play? I guess I disagree that this isn’t condescension, but that’s probably coloured by my own past experiences with HR personnel. I don’t know why it would be surprising or laughable that people coming to you for HR expertise know less about HR matters than you.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Why would you lie about the open enrollment window and pretend you had the power to override it? That’s a weird thing to do. If you’re trying to get him to take the deadline seriously, saying that it’s flexible is the worst way to do so. It also makes it sound like favoritism to make an exception for this employee and not for the next one who needs the deadline extended.

        I work in UI design. Yes, a certain percentage of employees are going to forget or mis-enter the name of their insurance plan, even if it says the name of the plan at the top of the screen. That’s not because they’re dumb, it’s because the interface is bad. An employee shouldn’t have to remember the name or enter it to just stay on their current plan. Also, it isn’t good practice to assume that people whose jobs have nothing to do with health insurance should be familiar enough with insurance to differentiate between HMO and PPO plans or to remember whether the B is important.

        If people get it wrong every year, maybe that’s because it’s a confusing process that you should be working to make better rather than mocking employees who don’t know as much in this area.

    5. Uh Oh HR*

      People also make weird choices! I had someone who tried to waive participation in fully employer-funded life insurance because it was “too morbid.”

      Until the day he left, he never designated a beneficiary and refused to discuss it with us.

  9. Square Root of Minus One*

    #3 Alison is right that one can’t know without the exact wording, but trusting your perception it seems to boil down to:
    – either the materials mention somewhere that it applies to “external discussion” but it wasn’t insisted on during training. It can indicate either a not-great trainer or a lack of ethics, I’d say it’s 50/50 (not-great trainers are so widespread).
    – or they don’t. Same two possibilities, but since unlike this particular delivery they must be written and reviewed by a whole team, the probabilities now skew heavily toward the latter.
    Either way, useful data point, hardly actionable on its own (beyond training feedback) but can be part of a bigger picture.

    1. OP #3*

      So, there was no trainer for this. This was a training module through the company’s online training program that appeared to be professionally produced and is the exact same every time — just prerecorded voiceover and slides and/or animations with written information, short videos to illustrate scenarios, etc. and I believe I backtracked to make sure I hadn’t missed some clarification because I was baffled by this.

      I hesitate to get more specific for a variety of reasons, but if I told y’all which company this was, I have the feeling a large number of people would understand why I jumped to the possibility of purposeful vague wording on the part of the org. This same training session spent an inordinate amount of time urging employees to REALLY THINK about whether to commit something to writing in an email or IM or if a face-to-face conversation would be better instead, and while that seems like decent advice on the surface, I’ve never seen a company spend so much time emphasizing not leaving a paper trail.

      I am SO glad to be out regardless. There was a lot wrong with that place.

      1. Nah*

        Hooooo boy, training their employees to not leave a paper trail (but ~totally~ not actually saying that directly for legal reasons tee hee)? Sounds full of bees and I’m glad you got out!

      2. Tangurena*

        Blocking people from discussing wages is a federal crime. In specific, it is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRB, who prosecutes this, has always ruled that discussing wages is a labor organizing activity and that obstructing labor organizing activity is technically a federal crime (but almost never prosecuted).

  10. RCB*

    #4 I’ve done employee benefits for over a decade and ALWAYS double check with someone when they don’t sign up for something, especially when it’s something they previously signed up for. It’s just common sense, people make mistakes and only about 10% of employees (I’m not exaggerating) understand benefits fully so there is a huge amount of confusion with most employees, so confirming before deadlines saves everyone tons of times versus finding a mistake later.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, I think it’s very likely that HR is concerned the LW made a mistake. It’s often very easy to. And people don’t always read paperwork carefully.

    2. Liz*

      Yes! I somehow missed signing up for vision insurance one year (I wear glasses!!) and man was I pissed no one in HR double-checked I’d meant to opt out.

    3. SallyB*

      Yeah, HR rep here and in total agreement – If I see someone just dropping coverage, I almost always check. We’re a small company, so it’s easy to review everything and just send someone a chat to confirm. And in addition to people not understanding benefits in general, our employee base skews young, so folks are often navigating benefits for the first time. Since you really can’t elect the coverage later on (outside of specific circumstances), I definitely want to make sure you intend to drop it. It’s definitely not meant as a passive aggressive message that you should keep the coverage – I truly don’t care what you do, as long as you do what you actually *want/intend* to do.

      1. Kyrielle*

        I love hearing this! I had no one in HR at my huge company check in with me at all when I opted entirely out of our health insurance. (Fortunately, I did mean to: it was terrible, and my husband’s insurance was much better and we used that for the whole family.)

    4. StressedButOkay*

      I once accidentally waived eye care insurance and I got an email checking in (the official email was pretty much what LW got but the Teams ping was much funnier. “Aren’t you blind without your glasses?”). Mistakes can and do happen – and it’s better to confirm that they aren’t mistakes now then six months down the road.

    5. Nightengale*

      I forgot to sign up for vision

      First I didn’t sign up on purpose
      The next year, I meant to include vision but clicked the button for “same benefits as last year”
      The third year I did manage to sign up for it

      And there’s no excuse about not understanding benefits or health care or any of that – I’m a doctor

      1. Hroethvitnir*

        Hahaha, nooo. Realistically, that’s more about paying attention to forms than the medical side, but still.

  11. Michigander*

    LW4: She does not care personally what you’re signed up for. I can pretty much guarantee that over the years she’s fielded numerous panicked emails and calls from people who messed up their insurance enrollment so now she double checks anything that seems out of the ordinary to try to reduce the number of those complaints later on.

    1. Anya Last Nerve*

      I also imagine she has received panicked calls when someone is going out on disability and now claims they didn’t understand and meant to sign up for the insurance. Having the denial of coverage in writing is necessary for that.

    2. SarahKay*

      Yup, that was my thought. It’s the sort of thing I would absolutely double-check if I were in HR’s place, because the cost to the employee (and stress to both of us) of trying to sort out an error in coverage after the fact must be enormous.

