high school career counseling is using ChatGPT, giving 360 feedback to a clueless coworker, and more

by Alison Green on March 3, 2025

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

1. How do I give 360 feedback to my clueless coworker?

I have been asked to complete a 360 review for the junior staffer on my team. In general, I would like to only be positive in these, as that’s what I want in return! And I have never expressed these feelings to this coworker.

But he is like a little baby in the outfit of a 26-year-old man. He doesn’t have the general sense at work you’d like someone four years into their career to have — as an example, he scheduled our boss to meet with board members, assigning them a meeting time without asking them for input on their schedules. The problem is just basically that all the time — he is not supposed to be so entry-level but his work problem-solving skills are like me at 20, in my first internship. He’ll also do things like answer questions in a group setting that were clearly directed to someone with authority/experience.

What is a nice way to put this? I’d love to just say “Bob is eager and kind, but could really benefit from more training in X” but I don’t know what X is, because it’s not project management or tone or anything, it’s just having a clue.

The complicating factor here is that I am only one year older than him and not a supervisor, though my role is more senior, and my tenure with the organization is longer. But I am worried about overstepping by correcting his behavior in the moment. And I’m worried I may have bitch-eating-crackers syndrome with him, because I’m annoyed that he constantly says “Thank you” instead of “sorry” as we’re all taught to do — but sometimes, his incompetence has resulted in hours of extra work for me and he thanks me “for my leadership”! It probably doesn’t help that when I held his role, I was paid two-thirds of what he earns now.

What should I say in the review? Is there a succinct, kind way to describe the problem?

“Bob is eager to learn and kind, but could benefit from more coaching in problem-solving and political awareness (for example, checking board members’ schedules rather than simply assigning them a meeting time, or recognizing when questions in a group are being directed to someone with more authority or experience).”

That said, is there more to it than just problem-solving and political awareness? If his incompetence is causing hours of extra work for you, that sounds like there might be an issue with basic skills as well — so whatever that issue is, make sure you name it and provide a couple of examples to illustrate it too.

If you’re uncomfortable putting this in writing, another option is to talk to Bob’s boss and say, “Here are the things I’d like to give feedback on. I’m not sure how to put this in writing without being more blunt than I’m comfortable with since I don’t have any supervisory authority over him, so I hoped to get your advice on how to frame it / wondered whether I could share the feedback with you informally as areas for you to watch / wondered whether you could synthesize this into the overall feedback you share with him.”

2. High school career counseling is using ChatGPT

My high school student received an email from an employee of the school district advertising “ChatGPT Interview Prep” and “NLP for Interview Confidence,” supposedly teaching them how to craft strong interview answers from ChatGPT.

I’m surprised by this. I do think kids should learn interview prep, but maybe not this way. When I interview people, we can tell if they are only good at giving pre-planned answers that don’t go in depth; typically when we debrief, we’ve all noted they had the right answers but lacked depth/examples, didn’t get deeper on a line of questioning…

My high school kid also had to create a LinkedIn profile (not sure what why) and it is clear she used ChatGPT. I feel like it’s a lot of the same buzz words on LinkedIn, but using the words “reinforcing client relationship” in a job description for babysitter is funny.

What are your thoughts on a high school “career office” offering an interview prep workshop that teaches kids how to use ChatGPT to craft answers? Would you ask the school about this or weigh in with your professional opinion as a person who interviews job candidates? Should I be concerned about my district’s standards?

I assumed ChatGPT would be crap at interview prep, but to test that out I asked it to generate likely interview questions for a couple of jobs, and it actually did a decent job both of suggesting questions you might receive for those positions and of describing the sorts of things you should build your answers around. It would be terrible at suggesting actual answers (since those need to be based on your own experiences and expertise) but it was pretty good at explaining the types of things your answers should cover. So, depending on how the school is using it, it’s not the worst idea in the world, as long as they’re stressing that sometimes it ends up being wildly off-base.

However, the LinkedIn thing — no. I’m skeptical that most high school kids need LinkedIn profiles at all, and anything that results in describing babysitting as “reinforcing client relationships” is teaching them the absolute wrong lessons. And that’s of course part of the problem with ChatGPT; the person using it needs to have enough expertise to know if what it’s suggesting is good or not. A high school student won’t know what a good LinkedIn profile looks like, so might not spot it when ChatGPT suggests something insane.

Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of high schools teaching “interview prep” at all; they’re often bad at it, or the lessons center around the types of interviews kids aren’t likely to have until years down the road. But you’d need to know more about exactly what they’re doing to know if there’s something complaint-worthy here or not.

3. My boss keeps giving me conflicting instructions

My job involves compiling information into a short, standardized document. My manager reviews every document I turn in and frequently gives me feedback that contradicts previous feedback he has given me. For example, today he told me “when you describe Regulation 1, always include parts A, B, C, and D,” when in the past he has said “only include the part of Regulation 1 that pertains to this document, Part A.” The circumstances are exactly the same for the two cases, and this happens constantly. My instinct is that constantly redoing things to different standards is just part of my job and I should say nothing. Am I right?

With a decent boss, the right thing would be to say, “I want to make sure I’m handling these correctly. When I turned in the X document, you’d said I should only include the relevant part of Regulation 1, which was Part A. How do I know when I should include A, B, C, and D even if only one part is relevant, and when I should only include the relevant part?” It’s possible there’s some piece to this that would make it make sense — like that the first document had a different audience than the second, or some other reason that you’re not currently spotting — and so he’ll be able to give you helpful guidance on spotting that yourself in the future. Or maybe he just changes his mind every other day, who knows. But a reasonable boss would want you to ask.

If he’s a terrible boss — if he’s a tyrant whose whims of the day determine what’s correct more than reality does, or someone who reacts poorly to having it pointed out that he’s giving you conflicting instructions — that would change things. But otherwise, start by assuming you should ask.

4. I’ve been getting all my colleague’s meeting invites … for 10 years

I’m hoping you can help me on something that has been plaguing me for years. When I started at this large company, I was an admin assistant and my duties included managing the calendar of our director, so he added me as a delegate to his calendar in Outlook. Eventually I got another job at the same company, but I continued to receive all of his meeting requests. I reached out to IT many times and to the director, who always shrugged and said he’d ask IT.

No one ever resolved this, so I made an Outlook rule and sent all the meeting invites to a folder that I would occasionally mass delete. Over the years, twice I have tried to reach out to IT (but I was in a different department at this point) saying, “Hey, this started happening again.” They’d respond to say they would look into it and I’d check back but they hadn’t spoken to the director, and eventually they just stopped responding. I’ve just lived with this, thinking the director will retire long before I do.

Now there has been some reorganization and the director is in my department! I’ve also grown in my career a bit, and my circle and his has more overlap than before. This is a regular reminder that I have a folder of his meeting invites, and I’m starting to feel weird about it. Do I try to reach out to our joint IT person about it and pester it until it’s fixed? I’m worried that I’ll get in trouble for having had access to these invites for so long, but I truly don’t pour over the details or have any context for any of it. I was just an entry-level employee and it was an annoyance that I lived with, but now I’ve been here almost a decade and it’s starting to gnaw at me that I could get in trouble for this. What should I do?

You’re not likely to get in trouble for it; you asked them to fix it many times! But yes, reach out to IT now and say, “This is still happening, I really do need it fixed, how do we make that happen?” This time, follow up every few weeks until it’s dealt with. It’s ridiculous that it’s still happening.

5. Should federal workers state the obvious when writing cover letters?

Should federal employees applying for jobs in the private sector mention that they’re applying due to the decimation of government jobs, or would that be gauche?

I’m finding myself applying to jobs at a company I worked at for years and years that I had just left recently for the stability of a fed role. Clearly that did not work out! Should I address that elephant in the room in my cover letters, or assume the hiring manager can figure it out and just write a normal letter?

Just write a normal letter. They know what’s going on, and if for some reason they don’t and are curious about why you’re leaving, they’ll ask.

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{ 375 comments }

{ 375 comments… read them below }

  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    A reminder: We’ve had a recent increase in trolling here, and you can help me by NOT RESPONDING to it. If you engage, you are ensuring that troll will reappear. Instead, please flag the comment for me (just reply with a link, which will send your comment to moderation so I’ll see it).