    3. londonedit*

      I agree, and I think it’s a good thing that she checked! OK, in LW4’s case the change was correct, but I bet there have been instances where people haven’t realised they’re not signing up to the same thing as last year, or haven’t noticed that they didn’t tick that box, or maybe didn’t even fully realise what those policies were for. She could have just put it all through the system at face value, but she didn’t, she took the time to check that the LW was fully aware of the options they’d chosen. Especially as they differed from last year. I don’t think it was at all intended to be passive-aggressive – you can view it as arse-covering on the part of the company or you can view it as the HR bod wanting to be sure no one was missing out on something they needed, but either way there was no harm in her double-checking. Better that than the LW realises down the road that they need a disability policy and they don’t have one.

    4. MamaMingo*

      You are 100% right. I’ve worked in benefits administration for 12 years and I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had people who have ‘accidentally’ waived coverage and then contacts us 3, 6, 12+ months later in a panic because they need the coverage. She just wants to confirm you understand that you waived coverage.

    5. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      Double checking now, before open enrollment ends. So if its a mistake, it can be corrected in time.

      OP4, please try to see this as helpful, not passive aggressive. You may hate the plan but HR doesn’t know that.

  12. Texan in exile on her phone*

    LW4 and everyone else: Please take the life insurance and the disability insurance. Even if you have no dependents, it costs money to bury you. I see so many Go Fund Mes for funeral expenses.

    And if you become disabled, any income is better than no income.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      If you have no dependants and plenty in a quick access bank account then life insurance is an unnecessary expense.
      BUT – every adult – make a will detailing your assets, beneficiaries and your wishes for disposal of your bod.

      1. Harper the Other One*

        Oh my goodness, yes – and make sure it’s 100% legal in your area. We’re currently dealing with my uncle’s estate; he wrote his will by hand which is legal in his area, but made some mistakes which then invalidated it. It’s become so much more complicated for my mom, his next of kin. Fortunately there’s no urgent need for the funds but it’s been an additional stressor while she’s grieving.

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        And a power of attorney (both financial and medical too.) And make sure that all of these documents get updated if family situations change. My mother-in-law prepared her will assuming that one of her children would be administering a trust, but that person died before she did and it made things more complicated than they should have been.

      3. auntie tank*

        What I’m having trouble with is the “expense” part. Every employer I’ve ever worked for, they’ve offered life insurance as a benefit paid out of their own pocket. No cost to me. It’s also never been a huge benefit, but it does represent a nice chunk of change in the pocket of my beneficiary, on top of the arrangements I’ve made for myself at my own expense.

        1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

          YMMV. In 40 years work, I only had one employer that gave free life insurance. I’ve always worked in Europe, so I had benefits up the wazoo, but not usually that one.

          In Germany, I had disability insurance @80% salary for up to 2 years that was automatically built into the state healthcare with premiums paid 50:50 employer:employee. No optout possible there.

        2. Stanley steamers*

          Up until my current job, every employer offered basic term life insurance as a no-extra-cost benefit. It was a policy for 1.5 times my annual salary and if I wanted a higher payout, I could opt into additional coverage, at an extra cost. My current t job also provides basic term life insurance at no cost but caps it at $50,000 (and my gross salary is below that). I’m single with no kids so at this point when I die, that $50k would cover the funeral and outstanding debts. Yaaaay.

    2. Harper the Other One*

      I second this – maybe not the life insurance if there’s basic coverage that would handle funeral expenses in your health plan (mine covers one year’s salary and expanded coverage is only for top-ups) but the disability for sure. My husband had a health crisis when the kids were young enough that I wasn’t working; it put him out of work for seven months and I genuinely do not know what we would have done if it hadn’t been for the disability coverage. And I know multiple single folks who had something similar happen – car accident and unexpected cancer diagnosis. Dealing with the health impacts while also worrying about how you’ll have enough money to survive is awful.

      1. PhyllisB*

        Can confirm on the disability. I have a niece who was in a car wreck at the age of twenty who is now a quadriplegic.

    3. FashionablyEvil*

      Definitely take the disability insurance. I have seen too many folks temporarily or permanently disabled through simple bad luck and the money is crucial.

    4. pally*

      Yes to this!!

      Unfortunately, to cut costs, my company eliminated both of these.
      I don’t earn enough to pay for my own coverage.
      SOL.

    5. Tuckerman*

      Yes. I’m so glad I signed up for supplemental life insurance through work before I was diagnosed with a major medical condition at age 36. I’ll never be able to get life insurance again.
      And never get any genetic testing before purchasing life insurance. Health insurance companies can’t deny you, but life insurance companies can. In fact, my dr. advised me not to get my daughter tested for genetic mutations for this reason.

    6. ArtsNerd*

      Nthing the suggestion to at least strongly consider the disability coverage or put the money toward an individual policy. Especially in the US.

      I was young and healthy and didn’t need it… right up until I wasn’t healthy and hanging on by a thread. At this point I would never qualify for an individual plan due to my pre-existing conditions, but I’m eligible for long-term disability coverage through my employer.

      SSDI income is designed to keep beneficiaries in poverty, and even that weak safety net is at risk in the current political climate. A bad employer policy is likely to be better than not having it at all. Even the healthiest person is just one life-changing accident away from total disability.

      1. ArtsNerd*

        Fortunately, in my case, my employer has provided a level of flexibility and grace that most wouldn’t. It’s taken about 18 months, tons of missed work (and more dropped balls than I’d like to admit) for me figure out a treatment plan that lets me perform at an adequate level to stay in my role. For now, at least.

        Even with the successful treatment, I’m still prettying freaking disabled. I’m do not cook, I do not clean, I do not do my own laundry. I mostly just work, and then recover from work.

      2. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

        One very small caveat is that, in my personal (so anecdotal) experience, being covered by employer disability insurance basically precluded me from acquiring an individual policy. The one insurer I talked to said they would only write a policy for 10% of my income, because the underwriters wouldn’t approve a policy that brought my insured income over or even near 100%. And it doesn’t really matter how my your employer DI was – ownocc for 2 years and anyocc to age 55 would still count as disability insurance.