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  2. Artemesia*

    when someone is a total screw up as this junior employee is, why would you want to soften it? 4 years in and doing the ridiculous things the OP describes? He needs to know that his performance is woefully lacking and see concrete examples.

    going to the boss to discuss how to word it is astute — but again VERY clear examples of the problems.

    1. Polly Hedron*

      OP#1 said
      – in general, OP #1 wants to be positive in her reviews of other employees because she wants them to review her positively in return
      – she hasn’t previously criticized this coworker [so it seems unfair to start in this official document with no warning]
      I like Alison’s suggestion of talking to the boss first is best.

      1. Escapee from Corporate Management*

        “In general, I would like to only be positive in these, as that’s what I want in return!”

        OP1, this is not how 360 degree feedback works. Please stop thinking in terms of “positive” and “negative”, as though you’re ranking friends. This is a tool that, when used well, allows managers and employees to improve their performances. Think instead of “what is done well” and “what could be improved”. A good employee (and especially, a good manager) WANTS to hear all of the feedback.

        I urge you to be honest—which you can do kindly, but directly—on this 360 review and ask others to do the same when reviewing you.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          OP please listen to this. If you ever want to move up into a supervisory role, you have to be able to give feedback that is not what you would consider positive. Honest, professional feedback is required.

        2. Dasein9 (he/him)*

          I agree that honest, professional feedback is what’s needed here. Besides naming areas for improvement, try to name some behaviors, however minor, that you appreciate and would like to see continue. Bob probably does have some good qualities and using this opportunity to actively look for them might help with your own BEC issue.

          Honestly, it sounds like you’re likely to advance a lot faster than Bob, so this can be a good chance to get early practice with some skills you’ll need when you’re managing a Bob of your own in the future.

        3. Smithy*

          While I understand this impulse – I do think this advice really goes more into a “know your work place” reality.

          Where I work, the review process does correlate to the level of annual increase you receive – and because we’re a nonprofit, we’re hardly talking about massive increases at the best of times. Therefore, it’s far more often that managers themselves will lean towards the most positive review of their direct reports to align with basically either excellent and the top increase, or just below excellent to still receive a relatively decent increase.

          This can result in the most critical feedback coming from peers – and depending on who’s asked, folks are frequently not as anonymous as you’d think. And because it’s during an annual review where managers are regularly under pressure to seek those top increases (which again, are hardly that high to begin with). If there’s a genuine issue – both in terms of aiming to move into management but also in having it addressed – bringing it up outside of the 360 review is usually far more effective.

          So again, know your workplace. But I think raising these issues outside of the 360 and then being softer on the 360 is a tactic that suits a number of workplaces where this becomes an inevitable flaw in the process.

        4. Ally McBeal*

          Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. It’s not a 360 degree review if you go in with the intention to be “only positive.” That’s not helpful feedback nor an efficient business practice.

        5. Melicious*

          I’ll pile on here. If everyone kept their feedback only positive, this would be a useless waste of time for everyone. You don’t need to be harsh, but if there are problems, management should know about it. And they’re asking!

        6. Venus*

          It’s possible that the OP meant that they want to be constructive, not just blindly positive. They want to provide constructive feedback about this specific issue but they’re struggling to know how to word it in a way that doesn’t sound negative and unhelpful, and that’s why they reached out to AAM.

          1. Melicious*

            You’re right. I fixated on the sentence only wanting to be positive, when the bulk of the letter IS how do I word this negative feedback in the review.

        7. Also-ADHD*

          It depends on if the 360 is part of the performance process or separate. Some companies do use that data similarly to performance reviews, and while they shouldn’t, you have to treat it differently then than you would a sincere 360 with fidelity.

      2. Artemesia*

        I know that is what the OP said and I am saying that is the wrong direction to take and why we end up with incompetent employees like this one embedded in the system.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          It’s one possible reason. Unfortunately, all the constructive feedback in the world doesn’t help if the manager won’t act on it or hold the employee accountable. I had a meeting last week with a jaw-droppingly condescending liaison to one of our partner organizations. I went to a manager about it, and she assured me that we’d complained many times, but his manager is just too wishy-washy to do anything about it.

          Apparently I won’t have to deal with it often, because the condescending employee refuses to meet with us most of the time anyway.

    2. Metal Gru*

      I agree, it is much too soft (even with the suggestions in the answer, imo). He isn’t “eager to learn etc BUT…” he is pretty useless (specifics) BUT it seems well-intentioned.

      You know how sometimes someone gets a bad review and that’s the first they have heard about it from their boss? This is a similar thing, but from your boss’s perspective. Since he’s causing concrete issues (extra work needed because of his screw ups etc) this is beyond just interpersonal. Ideally LW would have gone to their boss already about this, so the first time the boss hears about it wasn’t this review. However we are where we are, so I would just give the feedback that I would have given to the boss: he has a pattern of doing x, this has impact y. A couple of incidents in particular had significant client impact (or whatever). He has the lack of political awareness you’d expect from an intern rather than an established employee. etc.

      1. Polly Hedron*

        Alison’s suggested script is “Bob is eager to lean“, which is true. (I know it’s a typo, but it made me laugh.)

      2. DJ Abbott*

        If this is really the first time it’s being brought up, maybe go to the boss before writing the review and give them a heads-up.
        The boss may have direction on how they want you to handle it.

      1. A. Lab Rabbit*

        Then what is a 360 review for? Just to give useless platitudes. As someone downthread pointed out, this is how people like this employee get away with mediocre man syndrome. People just look at the good things he does and completely gloss over his egregious errors.

        You don’t have to be brutally honest, but you do need to be honest.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          Given that OP specifically mentions wanting their own 360 reviews to be only positive, using it to provide evidence that a 360 review was had, which must mean more information, which must be good, seems to be on the table.

          And I do think Pigeon has a point–if the people above Hapless Hal don’t give any negative feedback, there’s probably no benefit to OP of being the one squeaky wheel in the org.

          1. Aggretsuko*

            I can say from experience that being the only one in the office with A Problem (in general, as yourself, or with someone else) is very, very bad for your career.

            OP has to suss out what their office is like, whether or not they will be identified/dinged/punished for speaking up, if management is fine with Hapless Hal really, before deciding whether or not to give honest anything-but-positive feedback. It’s a risk to OP, for sure.

        2. Productivity Pigeon*

          I’m sorry, I expressed that badly.

          I meant more that fixing this problem isn’t on OP’s shoulder.

        3. Aggretsuko*

          Well….not everyone in management wants honest feedback and critique REALLY. They feel obligated to ask, but they don’t really mean it. It’s Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture and asking for feedback when you don’t really want negative feedback is Guess Culture. I’ve seen enough 360 stories gone wrong around here that when I was forced to fill one out for someone who I knew would likely kaboom, I lied and gave them good marks, because it wasn’t worth the drama and harm to me to speak up. Especially if they CAN find out who said it, or deduce who did.

      2. PayRaven*

        360 feedback is a key way for the boss to find out about the issues that they don’t see themselves. It’s not absurd to ask someone to be honest about their colleagues.

        1. Productivity Pigeon*

          I’m sorry, I was unclear.

          I meant that fixing this isn’t OP’s responsibility, not that they should lie and say everything is peachy.

    4. BatManDan*

      This is why so many of y’all are working with “Bobs” (and why I’m self-employed).
      “Bob isn’t good at his job, but I don’t want to tell him he’s not good at his job, but I want Bob to get better at his job. How can Bob get better at his job, without anyone having to worry that they might hurt his feelings?”
      Newsflash: Bob ain’t gonna get better on his own, without feedback (and consequences – otherwise, feedback is just noise).

      1. Cyborg Llama*

        I’m going to assume from your name that you’re a man, so you can probably give feedback like that without blowback. Women get viewed negatively when they’re blunt or not friendly enough.

        1. PayRaven*

          I won’t say there isn’t a gendered difference, but in a company that uses 360 feedback and isn’t toxic, especially since it isn’t feedback direct and out loud to the person, this isn’t a reason to not take it seriously.

        2. Ask a Manager* Post author

          There are well documented gender differences, but this kind of absolute framing isn’t helpful for women either, and I hate to think of younger women absorbing that message as a rule. There are indeed women who give blunt or critical feedback without significant blowback. (I’ve done it my whole career. It comes with a different risk profile; it is not impossible as a general rule.)

      2. Aggretsuko*

        Bob needs consequences from his manager, not from someone who can’t actually force him to do anything.

      3. Pescadero*

        “How can Bob get better at his job, without anyone having to worry that they might hurt his feelings?”

        He can’t.

        …but THAT is managements job. I don’t get paid to evaluate my coworkers – their manager does.

      4. MigraineMonth*

        I think that feedback like this is, ideally, delivered in person first. Brought up for the first time on an annual review is a pretty harsh messenger, so I think it’s fine to soften the message a bit.

    5. Sloanicota*

      Actually (and this might be just me) but I wouldn’t put things that have much nuance into a 360 review, and I do think I’d probably talk about the boss with them instead – just because you should probably assume everything you write in a 360 will be delivered “anonymously” (?) to the coworker, who will probably immediately start triangulating who wrote what, and writing it down like this makes it seem *very* harsh, like you are actively trying to get this person fired or something. I honestly don’t care that much about my crappy coworkers, at least not enough to make all this drama. I’d just give him all 3s or whatever.

      1. KitKat*

        I agree, there are social norms that are part of 360 reviews that some other comments here are ignoring

        1. 100%*

          100% agree with this. It’s ironic to be talking about political awareness and not consider the fallout. Anything nuanced should be relayed in conversation – it brings gravity to the situation, limits misunderstanding and shows you are not looking to harm your partnership. It’s up to his boss what he does with this, not OP. But OP should not be coming in guns blazing

        2. DJ Abbott*

          Not everyone has been around 360 reviews. I have worked in offices since the mid-90s, been in the work world since the 80s, and I’ve only had one 360 review. Feedback was delivered to me. I knew right away who one of the writers was by his pompous style. :) Luckily, it was all good or neutral things. I had only been at that job a few months, so they didn’t know me well. It was the only 360 review I saw them do, even though I ended up staying many years.

      2. PayRaven*

        uh that’s completely horrifying, why in God’s name would a company deliver verbatim feedback

        yeah, if your company does this, be careful, but in any reasonable outfit, it’s the manager’s job to synthesize. And if your manager doesn’t, they suck.

        1. Anonym*

          I’ve had 360 review feedback that I gave delivered wildly out of context. I thought the person’s manager was solid, so shared basically the person is 99% perfect, if they have bandwidth they could tweak this one thing. The manager shared no positives, and only that the person was terrible at the one thing. Not going to risk that again. If I have concerns, I will either work with the person directly or attempt a conversation with the manager to improve the chances that the message is delivered correctly.

          I strongly support Alison’s advice to speak to the manager directly.

      3. Smithy*

        This! I tried to write on this – but I do think the political reality of the 360 is why there’s this much niceties in the process. Regardless of seniority.

        If this is the only time the OP has ever thought to raise this, I do think there are 101 other approaches with their supervisor or this person’s supervisor (depending on how the management structure works) to articulate these challenges.

        In a way, I think it’s similar to a supervisor not raising any challenges all year and then at the annual review sharing all these issues. If a coworker has never articulated these challenges to anyone, and then puts it in their 360 (which is regularly tied to annual pay increases) – depending on the political context of the workplace – can seem harsher than is desired.

        1. OP#1*

          Thank you all on this thread for putting to words what I didn’t express well! I care less about wanting positive feedback for myself and more feel weird about the 360 process. I don’t want to be seen as always having a problem with my coworkers, and I don’t want to impact someone’s salary when this could be a management issue for all I know.

          1. Smithy*

            Yeah – I’ve had a coworker now for years who isn’t that strong. I’ve flagged this with managers, articulated how it impacts my work, etc. She’s clearly not going anywhere and also isn’t getting significantly stronger.

            On the 1-5 scale, I give 5’s where it feels genuine and then give the lower numbers where that feels accurate. But in my feedback the comments are a bit more wishy washy. At this point, I’ve just learned to work around her and accept that ultimately having a positive working relationship as much as is possible is the bigger goal.

            It doesn’t mean being entirely silent, it’s just that the 360 just feels like a way for me to make things unpleasant in ways I’m not trying to achieve.

            1. Aggretsuko*

              I think this is an excellent post. Positive working relationship with someone is crucial and possibly more crucial than trying to critique where critiquing gets nowhere.

              Also, written comments are where you can get identified and get into trouble.

          2. Escapee from Corporate Management*

            But that’s not the point of a 360. It’s to help everyone improve, if done correctly. Any good manager would see your comments as helpful and not decide you always have a problem with co-workers. As for salary, it’s Bob’s actions that impact his salary, not your comments.

            OP1, you say you’re relatively new to the workforce. You need to learn that how things work within a productive team are very different than your experiences in school or within social groups. It’s not about being falsely positive so everyone likes you. Being able to provide constructive feedback is a key success factor for leaders. I urge you to find a mentor who can help you navigate these issues. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with the Bob’s of the world for your entire career.

    6. WillowSunstar*

      I had a Bob and my boss at the time was one who sucked and wouldn’t do anything about it for 3 years, no matter how much evidence I gave him. Wound up changing jobs in large part because of Bob and the boss who wouldn’t do anything about him. Bob left the company a year after I moved departments. Hopefully the boss for #1 is not as bad as mine was.

    7. Ursuline*

      As someone who has to summarize the feedback from 360s for my direct reports, the colleagues who just say nice things about everyone are the opposite of helpful. Everyone has improvement areas (although they won’t be visible to every co-worker) and I need to know what they are so these folks can improve.

      1. PayRaven*

        ^ this. It’s insane whiplash to read reams of positive feedback and then hear the person get slammed in the live discussion. I need true info to do my job!!

        1. Aggretsuko*

          Yes, but is your workplace a SAFE place to say anything non-positive? Is the responder going to get into trouble themselves for being honest? Have they gotten in trouble before for honesty elsewhere?

          1. PayRaven*

            By and large, it is! I’ve never seen nor participated in nor gotten in trouble myself for critical or honest feedback (as someone who’s had “Says the hard things and asks the hard questions” as a positive on many reviews), and I’ve been where I am for a decade. I understand this isn’t the reality everywhere, but it IS possible.

            1. PayRaven*

              white educated cis straight-passing female yada yada, if you want the risk profile.

  3. Cmdrshprd*

    IDK maybe I am being naive, but “reinforcing client relationship” in a job description for babysitter” I do think is applicable.

    I have never been a babysitter but have hired/used babysitters and id sag only 50 to 75% of the job is actually babysitting,
    /watching the child, the other 25/50 is client relationship management.

    I have had babysitters that were great with my kids, but not great to deal with/with me that I would not recommend and others that were good but not great with the kids, but they were great at dealing/interacting with me aka managing the client relationship that I would highly recommend.

    The ones that were superstars were great at both, and getting word of mouth recommendations, letting me know they were looking for more work.

    So client relationship management is not unreasonable. It might seem like it if you have never thought of it that way, but the skills are similar I would say, if not greater. I think people will be more picky about who they deal with to watch their child versus who they deal with to get the quarterly newsletter done.

    1. Allonge*

      I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think of it that way, it’s more that it will look incongrouos on a high schooler’s resume. And then it’s equal odds if it helps or hurts.

      Saying ‘Five clients recommended me to their acquaintances for further babysitting jobs’ would feel more in place and tells you as much.

      1. allathian*

        Yes, absolutely. Naming the skills is good, but kids don’t need corporate jargon on their resume.

          1. WhoCares*

            Thank you. The corporate BS speak is getting ridiculous. Just say what you did and keep it simple.

      2. knitted feet*

        Right, exactly. Said highschooler can show they were successful and trusted by the families they sat for without using corporate phrasing that looks out of touch. It’s not as bad as ‘CEO of the Jones household’ for stay-at-home parents going back into employment, but it’s incongruous enough that it will likely make a hiring manager laugh and/or question the kid’s judgement.

      3. MigraineMonth*

        It’s not just high school, either; would you rather hire someone whose LinkedIn says they have professional experience “reinforcing client relationships” or one who says that “five clients recommended me to their acquaintances for additional work”?