        But if your choices are “sign up for the workplace disability insurance or plan to look into an individual policy when I get around to it” – then just accept the workplace policy! In fact, that’s what I’ll be doing this year, when my open enrollment opens next week. Maybe I’ll get around to looking into an individual policy in time for next year’s open enrollment…

    7. Strive to Excel*

      Please please please do your life insurance and estate planning, and make sure you have your living will/medical POA if needed updated. I’ve got family in the medical field. The amount of times they’ve come home with stories about people who haven’t updated their POA; or have no POA; or having a grieving family trying to figure out what someone wanted because it never came up is a really sadly high amount. Like, almost daily basis.

      A pre-planned meeting with an estate attorney is not incredibly expensive and they will be able to give you all the info you need. Relative to the amount of stress it will cost you it’s a screaming good deal.

  13. Still*

    OP#1, it’s not undervaluing yourself to think that it’s not a good idea to jump from 0 direct reports to 20. That would be an enormous and risky jump even at a great company with tons of support. But at a company that’s as disfunctional as you’re describing? All of the problems that have driven you to job-hunt are going to affect you exponentially more when you’re managing 20 people. You do not want this job.

    1. Not Australian*

      Yeah, no serious employer that cared about staff welfare/morale would ever think of making such a stupid offer in the first place. They’re just hoping OP will be flattered enough to accept and give them a ready-made scapegoat for future disasters … which there certainly *will* be. OP, let them know you see through their little game: *out* is the best place for you right now.

      1. A Person*

        100% – I had been managing small teams for 6-7 years and had my org ramp up from 6 to ~20 over the course of 2 years and it was still a pretty big shift and required a lot of learning. 0 to 20 is not something a reasonable company would do.

    2. niknik*

      I’ll go out on a limb and say that managing 20 people under someone as LW describes them and in a place as toxic is not a place you want to be in any case, no matter how much years of experience. Without them, it’ll be a meatgrinder.

    3. Allonge*

      Yes! 20 direct reports is a LOT, even for an experienced manager (I imagine the field has some influence, but over here, anything above 10 is in the ‘create some teams with leads below you’ category).

      And even if it’s a reasonable number, becoming a manager is a big step. It should not be done in a situation you are describing – by all means go for it, but go for it intentionally and in a setup that is stable enough to support you.

  14. Cheap ass rolling with it*

    OP #1 – I am a very strong individual contributor. (I’m the “first” to do a few things in my field.) But I was terrible managing and my career suffered for it. I’m now back at being an individual contributor and much happier for it.

    They’re want to offload a 15-20 people-team that’s in disarray, and providing you no management training. Meanwhile, you don’t sound interested in management and you have a good job offer.

    Take the job offer. If you ever want to try managing, tell your new boss and then get into it gradually with 1-2 reports, see how you like it or if you want to step back. Your current VP wants to throw you in the deep end of the pool with sharks, without teaching you how to swim.

      1. pally*

        Yes! In fact, insist on manager training if ever promoted to a management role.
        Not talking “on the job” training either.

    2. Honor Harrington*

      Lw1 – run! Run far away! Analysts do not have a clear role in agile. Your team might get dissolved and individuals assigned to product teams, but you might well be laid off too. Moving to agile successfully requires a major shift in organizational culture and structure. At best you would be in a difficult position where ineffective leadership will almost certainly doom the transition to failure. At worse you will be an easy scapegoat.

      Do a lot of googling. You will find many articles talking about the failures of agile.

    3. Blue Pen*

      Yes, I agree. I got extremely lucky the one time I was in a management position with an amazing direct report who I got along with, trusted, and did everything I could to lift that person to their full capabilities. But I never wanted to be a manager; I still don’t. So now I’m back in an individual contributor role, and I’m so much happier for it.

    4. BethDH*

      I think it’s worth OP considering the offer at the original place — NOT that they should consider accepting it, but I bet they really are undervaluing their potential contributions because that places like they describe tend to make it hard to do career-trajectory exploration.
      What about that role was appealing enough to consider when OP is clearly aware that it’s a toxic place? Maybe OP would like to move into management in a more supported way, but maybe it was a role with more input in strategy, or even just a role that gets appreciation and positive feedback.

  15. 653-CXK*

    OP #1: You gave notice for a reason, and now management wants to offer you something “amazing” that down the road may not be amazing at all – in fact, it sounds like a trap they’re setting to get you out of there.

    Decline this so-called offer and move out of this hive full of bees.

    1. pally*

      Agree.
      In fact, if current employer is so sincere with this offer, why didn’t it materialize well before the day you submitted your resignation?

  16. DrSalty*

    #2 eating lunch in the break room is a good idea. At worst, you’ll still be alone, but at best, someone will see you there and join you. So not much to lose.

      1. Lady Lessa*

        One thing that has started people talking to me is that I add hot sauce to Aldi’s brand of blueberry yogurt. (I find it improves the flavor.)

      2. JustaTech*

        One of the things I liked about our old lunch room was that we got several newspapers, so there was always “hey, are you done with the comics/local/sports/cooking?” and you’d automatically have a topic to talk about.

  17. a commenter*

    #1 – This is likely a trap. Allison is spot on here. This is either someone trying to designate a fall guy ™, someone self servedly trying to fill a vacancy without really wanting to spend time finding someone who would actually do well in the role, or someone trying to glaze you up to prevent you from leaving, while changing none of the things that have made you want to leave.

    Possibly all three.

    I’m not a “never accept counteroffers” kind of person. But this one stinks to high heaven.

  18. Slimboy Fat*

    LW4 has a lot of animosity for a basic question from HR. If the open enrollment website or general benefits website is anything like my company’s, it’s not exactly the easiest to navigate (and we just went through open enrollment too–and I joined the company less than a year ago so this is the second time in maybe 8 months I’m making benefits selections on the same user-unfriendly website). So I’m guessing that the HR person–having been burned by experience–just really wants to make sure that the LW didn’t accidentally waive benefits they meant to select. Especially something like life insurance or disability insurance. That is the type of thing you don’t want to find out you don’t have when you need it. And I bet the HR rep has had people screaming at her before about that (and other benefits options) so she’s trying to head this off at the pass.

    I probably checked my benefits selections three times on the website before hitting “submit” and then still followed up with HR afterwards because:
    1–I’m kind of neurotic like that
    2–our benefits website is that buggy
    3–the plan I’d originally picked earlier this year was disappearing as of November 1 (of course) so I had to pick a new option
    4–our HR staff is very much a skeleton crew and if there’s anytime for something to get messed up, even accidentally, it would be now (my first 2 paychecks were messed up and even though they were eventually straightened out, HR’s lack of staff didn’t help the situation).

    Your HR rep just doesn’t want a bunch of horrible phone calls or emails from you or your next-of-kin 6 months down the road if, universe forbid, it turns out you had meant to opt into that disability insurance and now realized you didn’t have it (or even worse for the life insurance option).

  19. Rosacolleti*

    #2 wow, you’ve made WFH make sense and desirable for the first time ever. Is there no one there to help you onboard and meet the local team?

    2. ZoeyWiggler*

      I am in a similar situation as the OP; I started this job 2 years ago as remote and only deal with people NOT in my local location so now that I go in 2 days a week, I sit on Zoom calls by myself and the office is usually empty.
      I think the real issue was the on-boarding; no one locally walked me around to introduce me to anyone so it just feels like I’m working at a coffee shop where no one talks to each other.
      Our office is also a bit strange; even the people who are there don’t talk to each other, so maybe it’s not a new-person thing…

      1. Coffee*

        Years ago I said good morning to everyone personally because as first thing every morning I was taking a look around. I wanted to see things like if they had already taken morning coffee and how urgent need we had for more coffee. After I had been there for several months someone came to tell me that people started to talk to each others more

  20. Delta Delta*

    #4 – It sounds like the HR manager was doing her job by ensuring you actually wanted to change your benefits election. Your reaction to her doing her job seems misplaced. Perhaps you’ve never worked somewhere that HR actually did anything helpful?

    1. Guacamole Bob*

      Yeah, I thought OP’s reaction was very disproportionate to the issue here. I can easily imagine an email that comes across as “are you really sure”, but it’s pretty clearly a good thing for HR to double check when someone indicates reduced insurance coverage. It’s not personal at all, and it’s kind of odd that OP took it that way.

      I wonder if it’s a smallish company so OP knows and dislikes this particular HR person, or if the HR person used really awkward wording. In a larger company OP probably wouldn’t know the benefits person or the notice would come from a system email address rather than from an individual.

      1. Antilles*

        Given that OP is opting out for the first time, an “are you really sure” email makes perfect sense in context, just to make sure that you did change your mind this year rather than accidentally clicking the wrong box.

      2. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

        Yeah I wondered if anyone else had picked up on what seems to me quite an adversarial approach. HR was characterised as “passive-aggressive” for no reason that I could tell (I could have agreed with nosy, covering their ass, etc) and that they know “damn well” that OP intended to take the options they did.

        HR is probably just making sure things are correct for both the company and OP’s sake. Remember the letter a few years ago which was re-run recently, where that OP in attempting to help the company cut costs had opted out of their own benefits like this? If that HR had checked instead of just robotically processing it, the whole excessive efforts to cut costs might have been brought to light.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          I was also surprised by that assumption. OP, I’d dig in to what’s going on that lead to you interpreting such a neutral or helpful action as an attack. Is your relationship with this person or HR in general strained? Did you come from a toxic culture where passive-aggressive actions were tolerated, or is it your current company’s culture that is toxic? Are you burned out or under a lot of stress?

          In a functional work environment, no communication–from HR, another department, your boss, or your reports–should be passive-aggressive. Assuming they are can destroy working relationships very quickly.

  21. Blarg*

    367 days ago I would have said meh to disability insurance. Single, 43, no kids, good health.

    366 days ago I was told I probably had cancer.

    It has been a wild year, but I am so thankful I had my employer’s disability insurance in tandem with my city’s (DC). This allowed me to take off the time that I needed and have one less thing to worry about.

    1. Learn ALL the things*

      Yeah, ten years ago I signed up for a high deductible health plan because it was the cheapest one my workplace offered and I was young and healthy. A week later I was diagnosed with cancer. I get the good insurance and short term disability now.

      1. Paint N Drip*

        I fully understand feeling like you can’t afford the good insurance, but you don’t realize what a good deal it is until you get into a situation where you are seeing SERIOUS numbers on those medical invoices with no end in sight

    3. Goldfeesh*

      I had a coworker in his early 20s who was glad he got the disability insurance from the big box store we worked at because he was hit and very badly injured by a drunk driver while riding his bike to class.

  22. Madame Arcati*

    We need the Admiral Akbar meme for #1. By the time you took up the senior management role, the Death Star would be fully operational…

  23. Peanut Hamper*

    #1:

    My spidey senses are telling me that they are setting you up for a major failure here.

    I would not be surprised if your predecessor had gotten a similar offer. If this company is even half as dysfunctional as you describe, please run! Run far, and run fast!

  24. Friday Hopeful*

    HR confirming that you want to drop the insurance s just what it sounds like. Since you took it last year and this year waived it, she is doing you a favor by confirming so there are no surprises later. She’s actually doing her job, she is definitely not being passive agressive.

  26. AnonAnon*

    LW#1: If they truly wanted you for this role, they would have properly groomed you for it. It would have been part of your goals/objectives and you would have been given small opportunities to achieve milestones to be prepared for this role.
    It doesn’t make sense that in your last couple of weeks they came up with this grand plan to promote you. You are being set up to be someone’s scapegoat.
    Run for the hills!!!

  27. Your Neighborhood Benefits Rep*

    #4
    HR benefits rep here…I feel like half my job is following up with employees to make sure the elections they made were truly what they wanted to do. I’ve had some stuff I wouldn’t think would bite us later, bite us hard. Don’t take it personally. If possible, think of it as HR trying to look out for you.

  28. Person from the Resume*

    LW#2, start a conversation with people.

    Yeah there will probably be short responses from some grumpy, unfriendly, stressed, busy people. But there will probably some friendly folks willing to help you get settled in or possibly other fairly new employees who are wishing for the same thing you’re looking for or willing to help.

    And also, do reach out to your supervisor and people you work with on your team via messages and phone calls. Make chit chat and ask for help. Presumably they all want you to do a good job and succeed because it helps them with their jobs.

    Remote onboarding and getting started is so tough. I think most of your remote and local coworkers understand and would be willing to help you settle in.