    2. Roland*

      “reinforcing client relationship” doesn’t mean anything. Even you called it “relationship management” in your comment, not “reinforcement”. Plus of course actual achievements are better than jargon, but even jargon should at least actually mean something and copying blindly from gpt doesn’t guarantee that.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        Honestly, if I got it on a CV, I wouldn’t even be sure what it meant and from a teenager, I’d suspect they might not either but had just heard it as a good phrase to use. I’d guess it meant something like “maintaining a good relationship with my clients,” but it’s awkwardly phrased and not very clear.

      2. Cmdrshprd*

        I feel like reinforcing, strengthening and managing client relationships are all pretty much the same things.
        I agree the phrase on its own wouldn’t be helpful, but in conjunction with list of ways it has been down would be helpful, and/or as a way to talk about it in a more opened ended way in an interview.
        The same way that someone saying they have “experience with word/excel” is pretty meaningless with out people listing or talking about what they have actually done with it.

    3. Martin Blackwood*

      See, when its on a resume, or cover letter, if you cant explain what you did to reinforce client relationships, then it means nothing. garbage that doesnt convey skills! If you can explain what you did to have positive relationships with clients…then thats what you should write. Lots of people need a bit of prodding to realize what skills are valued/count…but babysitters dont automatically have relationship skills. ChatGPT would probably tell the babysitters you wouldnt recommend the same phrasing as OPs daughter.

      1. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

        (I love your name, and it makes it extra funny that you’re talking about how to make a good resume)

    4. alas rainy again*

      Yes, I came here to concur! describing babysitting as “reinforcing client relationships” is indeed real when you consider that the client is the one paying, i.e. the parent. There is much schmoozing in that job, in addition to kids care. That is crucial to getting more income, like any other job. Of course, that interesting suggestion needs to be fleshed out with quantification and actual examples, like any ChatGpt suggestion, and -indeed- any suggestion when we come to think of it. This excellent site has daily illustrations of out of touch humans (I want to clarify I mean some coworkers of letter-writers)

        1. Candace*

          Exactly. As an employer of babysitters for my children, I would be turned off by that.

      2. metadata minion*

        If I saw that on a resume for a high-school babysitting job, I would think at best “aw, sweetie, you can just use normal language!”. It sounds like a kid trying to make their babysitting job sound more official (and it is an official job, or at least can be!), or who has received really terrible resume-writing advice. And in either case that’s not exactly unusual, but that doesn’t mean people should keep *giving* this kind of terrible advice to high-schoolers.

        1. Sloanicota*

          Yeah honestly even “client” is already a little weird – it’s like when teachers call their students “clients.” I would rather see “‘Five parents recommended me to their acquaintances for further babysitting jobs” than “clients.”

          1. Sneaky Squirrel*

            Yes, AI can help high schoolers come up with some great ideas to develop a list of skills to put on their linkedin and resumes, but someone needs to teach students how to make the language sound authentic. If the school was the one who encouraged the language as it was written, then perhaps the school is not the right choice. If I screened that resume, my reaction would have been similar to metadata minion’s.

          2. Andromeda*

            I actually don’t agree with this — I think the phrase “reinforcing client relationships” is way too jargon-y, but yes I’d refer to the parents who hire a teenage babysitter as that babysitter’s clients (much as I would if they were a dog-walker or gardener, for example). I would not refer to the kids they’re babysitting as clients, but I don’t think that’s what’s being implied here.

            Though it would make me laugh to hear a dog-walker’s dogs referred to as “clients”…

            1. Cmdrshprd*

              Some dog/cat clients can be very particular, needy and demanding. I can tell you from experience.

        2. Falling Diphthong*

          I could very much see this coming from my daughter at high school age. After four years of college she had gotten far better at describing things in clear, straightforward language that conveyed confidence she could back these claims up. But it was a learning process.

        3. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

          It sounds a lot like the “how do you say f*ck around and find out in professional language” type memes/tiktoks, where people take normal sentences and twist them up into corporate jargon. It can be very funny, but fancy language doesn’t actually make it professional!

          1. MarfisaTheLibrarian*

            Or the “how do I list my Dungeons and Dragons game on my resume to look like professional experience” post that I occasionally see float around social media

      3. Smithy*

        I think it’s the case of what will it mean to the reader.

        With babysitting in high school, I do think the reality is that people can end up babysitting family members or close friends of their parents, OR may have done more of setting that up clients, advertising their availability, etc on their own.

        If you’re in group two, showing that those were clients you truly obtained via your efforts – whether recommendations, advertising, or literally the sheer number of families you worked for is valuable. And if you happen to be in that first group, it may be more beneficial to show how you had increased responsibility over time no matter how you got the job. Things like being entrusted to drive them, being hired for continuous care over the summer, etc.

        And quite frankly, this is the real skill for lots of jobs. That dynamic of the value in supporting a lead on XYZ, vs leading on XYZ. Instead of trying to use generalities to make things seem more impressive, you usually gain more by really being able to dig into what you did.

      4. MigraineMonth*

        Maybe the profession has changed a great deal, but I don’t remember schmoozing a single client when I was babysitting.

    5. A. Lab Rabbit*

      If I had a high school or college student come to me with this on their resume to describe a babysitting job (and I used to hire teenagers for restaurant work, way back in the day) I would definitely give them a pass.

      Why? Because they didn’t write this. They either copied it from some other place or had tons of help (too much help, quite frankly) writing their resume. Is that how they’re going to approach their work once I hire them?

      (Also, I suspect that if I actually asked “tell me how you reinforced the client relationships when you were babysitting” in the interview, I would most likely get a blank stare.)

      1. Sloanicota*

        That is a good point and something I hope the school/teacher follows up on – if you use ChatGPT to generate ideas for your resume, you’d better be able to talk in depth about everything you listed, including what it means! If not, this is a major fail.

      2. BetterThanCutCo*

        I mean, my counter argument would be that this at least shows some effort and initiative, which is severely lacking in so so many submissions for entry level positions.

        Do I want someone who is going to be asking for others to help when they’re not experienced with something? Huge Yes. Do I want people who will find tools to help them? Yes again. Sure they need refinement, but that’s what you’re getting when your job opening is attracting resumes that still include babysitting roles!

    6. HonorBox*

      If I got a resume that had “reinforcing client relationship” listed as a duty for a babysitter, I might dislocate my eyes I’d be giving it such a hard side eye. I think it is far better to name what you did to reinforce the client relationship. Because it seems like it was spit out by AI or someone dove really far into a thesaurus. And to be honest, I’m not sure what that really even means.

      1. NigelsMinion*

        This! I can’t tell you how many times I read in a resume that somebody “facilitated” or “coordinated” something. My pet peeve is “managing.” What in the heck does that mean?!? “Manage” could mean anything!

        “Maintaining client relationships” is equally weird. Did you schedule appointments? Did you troubleshoot customer problems? Or did you just maintain eye contact while conversing with a customer?

        I coach resume writers to tell me what their jargon phrases looks like. Literally, close your eyes and describe what I would see when you “manage” something. Are you collecting data, reviewing things for compliance, answering inquiries, etc.?

        Note that I am in the public sector where it’s way more important on your resume to describe what you do than what you’ve accomplished (at least for non-executive roles). Accomplishments can get subjective and squishy, and it’s best to keep it objective and verifiable. However, this is also why government resumes are chapter books, so YMMV.

        1. LaminarFlow*

          Accomplishments that are listed with quantitative data are far more important than what anyone does on a resume. Something like “Created, implemented, and managed Peoject X, resulting in a 60% increase in revenue YoY” tell the interviewer what the candidate did, and why it was important.

          I interview and hire in big tech, and these types of data points are what we look for. If someone managed, facilitated, or maintained something, it usually means they had end to end responsibilities and touch points for a thing, but I need the quantitative data point to tell me why it was important.

          1. Katydid*

            Yes, but remember that OP is a high schooler and is very, very unlikely to have real data points like you mention.

    7. Annony*

      The phrasing is awkward and not at all natural for a high schooler. Can she even say what skills she is attempting to convey with that phrase? It can also come across as overinflating her role similar to how a stay at home parent putting that on their resume and describing responsibilities as schedule management, budget management, personal chef and chauffer would come across as out of touch.

    8. fhqwhgads*

      If we’re talking about a person whose primary job is childcare – so more of a nanny than a babysitter, but potentially a bit of both – sure, referring to client relationships would be applicable, and a valid thing to mention. But if we’re talking about a 15 year old, cash in hand, occasional babysitting type situation – which seems much more likely in this context, it’s puffery, and extremely unnecessary. As unnecessary as a high schooler with a LinkedIn account.

    9. Just Thinkin' Here*

      Having a teenager say they are engaging in client relationship management when they haven’t had any formal education or training in the topic tells me they copied this from the web and likely don’t understand the concept.

    10. Hyaline*

      It’s not the concept, it’s the language. ChatGPT provides BS language when people would be better served just *describing the thing specifically.* Bet dollars to donuts that if you ask the babysitter with “reinforce client relationships” on her resume what this MEANS and an example of a time she did so, you’d get blank stares. But the same babysitter could have been coached (maybe by a less inept career advisor) to include “show you managed the needs of parents and communicated with them” on the resume and do just fine: “Communicated daily updates clearly with parents (or clients, fine)” or “Developed relationships with some families lasting upwards of four years” or “Built my client base through word-of-mouth recommendations from satisfied families”

    11. Artemesia*

      to me this kind of silly inflation of the ordinary with jargon is akin to a housewife putting CEO of Rogers-Smith Inc and then describing meal planning, child care, and cleaning in ornate jargon laden terms. It comes across as ludicrous. It is not likely to help the candidate be taken seriously. (A woman in an interview can draw on household management demands or volunteer work in talking about her skills, but describing them in corporate speak on a resume is death to the application)

  4. mango chiffon*

    If they are all using generative AI for interview answers, then none of them are going to really stand out. Somehow I misread this initially as a college prep for interviews and I thought wow that’s a sure fire way to not come across as unique.

    1. bamcheeks*

      This really depends on how you view the job market. If you view it as a purely competitive process, then everyone’s job is simply to be better than everyone else and there’s no point in any kind of careers teaching. If you think it’s a sorting and matching process, then anything that helps people better articulate their skills and abilities is going to improve the efficacy of the process. And there’s a reasonable argument that Gen-AI can do that— though that doesn’t address the environmental and ethical problems.

      1. whatever*

        I’m confused by your point here – a job search IS a competitive process, just maybe not in a traditional way. I’m competing with others to get something (a job).

        1. bamcheeks*

          An individual hiring process is a competitive process: the job market as a whole is a mixture of competitive and matching. If you are hiring for one person, you want the best person for that job, and as an applicant, you want to beat all the other people who applied, yes. But it is still completely common for one candidate to be objectively or quantifiably “better” (more experience, higher qualifications, more revenue generated etc), but for the hiring committee to decide that someone else is a better *match* (seems more aligned to the mission of the company, has the right attitude, has a specific skill that matches the needs of the team, is more excited about / motivated by the kind of problems you want them to solve, seems like less of a flight risk, lives locally etc.)

          So this isn’t always a good thing– it’s one of the ways hiring committees can justify giving less qualified but more privileged people a job– but sometimes it’s the way that people who didn’t have access to higher qualifications or other opportunities get a start. And it recognises that different jobs need different skills, qualities, values, working styles and motivations, and that matching is at least as much of a qualitative process as it is a quantitative process.

          When you’re looking at the whole labour market, this should be even more true. A well-functioning labour market shouldn’t be simply identifying “the best” people and assigning them into the “the best” jobs, and then “the next best” people into “the next best” jobs, all the way down to “the worst” jobs. It should be sorting people into the jobs most suited to them, according to the wildly different needs and contributions people are able to make. If that’s the goal, then helping everyone get better at articulating what they are capable of and what they want from a job helps the system function more efficiently, because it makes it easier for employers to find the best match rather than the best interviewee, or the person with the best grades, or the person with the highest revenue. And on the flipside, when it works, it works for both sides: it means that the person who eg. has the best marks in biology but also doesn’t like being outside doesn’t get hired into a job that spends two days a week collecting water samples from a variety of remote locations.

          1. Area Woman*

            I LOVE THIS. This is exactly how I approach hiring and how I will if I ever am looking again. I am honest with people when I interview “hey, this place can be chaotic, I love it, there are lots of interesting challenges and we wear a lot of hats. However a lack of structure is not for everyone…” And I ensure that I delve into their skills to make sure it is a match both ways.

            I feel like there were parts of me in the past who thought, oh this person has the skills, they are nice, I should give them a job. When there were intangible things at the time I didn’t have the skills to notice or delve into. Now I know how to identify it and I am sooo much better at hiring, and my employees are much happier.

            1. StarTrek Nutcase*

              I would argue that the “best” person IS the one with both hard and soft skills, both tangible and intangible. Naturally, knowing which skills are actually needed for a specific job is step one. And IMO when hiring, my sole responsibility is to my employer, not society (any more than it is to applicants). And it’s incumbent on hiring managers to remember all hiring has a subjective component, even if subconsciously, and we should make every effort to hire objectively the “best” person for that specific job.

      2. Onyx*

        But how is ChatGPT going to articulate the student’s skills without the student first having to identify their skills and tell ChatGPT (in the form of text)? Either ChatGPT is going to be spitting out a description of skills people commonly claim that the student may or may not have (and may or may not be relevant to the specific job posting), or the student has to already have written up their skills in some form, and ChatGPT is just polishing the writing (hopefully without introducing inaccuracies).

        Getting another person or a software to edit the phrasing of your self-written content isn’t inappropriate, but IMO it’s very different than getting “job-search advice” from ChatGPT or having it write a first draft. If you’re going to ChatGPT to figure out what *kind* of skills people describe for ideas, I don’t really see hoe teaching students to use ChatGPT for that would be beneficial over using the same time and resources to show them how to find human-produced content on the same topic (and teaching them how to assess the credibility of the source).

        1. bamcheeks*

          I agree with everything you’ve said here and I don’t think it’s a rebuttal of my point!

      3. MigraineMonth*

        I would be *very* surprised if generative AI was any good at helping high schoolers articulate their skills and abilities, since the difficult part of that problem is that the students themselves probably don’t know. It’s a garbage-in, obfuscated-and-possibly-hallucinated-garbage-out problem.

        Just giving a high schooler a list of possible job skills and having them check off things they might be good at (or some sort of skills assessment) would be a much more reliable way to help students learn their job skills/strengths.

    2. LaminarFlow*

      This totally depends on how ChatGPT is framed to use. Yes, it can be a great resource to provide inspo/jumping off points for what types of questions might be asked (ex: behavioral style questions that require responses to be answered in the STAR format). However, while ChatGPT can be a great resource for this, I would heavily stress that this isn’t the only resource, and the responses typically benefit from being tweaked to sound authentic to the person saying them/writing them on a resume. Using ChatGPT or any other generative AI tool for this type of thing isn’t bad, but it is a new way to work. People who don’t know what Behavioral Interviews are like will get to see a variety of responses that are probably pretty good, depending on the prompt given. But, the fine print of tweaking the responses to sound authentic is key.

      1. Sloanicota*

        Yeah, look, I dislike AI generated writing but there are actually a bunch of jobs who are not looking for employees who ‘stand out’ and who don’t actually depend on strong writing skills, so it’s probably pretty appropriate for those situations, which would include many teen jobs. However, note that common sense is a requirement for most jobs, and leaving AI generated garble on your resume if you don’t know what it means would fail that bar.

      2. Annony*

        I agree that it can be a good tool for providing a starting point. Sometimes it is much easier to heavily edit (or even completely rewrite) garbage than to put words on a blank page.

        1. Pay no attention...*

          This is how I use Chat-GPT. I can babble a bunch of half-baked thoughts, rough sentences, and key points into the AI and prompt it to analyze this data and create a concise/persuasive/professional/etc. paragraph, slide deck, email… The better I am at writing a prompt and then refining my prompt based on what the AI spits out, the better results I get. I’m not a writer and the kind of writing I do is not something we would ever hire a writer for. My employer wants me to use the tools available to work faster doing the parts of my job that aren’t in my job description so that I can do the parts of my job that are. I’m getting better at writing prompts that produces results that are usable. This is a new marketable skill because, while I could probably get there on my own eventually, or researching on Google for articles etc., I’ll take most of the day and I don’t have that kind of time anymore.