    1. Nicosloanicota*

      Yeah as long as you’re in the break room/commons areas and you’re careful to limit any interactions when someone else might be busy, you can assume most people are not quite as curmudgeonly as commenters here sometimes come across; it can seem like any social interaction is a completely unwelcome distraction on here. So just … avoid people like that, because it’s really not the majority of your coworkers!

      1. Person from the Resume*

        I have resting thinking face and am very often inside my head and not paying attention to my surroundings. And I am not fond of small talk with strangers in general.

        BUT at work especially for someone who says they’re new and still onboarding I will happily talk and provide info. I probably will never invite you to join my friend group outside work, but I will tell you about the office, organization, provide lunch recommendations in the area, etc.

  29. Ssssssss*

    Thank you #5! We had someone impersonating a VP and listing jobs on a sketchy job site a couple years ago. They didn’t ask anyone to download sketchy apps, but I assume they were scamming for PII or bank info. I couldn’t help but feel awful for the folks who thought they were about to get jobs when none existed.

  30. Industry expert*

    #4 I am at an insurance carrier and have received hundreds, no exaggeration, of calls over the years from an HR person begging, pleading, threatening, crying because someone suffered a disability or passed away and were not enrolled due to “an error “ or misunderstanding and can we please please please enroll them and pay the claim. Your HR person is covering her butt and documenting beyond a reasonable doubt should something happen.

  31. Nancy*

    LW4: it’s a conformation email because people make mistakes, same as every other confirmation email/website popup you get when you sign up for things.

  32. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

    #5 – this goes beyond the malicious software issue. Another scam is to offer a job after a perfunctory interview via Zoom or sometimes, even by text. The next step is to send an electronic “cheque” to pay for the “new employee” to buy equipment. Sometimes there will be preferred vendor to buy this equipment from. Or the cheque will be for a huge amount and the company will ask for what’s left to be returned to them. Needless to say, the cheque is fake and will bounce (and there is usually a delay in this happening–banks may seem to “clear” a cheque early on and it will later turn out to be fraudulent. This may result not only in the aspiring job seeker losing money, but getting into hot water with their bank as well as going onto scammers’ lists as an easy mark.

    No real company will send a cheque for you to purchase your company equipment.

    1. Lucy P*

      I’ve was scammed into doing a one-way recorded interview earlier this year. The recording was done through a semi-well-known site. I didn’t realize it was a scam until I received an email for a job offer, without having spoken to an actual person from the company. In this case, the original job positing was real, but got hi-jacked after the position was filled. The interview and the job offer were fake.

      I’ve also noticed that smaller companies often don’t have employment pages, or don’t keep them updated.

      I had a friend fall for the check scam. Thankfully they have a good relationship with their local banker who immediately realized that the check was a fraud and did not deposit it into my friend’s account.

    2. Silvercat*

      This!
      I had this happen to me and while it felt sketchy (interview via Google chat, text only???), it wasn’t until I got the check that I was sure. They pressured me to deposit it RIGHT AWAY (I did not). They had stolen info from a real company, who were not happy it was starting again.

    3. Grimalkin*

      There’s also the perfunctory interview leading to a “job” involving a handful of trivial tasks and then they ask for your bank information to pay you for your “work”. I’ll admit to nearly falling for that one, though thankfully the alarm bells went off when they insisted on having my bank information, rather than sending checks or any other form of payment. But the text-only interview, the generic nature of the assignments (things like “make a spreadsheet to log your hours”), and the lack of feedback on my “work” all should have tipped me off before that…

  33. Fluffy Fish*

    OP 4 – I’m not sure what’s driving it but its a pretty big overreaction to something very benign. It’s super normal to confirm changes or at least changes that opt-someone out of something. Once the window closes the chance to fix anything is done until next year. They simply asked you to confirm you wanted to make the change. They didn’t ask why. They didn’t try to sell you on it. I promise you no one in HR actually gaf about individual employee choices related to benefits.

    1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Yes, I don’t understand why this raised the OP’s hackles:
      I’d appreciate HR checking back that I’d really meant to decline something potentially important that I’d had before.
      imo, it’s them being thorough and doing their job.

  34. El l*

    OP1:
    If you fundamentally don’t trust someone, more money or a better contract doesn’t fix that. Especially when you work with them every day.

    No.

  35. Acronyms Are Life (AAL)*

    I work in an office where there are multiple teams at the same location. People might notice you are new, but are hesitant to come talk to you since you might be *new* to the location but not *new* to the job. Some people are unnecessarily prickly about not being recognized, or being asked if they are new, as I had the misfortune of experiencing. Introducing yourself as the new hire makes it easier to see if you are someone who wants to interact with the others in the office. Asking about good coffee or lunch places around the office sometimes can get you information about ‘lunch groups’ such as we used to have a ‘sub squad’ that would either order online or go to the store together on the day it was sub deal day. We still ate at our desk, but you at least interacted with your coworkers walking over. Also, taking note of what people seem to talk about to find people with similar interests.

    It would have been helpful if your team had made some sort of ‘new person in office’ email like my office is trying to do (it has facts like interests and other things outside of work that can help people connect over shared things), but unfortunately it looks like you’re stuck trying to prove to people that you want to interact with them.

  36. ijustworkhere*

    #4 the consequences of HR making a mistake in your benefits is extremely high. HR people can get fired over that. And especially if you are now declining benefits that you previously had. So just take it as an “checking to make sure you intended to waive these benefits” type of email.

  37. Bookworm*

    LW2: Thanks for asking. I had been wondering how much has changed in terms of meeting/getting to know co-workers in this weird age of hybrid/swiping in badges, etc. so good to know and see the other answers (hot sauce in yogurt? XD).

  38. Parenthesis Guy*

    LW #4: You mentioned that you waived your “life insurance policy and a disability insurance policy”. Everywhere I’ve worked the company paid 100% of the premiums for disability insurance as well as standard life insurance (the amount of your salary). For the life insurance, you are charged the inputed income on the policy if it’s over a certain amount, but the actual tax cost is minimal.

    If I were you, I’d make sure that I understood exactly what I’ve done. Especially if HR reached out to you about it. You might have waived something that the company pays for, and thus really confused your HR.

    1. Fluffy Fish*

      Typically when the employer pays 100% for a benefit its not something that ever appears as an option during open enrollments. It’s never something you can opt-in or out of.