    3. Jamjari*

      When I was job searching, I asked it for a list of question for a particular job – then I fed it my resume and asked it to evaluate my responses to each question, which I also fed in. It provided suggested updates. None of them were anything I’d use verbatim but they gave me ideas on how to tweak my own response. None of the exact question were asked either but I was able to use that prep to more easily answer them.

      1. Artemesia*

        A competent counselor might be able to help kids use AI to tweek their resume. The problem is that 9 our of 10 students is going to copy this stuff verbatim. It takes some sophistication to use it artfully. (as anyone who has ever seen all the cut and paste from Encylopedias back in the day and websites these days in student work). Today if you want to teach students to write and be sure you are developing their skills you pretty much have to evaluate it in in-class exercises.

    4. WhoCares*

      Using AI just shows that you have no creative skills and it’s a form of cheating.

      1. Superhero Girl*

        I used AI to help me prep for my last job interview. I entered the job description, my resume, and a copy of my cover letter. I asked it to generate possible interview questions that I could use to help myself prepare. Then I asked it to generate questions I could ask at the end of the interview, and it came up with some great ideas.

        I don’t see how that’s “cheating” or demonstrating “no creative skills.”

        LW didn’t say they were using ChatGPT to create answers that were being memorized, they said that they were using it for interview prep and practice. I think this is a great way to promote equity among students.

        1. Wilbur*

          NPR wrote something about AI back in January, it highlighted the difference in results from top performers and bottom performers. “While the bottom third of scientists see little benefit, the output of top researchers nearly doubles.” I think your use case is a great example of that-you’re creating a more tailored study session and more effectively preparing rather than replacing yourself in the interview process with a generic answer.

          https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/01/07/g-s1-41290/what-americas-top-economists-are-saying-about-ai-and-inequality

          1. Superhero Girl*

            What an interesting read!

            Not to toot my own horn, but I would agree. And how strong of a tool could it be for our students IF (bold, italicized, underlined) we could teach them how to use it effectively. :)

  5. Mackenna*

    No 4, can you talk to your colleague in person, and then ask them to look into their outlook settings with you there? (I am assuming you are using the office version here.) I am in a role where the people in my group rotate regularly and I need to then be added on/taken off as a calendar delegate for several people after each rotation. I can log tickets with IT, but often it is quicker to walk over to the person in question and talk them through doing it themselves. Get your colleague to go into his calendar, then go to to File, Account settings, Delegate options and look around. I don’t know what settings your organisation will have but there is often a field where the delegates are listed, and you can delete yourself out of it. Another thing you can try is looking for the check box saying delegates will receive copies of all invitations. If that is checked, uncheck it. Given IT hasn’t done anything for 10 years (!!) this may be worth a try. Good luck.

    1. Mockingbird*

      And if he was clueless about such things when you were his assistant, he still will be. But his current assistant will know how to get it done for you. They might even be wondering why you’re still on there and be glad to get it fixed.

      1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        yes I wonder why OP hasn’t talked to that person’s assistant, unless things changed and he no longer has one at all.

      2. umami*

        Yes, exactly! My new assistant just helped me get the delegation part done properly because he noticed he wasn’t able to view everything the way he needed to. And we discovered that someone else had a role they didn’t need to have re: my calendar. If I were OP, I would definitely go talk to former director’s current assistant to have the delegations updated to exclude her.

      3. Ganymede II*

        +1 Go to the assistant! They will know where those settings are, because they’re probably using it themselves.

    2. Jen*

      Speaking of calendar settings, that may be what LW 1’s colleague is using.

      He’s assigning people a meeting time without asking them for input on their schedules, but Outlook’s scheduling assistant shows which times people already have blocked off as unavailable on their calendars. Maybe he thinks using that counts as asking them for input, and needs the fact that it doesn’t fully count actually explained to him?

      1. Insert Clever Name Here*

        If these are board members they won’t be employees of the company, though, and Outlook can’t show you availability for people outside your organization (as I understand it).

        1. Sloanicota*

          Yeah and in my experience Board Members, being often retired people, may not keep a calendar at all.

        2. umami*

          They might have an organization email/calendar, but it is likely not kept updated to where the scheduling assistant is effective.

        3. Also-ADHD*

          At my workplace, Board Members have an internal email (it’s how they access Board docs too) and the expectation to update their calendar internally, so I’m sure it varies.

      2. GreenApplePie*

        The scheduling assistant can only “see” whatever is on someone’s Outlook calendar, and many people will put private things like medical appointments on a separate personal calendar. In a perfect world everyone would just block off that time on Outlook as a vaguely named meeting so it shows up on scheduling assistant but in practice (at my workplace anyways) that would get you a stern email from HR about stealing time.

      3. Also-ADHD*

        I was really confused by that example, because I work in a role where I work with Board Members and C-Suite routinely and sometimes set meetings (sometimes their EAs do) by using the calendar availability. That is totally normal to do at both my current mid-sized company and some divisions of the Fortune 100 I was with last (some senior leaders in particular divisions there DID get fussy and want everything through a particular EA / want special attention for scheduling, but I find that kind of prima dona in a world where we can all set our calendars – or have your EA set it – like adults).

        I get it’s not normal to use the Calendar scheduling everywhere, but this sounded less like “get a clue” and more like “pick up our organizational norms” (which should also be much more explicit in things like that, or at least people should get immediate feedback). Though maybe it is more obvious at LW’s org than I’m giving credit (it’s just a short letter), but I literally just set up committee meetings for a work group that includes several Board Members and most of the C-Suite, and I just went by calendars – like we usually do where I work and as is my preference, rather than trying to get a bunch of information individually.

        1. Bike Walk Bake Books*

          Could be a nonprofit organization with volunteer board members who aren’t inside the organization’s IT systems.

          1. Also-ADHD*

            Sure. I’m not confused that it’s “correct” to check with them directly in some cases. I’m confused if the LW seemed to think people should just know how their particular org functions, or if the employee was told their calendars were not kept internally? LW seemed to think it was a workplace norm that all BOD meetings were scheduled by directly requesting availability from them, rather than with the Calendar function, and that’s not been my experience — different orgs calendar differently.

    3. Snow Globe*

      If that doesn’t work, I’d recommend LW4 just change their own settings – instead of sending these invites to a folder, set the rule to permanently delete them.

      And I agree with Alison – there is no reason you should ever get in trouble for this. You’ve asked IT and your former boss multiple times; it is not on you.

    4. Contracts Killer*

      It looks like you can also do it yourself. I just found this on a Microsoft forum:

      Stop being a delegate for someone else:

      On the Tools menu, select Accounts.

      Select the Exchange account that you want to change, select Advanced, and then select the Delegates tab.

      Under Open these additional mailboxes, select the person for whom you want to stop being a delegate, and then select Remove Delete.

    5. Ginger Baker*

      Yes I came here to say this! Just walk into his office and say “hey do you have two minutes so I can fix this calendar issue? Can I have the mouse for one minute?” Obvs aim for a time when he isn’t already on a call but yeah. Just go handle it in person and be done with it!

      1. Sloanicota*

        It’s honestly weird that OP didn’t do this in the weeks immediately after they left the role when they realized this is still happening. That would have been completely unobjectionable. NOW it’s a little weird!

        1. Venus*

          It’s normal to expect that someone else would fix it, and OP may not have known how to do so. Any weirdness now is from the manager and IT because I can’t believe IT doesn’t know how to fix this!

  6. Daria grace*

    #2 while ChatGPT may regurgitate plausible enough answers for this task, I’d be concerned by the role modelling to students starting careers that it’s acceptable to use unreliable and ethically problematic shortcuts in business contexts rather than seeking out ethical sources of quality information. ChatGPT is based on stolen material and uses environmentally damaging amounts of water and power to do its calculations.

    1. Testing*

      I’m afraid that, while you may be right, you are wildly out of step with much of the working world. Most people starting their careers now are definitely required to at least familiarize themselves with using AI, and probably also use it in their work already.