      Open enrollment life insurance and disability is the supplemental benefit.

      1. Parenthesis Guy*

        Basic Life Insurance always has an option to opt-out because you have to pay taxes for imputed income. Life insurance is tax-free up to $50k. Suppose your salary is $200k though? You’d have to pay taxes on inputed income on the coverage between $50k and $200k. It’s minimal, depending on your age we’re talking like $270 of income, so maybe your tax bill goes up $75. Far cheaper than paying for life insurance yourself, but it does require you to opt-in.

        As for disability insurance, I remember having the option to opt-out. Easier to program the benefits that way. Not saying that happened to this person, but saying it makes sense to make sure.

        1. Fluffy Fish*

          Basic does not always have an opt-out – I have never had the opportunity to opt-out.

          Regardless my comment was a general comment on open-enrollment for discussion purposes, not that OP shouldn’t verify but I didn’t make that clear.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          You’re making assumptions that what you’ve been offered in your jobs is what’s offered in others’.
          My last job the company paid 100% life insurance for 25k for everyone. Had nothing to do with salary. One before that paid for a policy 2x everyone’s annual salary, up to 150k. One before that they paid nothing but offered one you could opt in to pay for. All three allowed you purchase more, but the amount you were able to opt-in to varied.
          Current job pays for LTD for everyone. Previous job didn’t pay for any of it, but offered it.
          In my experience it’s not possible to waive a benefit the company pays for. Those are displayed on the screen, but not actionable because they’re automatic.
          You’re not wrong to suggest double-checking since that’s rarely a bad idea, but OP mentioned not finding the plans offered worth the money, so pretty sure they know it did indeed have a cost to them.

      2. Ccbac*

        I’ve worked at 2 companies where it was possible to opt out of 100% company paid life insurance and disability during open enrollment fwiw.

    2. a clockwork lemon*

      LW says “this year” they opted out. The most likely thing is that they declined coverage they’d previously had, so the HR rep wanted to confirm that it was intentional rather than someone just trying to quickly get their benefits elections done between meetings and missing a checkbox.

    3. Saturday*

      I wondered if this is what it was too. My employer pays 100% up to a certain amount, and it shows up in open enrollment because I have the option to pay to increase the amount and to name a beneficiary.

      Either way, I doubt the HR person was being aggressive or trying to persuade anyone, they were just confirming the choices.

  40. Catherding Specialist*

    I had the opposite issue as OP #4 this year. I clicked the box for hospital indemnity insurance to find out more and forgot to uncheck it. I realized it shortly afterwards, but the premium was so small that it didn’t seem worth what I thought would be a significant struggle to get it removed.

    Less than a month after the policy went into effect, my appendix took an early retirement. It rage quit so spectacularly, I had to spend 5 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics.

    I had completely forgotten about the hospital indemnity insurance until just a couple of weeks ago. It took 15 minutes to fill out the paperwork, and my check has already been cut. It’s enough to cover my high deductible plus a little extra so that’s amazing. I still will be removing it next year.

    1. PhyllisB*

      Yes!! Remember the niece I mentioned upthread? Her dad does work that involves overseas shipments and at one point he was required to take out an extremely large insurance policy. Don’t know how much, just know it was over a million. He forgot to cancel when the project was over and boy was he glad after the accident. it paid for every bit of her treatment and is still paying for her ongoing rehab.

  41. a clockwork lemon*

    LW 4 – Half my department accidentally signed up for the wrong insurance plan when our benefits elections first rolled around. HR changed the system this year and it now defaults into one specific high deductible plan and you needed to dig a little bit to get to the other options. I submitted some sort of worksheet to my actual insurance company only to realize when I got an email from HR that I hadn’t actually enrolled in anything.

    That confirmation email is for people like us, and we’re grateful idiots for it.

  42. auntie tank*

    #4:

    Is your employer offering you a life insurance policy that you pay for, or that they pay for. If they’re paying for it, you’re basically turning down free money. Even if you have no dependents, you still have a chance to put free money in some beneficiary’s pocket. Is there literally nobody you can think of, that you’d like to leave a goodbye present, at your employer’s expense, should it come to that?

    1. WellRed*

      This. I have no kids but thus way, any death expenses and my student loans are covered. Otherwise, it’s an expensive burden for someone.

        1. PhyllisB*

          I wondered about that. My son who died under suspicious circumstances has a student loan but I still don’t have a death certificate so haven’t reached out yet. I assume they want actual proof of death.

          1. Parenthesis Guy*

            I’m sorry to hear about your loss. You are correct that they’ll want actual proof of death.

    2. UpstateDownstate*

      Great point. If your employer is paying for this benefit you should reconsider signing up for it. It doesn’t cost you anything and is a great benefit to have, and something regular people forget to get on their own.

  43. Serious Silly Putty*

    Op 2- FWIW, I drafted a “smalltalk algorithm” , documenting what I noticed myself trying to do in smalltalk situations. It’s just a google doc, but if links are allowed you can see it at tinyurl.com/smalltalkalg

  44. WantonSeedStitch*

    LW #2, do you have Slack or Teams or some other chat app for work? If so, maybe start there. Most workplaces have at least one place where social chat is welcome on those apps. You can post and say “hey everyone, I’m Jamie and I just started here a little while ago. I work in the office on Mondays and Wednesdays, but I haven’t really been able to meet anyone when I’m in there. Anyone want to get together for lunch in the break room next Monday?”

  45. Mrs. Jameson*

    LW#4 – Please reconsider the disability insurance. I say this as the spouse of someone who experienced two completely unexpected life events at two different times that resulted in a disability. The sudden lack of income is challenging in the midst of figuring out major health issues and qualifying/acquiring any sort of disability through the federal government is challenging at a time when you are emotionally spent. If you have significant savings or can survive on the sole salary of your significant other, maybe it’s fine, but I would encourage anyone who qualifies for disability insurance to sign up. (Sadly, I tried to sign up for disability insurance and didn’t qualify, which is a whole other kettle of fish).

  46. CzechMate*

    LW 5 – I work at a university and we’ve had a lot of students (and even some folks in the career center) fall for some fake job offers–in some instances, they’ve even lost money. To add to this:
    -Be wary of anyone who reaches out to you directly offering a job,
    -If you’re corresponding by email with a hiring manager, look them up on the company website and/or LinkedIn,
    -Do not accept offers that seem “too easy” or ones where you receive an offer without having a face-to-face interview,
    -Don’t spend any of your personal money right away. There is a scam now where an employer will tell the mark to wire money to a specific location “to get the work started” and then will give them a “check” so that they can get reimbursed. They often tell the person that the check may take a few days to clear, but they need to wire the money right away so that they can secure equipment, materials, or whatever.

    2. OP*

      OP here. Great points. We also had some people contact us via LinkedIn who had been contacted directly and made a job offer for a job they never applied to. We only heard from those who slowed down enough to question it, and come to us for confirmation. These scammers are predators who are contacting sometimes desperate people who are so grateful for the job offer that they don’t see that it’s a scam.

      1. CzechMate*

        Yes, absolutely. People who are applying for jobs for the first time in a while, are new to the workforce, or are recent immigrants are unfortunately really susceptible to this, but it could affect anyone. This happened to one of MBA students, and his “internship” had actually been vetted by the Business School Career Center (it’s a US Top-50 business school, so they’re generally pretty savvy).

        If a fake hiring manager gets hold of your social security number (if you’re in the US), notify the Social Security Administration right away. Any scam offers where the scammer impersonates a real person or organization or pressures you to give money or personal information should be reported to the police.

    3. Procedure Publisher*

      If you have someone come directly to you, vet them. Had a scammer contact me several times and it sounded so legit until I started vetting them.

      Recruiters from staffing agencies have the same MO: ask if you are looking, tell you about a position they have that your profile on where they found you matched, and ask if you want to apply or could refer someone to apply.

      I’ve had multiple scammers come to me in the time I’ve been job searching. Scammers have made me cautious about using the Easy Apply function on some of these websites.

    4. I Have RBF*

      I second this.

      I have worked now for two entirely remote roles. I interviewed over Zoom, and all that. But they were real people, and they are real jobs.

      Things that I look for in dealing with remote work searches:
      * Is their email actually a company email, or a weird gmail or yahoo address? Domains and hosting are cheap. Even small companies have their own domains. (My tiny side hustle has a domain, FFS.)
      * Do the interviewers ask real questions about the work, and do they have good answers about their environment? Can you look up at least one of the people you interview with on LinkedIn?
      * Do they ask for your address to ship you equipment, or do they want to do the “send you a check” thing? Real companies ship you the equipment already set up with corporate images.

      I tend to not respond to text based attempts to recruit me either. Most of them want me for “data entry” or some thing that is only peripherally related to my expertise.

  47. Phony Genius*

    On #3, for the concern about sharing salaries with other companies, I understand how sharing entire company salary structures would be an issue. But could that also apply if the only salary you disclose to the other company is your own?

  48. YesPhoebeWould*

    Regarding #1? Don’t do it. Don’t take the director role. I’m a tech VP and came up through the ranks? It is almost certain that your gut is right, and you are being set up to fail. The tech skills that make you a strong analyst are very important in senior management, but if you have never managed a team before? That role will crush you and the (almost inevitable – through no fault of your own) failure could well damage your career for years. The skill set for being a good manager is quite different from the skill set to be a good technologist.

    Go to the new company. Move up the ranks by getting a couple of analysts under you first, then a 5-10 person team, THEN start looking at senior management roles (if you want – the money is great, but there is a lot that sucks about being a director or VP).

  49. Coffee Protein Drink*

    I like Allison’s script for introducing yourself. It’s totally okay to be up front about your situation. There may be other people in the same one.

  50. Medium Sized Manager*

    LW2, just a word of support from somebody doing the same! It’s a little terrifying, but I just keep reminding myself that people being rude is a them problem IF it happens. Some things that have helped me:

    1. Start with your HR representative and ask for their help introducing yourself. They know everybody and can guide you in the right direction. In my case, it also helped me develop a casual friendship with her just because she knew I was making an effort to meet more people.
    2. If you are at an event or a speaker or a Town Hall, just introduce yourself to the person next to you. I always say that I’m new-ish or don’t really know a lot of people to help soften and then swing into talking about them (your pants are cute/what do you do/was traffic too bad this morning?). It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering, it just has to be a convo starter.
    3. If you overhear a work convo that sounds irritating, offer a word of support/kindness. You’ll have to read the room on this one but a mildly irritating phone call is a good starter.

    The word “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting but you got this! Good luck!

  51. Bike Walk Barb*

    Seems like RTO policies and ideas for handling them would be a comment extravaganza.

    I’m in the highly fortunate position of working for a state agency whose head has said our goal is to maintain a 40% average WFH rate. Some jobs require in-person presence because they’re hands-on or field work, but to maintain 40% overall those of us with desk jobs have to do well over 40% teleworking. The state recently issued a new set of rules for how we define remote work and what that means for travel reimbursement (from home address or from assigned duty station); it’s very geared toward continued telework.

    We’re all just hoping the new governor doesn’t issue a mandate for RTO. I for one have recruited an awesome team of people living in multiple cities and I’d hate to lose any of them if I forced them into the office full-time. And we’ve given up leases, reorganized use of space, wouldn’t have the workspace for every butt to be in an office seat, wouldn’t have the funding to address any of this. It wouldn’t be possible to bring everyone back in even if it were a great idea and we know it would be a recruitment/retention blow.

    It isn’t just employers thinking they’re somehow extracting value from their real estate. What I’ve heard repeatedly from the major city near me is that the Chamber of Commerce is pressuring major employees to bring people back because they need the business transactions that the workforce represents. People don’t go out to lunch if they’re walking to their own kitchen, they don’t shop the sales, they don’t buy the lattes. Big employers sit on the boards of the Chamber and they’re in meetings where groupthink runs rampant. (I used to serve on a lot of Chamber committees in the town I lived in for many years; speaking up with a very different opinion almost always felt awkward even though it created a whole new conversation.)

    1. Governmint Condition*

      Interesting. Our state has the opposite type of goal – a minimum percentage for in-person work. I’m not sure of the overall number, but lower titles are permitted higher percentages of remote work. (My most recent promotion included losing one day of remote work every two weeks.) But I don’t anticipate any changes since the current rules were negotiated with the union, so they’re binding.