      1. A Girl Named Fred*

        I think wildly out of step is a bit overblown – I’m sure there are places out there requiring it, but there are also places banning it and everything else in between. Personally, my boss (who coincidentally is just as incompetent as the coworker a different OP today mentioned) was telling me the other day about how he used ChatGPT to write emails and told my coworkers about how they could use it. I explained why I don’t want to use it (all the reasons Daria grace mentioned) and he dropped it.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          This. Acting like it’s some foregone conclusion that we couldn’t possibly stop just because tech companies keep forcing it into their software is not it. We are still at the very nascent stage of this stuff and can absolutely push back on its use instead of giving up and saying “Well, everyone’s going to need to use it” without actually giving any thought to why they think people need to use it or in what jobs.

          1. Tea Monk*

            Yes, especially with young people who need actual skills. Using the plagiarism machine is not something that’s going to get jobs, because they won’t build skills. If they really need to cut corners they can learn on the fly.

            The idea that teenagers don’t know how to cheat on homework and need to learn to rip off other’s work is wild.

        2. Jamjari*

          Either way students nowadays need to be familiar with it, and need to understand its uses cases and limitations. They may not have the choice not to use it.

      2. Fives*

        Technical writer here and nope. Not “familiarized” with it or using it. I write my own work.

        1. Wren_Song*

          While I also firmly agree with writing my own work, I would urge you to reconsider getting “familiarized” with AI as a tool in technical writing. It is not going away, and you will likely need to have conversations with clients and colleagues about its limitations and benefits. As an analogy, a good defense attorney knows the prosecution’s case inside and out. Maintaining an understanding of the current field is a good thing even when you don’t like the tools.

          1. Ganymede II*

            As the first message indicated, ChatGPT is trained on copyrighted materials, using text to learn without the permission of the text’s author. For people for who writing is a job, this means it took the fruit of their labor without fairly paying them (or paying them at all).

            In a specific example, maybe ChatGPT crawled this very website, to learn about work-life advice. It used this text to learn, and may use these learnings to answer a question someone asks about work. This means that the person asking would never come to Alison’s website, earning her the ad revenue that pays her, but it would still be based on the work she has done – without ever acknowledging or paying her.

            1. Sarrrra*

              That’s why it’s bad for content creators for people to use ChatGPT. But nothing about why it would be cheating for the person. How does it matter whether they read the advice there or here?

    2. Evvy*

      I agree with this! If anything, students should be supported in learning to push back against something that may be presented to them as a regular tool in future work environments without any discussion of its ethical weight (as so many things are—not just gen AI!) — what is described in the letter just seems misleading on the part of the career center, and I feel like it may get kids into trouble with prospective employers who don’t support + can clearly spot the use of gen AI.

      1. bleh*

        Most people who ever make a difference in the world have been “wildly out of step with much of the working world.” Going along with bad ideas is not wisdom, it’s capitulation. It’s like buying from Amazon because it’s easy and everyone does it. Still environmentally and labor relationally unethical.

        1. Testing*

          I don’t buy from Amazon.

          But my pretty old-fashioned employer in a boring sector in a not-particularly-hip country is encouraging us to familiarise ourselves with different kinds of AI. They’re not outright forcing us to do so, but it’d sound VERY strange if one of us just went ”nope, I’m against it” and didn’t do it. A bit like those people back in the mid or late nineties who said ”university can’t force us to use email” and demanded everything on paper… which didn’t last long.

          And I’m mid-career! I can’t imagine a new or potential employee saying ”I won’t touch AI”. I’ve heard people refuse to fly for work because of environmental reasons, but not this.

    3. a bright young reporter with a point of view*

      Also, if you’re a student, isn’t the point to actually learn something? If you just tell the statistical phrasemaker to do something, then you’re not learning how to do it yourself.

      1. LaminarFlow*

        Learning how to craft a great prompt for a Gen AI tool is 10000% a skill that today’s students need to cultivate. Students in previous generations used an abacus to do math, but now we have calculators that depend on how the question is asked to give answers, which shows that the student is engaged in learning. The same rules apply with Gen AI. The fine print to stress: Using critical thinking to revise the responses to sound authentic/applicable/factual, is required for quality work.

        I work in GenAI, and I interview for tech roles at one of the big tech companies. Of course I can spot a non-revised GenAI response that has been copied & pasted, which is really not the way to use it. Using ChatGPT to respond to emails seems far more time consuming than simply responding, but using it to get a beat on how to respond to behavioral interview questions is great. I hope they cross reference this with YouTube videos from content creators who have experience with giving behavioral style interviews to stress the point that the responses need to be authentic to the person saying them.

        1. a bright young reporter with a point of view*

          Honestly, I straight up disagree that statistical phrasemakers (which, I think it’s a stretch to call AI) are somehow comparable to abaci or calculators. Learning how to use an indexer like Google is worth it (although it ain’t what it used to be). Learning how to use a thing that famously gives weird nonsense lines as a replacement for learning how to write one’s own things seems like a massive brain drain in the works. If you aren’t significantly MORE practiced at writing from scratch, or based on various templates, you’re not as likely to have the ear to edit LLM outputs.

          And you can just look up articles that list common interview questions so I’m not sure how an LLM is somehow helping here.

      2. Pescadero*

        Learning how to drive a front end loader doesn’t help you dig with a shovel – but you still get holes, and you still learned something.

        1. a bright young reporter with a point of view*

          I would say it’s more comparable to, say, setting dynamite will get you a hole but and teach you something, but probably not the kind of hole you wanted and you still don’t know how to do good digging with a shovel OR an excavator.

    4. Student-Student Nurse*

      I second, third and fourth this!

      and as we see companies like Microsoft walk away from this technology, we should be putting even less stock in the ‘necessity’ of it

      1. LaminarFlow*

        Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, Apple, and all of the other big tech companies are absolutely not walking away from Gen AI technology. I work in the space, and the race is on to be 1st with the most comprehensive & reliable AI anything and everything. It will take some time, but it will not go away.

      2. Meg*

        I refuse to trust Microsoft’s judgment on anything until they figure out how to make their email search less of a complete disaster than it is now.

    5. Falling Diphthong*

      It’s also problematic in giving the idea that ChatGPT is good at providing end product, and no one will be able to tell the end product is either ChatGPT, or dumb and they attribute the dumb to you.

      I know people have used it to write basic computer code (which they then revise and adapt), and to improve the flow of writing (which they then revise and adapt). It’s not good at last steps.

      The same for analytic AI–it can be really valuable as a step for analyzing large data sets, but someone does need to understand what it’s doing, and whether the predictive model is based on something like “I noticed all photos of cancer cells had a ruler and the distractors did not, leading to 100% correct identification.”

    6. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Thank you. I keep imagining guidance counsellors saying “Use ChatGPT!” to students who want to get into lines of work where ChatGPT is absolutely going to harvest their work without permission or compensation, or is going to set their sector’s work back by decades because of the environmental impact. It’s not some neutral force in the universe that we just have to accept!

    7. AttemptsAreMade*

      Came here to say exactly this! I refuse to use it at work as an adult, and I would absolutely never suggest it to students. There is no need to be unethical in one’s actions just because other people are.

      1. WhoCares*

        10000000 percent agree. Learn to write things your own self and don’t cheat. We managed to do that before we can do it again.

    8. Whale I Never*

      I’m relieved to see some of these comments. Most people in my personal/social circle are very anti-GenAI, so whenever I see people confidently declaring “everyone is using ChatGPT, everyone will HAVE to use ChatGPT in the future” it makes me very alarmed.

      I’ve honestly only used it twice–once for a mundane “write this email”-type task, and once to try and help me with a writing project along the lines of what I might do for my job. It was honestly just BAD at the latter, and rewriting the prompt enough to get something good took more effort than just writing the thing myself. With regard to the former, it was fine, but I decided the time and effort it saved was just nowhere near worth the power usage it generated.

      Having said that, the cost-benefit analysis is, of course, based on my ~20 years of developing planning, drafting, writing, and editing skills without the use of GenAI, so I am always extra worried when it comes to students who don’t yet have that experience. The skills needed to evaluate the result that something else has come up with are very different than the skills needed to develop something yourself–and, in my experience, having the latter is one of the best ways to hone the former!