    2. DJ*

      We have a cost of living crisis in NSW Aust so forcing ppl into the office doesn’t mean they will spend $ on the over priced takeaway and coffees available. And most food is unsuitable for those with diabetes and perhaps those with other dietary restrictions.
      Conservatives believe ppl should just up and move back closer to the office despite the rental and housing crisis. Then no doubt whinge when workers need to take time off for childcare and other reasons ie rental inspections, repairs, appts etc because they no longer have a community to call on to wait at home/be with kids when needed!

  52. UpstateDownstate*

    #4 HR is just making sure you didn’t waive that coverage in error. You will be surprised at how often this happens during open enrollment, onboarding or during a life change (when one can typically make changes to their coverage). Sometimes its good to have it in writing especially when dealing with a large population of employees and people often come by and tell you what they want to enroll in and of course people forget what they said or who they said it to. Anyway, they are just doing their job.

  53. BatManDan*

    #4 – former benefits counselor here (worked selling life, disability, etc to employees during open enrollment). HR is just covering their butts. The number of people that will decline coverage, need it later in the year, and then come back and try to get the benefits under the context or pretext of “didn’t mean to” or “didn’t understand” or “thought I could sign up later” or “thought I wouldn’t need it but I do” is astounding. She needs in on record (twice, apparently -through the system and though email) that you declined / waived, so if it loops back around, she can shut that conversation down quickly.

  54. sometimeswhy*

    OP1 – I’m glad to see that you’ve already taken Alison and the commentariat’s advice on board and not only really see the offer for the terrible idea it is but also are reaching out to a Sr VP to give her a data point about that director that she would be unlikely to get from him or from observation.

    I’d still like to add: Taking over a group that is undergoing or needs to undergo massive change is HARD. It’s a special skill set on top of your bog standard leadership toolkit or a managing managers toolkit or a guiding technical groups toolkit. And it’s not something anyone should take on unless they really, really want to. And it’s even harder if it’s a change that you don’t believe in.

    You’re right to run.

  56. ThinMint*

    “managing managers is a whole other level of learning and difficulty” – this is the space I’ve entered and I’m scouring AAM for more posts about this.

  57. the cat ears*

    RE: LW 2, when you eat in the lunchroom, also make sure you don’t look at your phone so that people feel they can approach you, you may end up sitting by yourself for some or all of the lunch break but it’ll make it a lot more likely that people feel they can make small talk with you at some point.

  58. iglwif*

    OP4 — HR is not being passive-aggressive, she is noticing a break in your previous pattern and verifying that it happened on purpose and not by accident. Those insurance sign-up forms are often long, confusing, and complicated, and I’m 100% sure that people make mistakes on them all the time.

    I just became eligible for my new job’s benefits coverage last month, and when I sent my form in, the HR person (who is even newer than I am) emailed back to verify that I wanted my child to be a beneficiary on my life insurance but not to be covered by my health plan. I explained that the said child isn’t eligible for coverage due to being an adult, no longer a student, and employed full-time with her own benefits coverage, and that was that — but it could have been me forgetting to put kiddo’s info in, she could have been eligible if she’d been going on to an MA program from the BA she just finished, and HR had no way of knowing that my kid is 22 and not 12. So I appreciated the check-in!

  59. Strive to Excel*

    LW 2 – One thing you could consider (and this is really up to the tenor of a workforce, so do tailor as needed) is having a conversation starter with you at lunch – something uncontroversial that gives people a clue what to talk to you about. I have met a surprising number of people when I’m sitting and cross-stitching during my break. Other options:

    * Lunchbag themed with your sports team of choice
    * Keychain with a favorite/popular TV show or movie
    * Book of choice
    * Picture of pet (on desk, rather than at lunch).

    Sometimes people won’t strike up conversation because they just don’t know what to talk about. “How about them Sports Team” or “Hey, you also have a Golden Retriever” gives you a starter.

  60. Crencestre*

    OP1: This sounds like a trap to me; you’re being tempted to take a position that’s WAY above your experience level and being set up to fail at it. That way, the company can fire you “for cause”, get back at you for leaving on your own and make it all but impossible for you to use anyone there for a reference later on.

    Petty? Absolutely! But some managers go banana-suit crazy when one of their employees strikes out on their own and pull all sorts of dotty stunts to get their revenge. Frankly, this only confirms your decision to get out of there ASAP!

  61. DJ*

    LW#3 that’s the problem with this blanket just get everyone back into the office. They still have hot desking and don’t have teams/branches together! And it can be working from satellite offices, some under very unergonomic conditions ie from a laptop at a lunchroom table!
    Is the rest of your team in and if so is it possible for you all to sit together. Usually new starters start off with meeting and getting to know their team and then branch!

  62. DJ*

    LW#5 agreed. Companies should be posting links to the job listed on their website or to their main website with instructions on how to find the jobs section

  63. JobPostings*

    Many companies do not post jobs on their own website, especially smaller companies, and particularly if they don’t have dedicated webmasters and/or HR folks. Mine doesn’t. When we hire we use LinkedIn and Indeed.

    I’ve also worked at larger companies where the bureaucracy around posting the job is such that it takes months. We’ve started the process but used other methods to advertise the job. Sometimes we’d have already hired someone by the time the job was listed.

    Not having the job posted on the company website does not mean it’s not a real job opening.

  64. Malogica Software*

    Great advice on navigating workplace challenges! The tips on handling counteroffers and building relationships at a new job are especially helpful. Transitioning into a new role can be daunting, but focusing on clear communication and being proactive in connecting with colleagues makes all the difference in feeling settled quickly.

  65. Bananapants Modiste*

    #1 :
    Many moons ago, I was a senior system administrator at Large Company.
    I gave notice with no new job lined up because of too much work and there being no technical director.
    Well, I immediately was offered the position of tchnical director and a salary bump.
    I kept working there with the new title, got zero training or other duties, no contact to other management etc.

    Three months later, I was demoted back to sysadmin, and an incompetent bank manager was hired as technical director (he played management games with me which he lost). It was a total ploy to keep me working there.
    A year later, Large Company went down in flames.

    In a nutshell: OP, take the new job and get out of there! Trust your instincts!

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