  7. LoPerry*

    Re: letter 2: There is absolutely NO way I’d have my child setup a LinkedIn profile/account while she’s 1. still a minor; 2. still in high school; 3. is going off to community college in the fall; and 4. already has a job that she’ll be able to keep.
    99% of high school and early college students don’t need LinkedIn.

    1. Daria grace*

      Unless there’s some really good reason for it (like they already run their own business) I wouldn’t encourage minors to join LinkedIn either. It’s not going to be that useful and despite LinkedIn being meant to be for professional purposes I’ve heard a bunch of stories of people encountering creeps there. That feels like especially a risk for teens if their LinkedIn profile includes info that makes them locatable offline (school, workplace ect)

    2. PurpleCattledog*

      Learning employment norms for job hunting at school was standard when I was a kid. We’d read up about careers, prepare CVs etc. It was about normalising work stuff, and educating kids on options. And then we’d apply for jobs in reach of where we were (supermarket, maccas etc).

      Job hunting has gone online, it’s no surprise that schools have followed.

      It’s all well and good to say if they can’t do it perfectly schools shouldn’t be involved – but that pre-supposes that these kids have another avenue to get introduced to employment options while they’re still at school and making decisions with long lasting impacts. Fine for the rich kids with their old boy/girl networks. Not so good for the kids with functionally illiterate parents who don’t have a network to fall back on.

      I’m a big supporter of improving career education in schools – but that’s a long way from giving up because it’ll be contrived or imperfect.

      1. TeachingJobSeeking*

        The norms of job hunting vary a lot by type of job and, to a lesser extent, industry and the skills/expectations for the types of jobs teenagers tend to get are vastly different from many other environments. Teaching the wrong things is actively harmful. If they talk about a range of options and how it’s constantly changing maybe that would be helpful. Straightforward “thus is how to do it” almost certainly would not be.

      2. metadata minion*

        I think it’s a good idea to teach kids *about* LinkedIn and similar online job sites, but that doesn’t necessarily mean having them create their own real LinkedIn account.

      3. Observer*

        It’s all well and good to say if they can’t do it perfectly schools shouldn’t be involved – but that pre-supposes that these kids have another avenue to get introduced to employment options while they’re still at school and making decisions with long lasting impacts.

        Except that it’s not just “not perfect”. Some of this is actively harmful. And it is the *most* harmful to the kids you seem to be worrying about.

        Teaching kids *about* linked in? Yes – if it’s done reasonably *accurately*. Having them create a linkedin profile? No. Not only because it’s not helpful, but there are some significant issues.

        Teaching kids *about* resumes? Sure. But again, reasonable accuracy is the key. Actively encouraging terrible resume practices, and failing to even mention the distinction in hiring and employment practices in different types of fields is actively problematic, especially for students who have neither a network nor a background that can alert them to some of this stuff.

      4. Ann O'Nemity*

        Yes, this. If high schools students aren’t getting interview prep help from school, where should they be getting it?

        I understand that not all high school students immediately enter formal interview processes for professional careers, but in my city, nearly half of high school students work—many out of financial necessity to support their families. For them, interview prep isn’t just an academic exercise; it’s a practical skill they need NOW. While the quality of instruction may vary, dismissing it entirely overlooks the reality that many students are already navigating interviews for part-time jobs, internships, apprenticeships, and college. Equipping them with these skills early can help them secure better opportunities, both now and in the future.

      5. Wilbur*

        Linkedin is a social media platform, and participating exposes them to the same kind of toxic people that are on the rest of social media. The kind of posts I see on LinkedIn are either bland corporate nothings, “inspirational” BS, or weird hustle culture nonsense.

      6. Different Name This Time*

        Agreed – a lot of the service-type jobs that teenagers typically take on have moved to online applications as well, so developing those kinds of tech literacy skills is relevant pretty early on.

        Beyond job searching, a lot of kinds are interested in getting involved in volunteer or service opportunities, and interview skills are pretty important for those as well.

    3. bamcheeks*

      Minors using social media under their real names is definitely a concern. But the positive argument for young people having access to LinkedIn is that it’s _
      AMAZING for careers research. You can go and look up what people with X degree from Y university are doing now, and I guarantee it’ll be wider and more diverse than whatever the university promotes as “what out graduates end up doing”. You can get a realistic idea of how long people spend in anpprenticeships and entry-level jobs and what those entry level jobs are. I would absolutely be recommending that any 16-18yos aiming for professional careers are doing that kind of research, even if you create a fake / not real name accoint for it. At university level I would recommend using a real name or real-initial account, even if you keep the information fairly too-level, because it means you can reach out to people to ask them about their work.

    4. Alumni interviewer*

      I am an alumni interviewer for undergrad applicants to my alma matter. The strongest applicants almost always have LinkedIn pages, so I am extremely skeptical of this advice that “high school students shouldn’t have LinkedIn pages.” Granted, this is an Ivy League institution, so the strongest applicants are the crème de la crème of their high school classes and have real accomplishments to brag about. Still, this pattern suggests that learning how to market yourself is a beneficial skill.

      1. Holly.*

        I agree. Knowing about LinkedIn and how to set up a page is useful info. The kids can always delete their page afterwards. It’s also a useful lesson in how your online presence can influence future jobs.

      2. Expectations*

        What do they put on it? It’s supposed to be about employment history. The strongest students I knew/know devote the majority of their time to school activities. Personally, I wasn’t allowed to work because my job was school (we were not wealthy but my parents were both teachers and school was prioritized; FWIW I went to a top10 school undergrad and an Ivy for grad school). I had real accomplishments, but they were tied to school and school-related activities. They would not be things I’d ever put on LinkedIn, in part because LinkedIn isn’t designed/organized to highlight them.

        1. Seashell*

          Even if school is the main focus, kids can have summer jobs.

          My son is in college now and has a LinkedIn account with his summer jobs and school information. I can’t remember when he set it up, but it may have been high school or early in college. I know some of his friends from high school use LinkedIn too, because they’ve been suggested to me to connect with.

        2. No LinkedIn Profile*

          I agree – when I was a student, my accomplishments also focused on school activities, clubs, volunteer work, and skills development related to a part time job around school stuff. I thought LinkedIn was more about strictly professional accomplishments so only my part time job would’ve gone on there.

          IDK I regularly get the impression LinkedIn is mostly focused on the IT sector anyway so if you’re in a different field it’s not going to be as helpful for you.

        3. Apex Mountain*

          LinkedIn is functionally pretty similar to a resume, so imo you could put those same accomplishments in an LI profile.

        4. Alumni interviewer*

          Extracurricular activities (with an emphasis on accomplishments), academic coursework and relevant AP scores, research/senior projects, internships, volunteer work, language/coding skills, etc.

          If anything, the resumes are too long. They’re not wanting for content. I have noticed that some of the better ones are functional, unlike conventional resumes (eg, sections entitled “science,” “journalism,” “debate”).

          One particularly memorable resume noted that the high school student held a private pilot’s license and was a flight instructor.

        5. Yankees fans are awesome!*

          Years ago, when I was an assistant manager at a local movie theater, we were hiring for a couple part-time positions. We got inundated with applications. The kid I hired was a self-described “B” student who was his class’s treaurer and also volunteered a few hours a week at an animal shelter. I never forgot that kid. Grades are important, of course, but I’ll still take that kid any day over all else, with varied intetests outside of school. So, a LI profile would have worked very well for him at that time.

        6. Different Name This Time*

          Volunteer and community service positions? A lot of high-achieving students have substantial out-of-school commitments like those, even if they have little employment experience.

      3. A.P.*

        “The strongest applicants almost always have LinkedIn pages”

        Have you considered this may be correlated to economic and social status? Are the students with LinkedIn pages also the ones with wealthy parents who attend top-ranked schools, with all the advantages that entails?

          1. A.P.*

            You just said that they’re the “crème de la crème of their high school classes”.

            That’s not the same as acknowledging that there are reasons that go beyond the students’ abilities for the reason why some students may present themselves better.

            Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time. Volunteering to interview college applicants is laudable. All I’m trying to say is that it’s likely a tail wagging the dog effect: It’s not that if you’re an accomplished applicant, you get yourself a LinkedIn account. Rather, the reason they have accounts in the first place because of the same economic and social drivers that allow them to have strong extracurriculars, internships etc. A kid who didn’t grow up in the same environment wouldn’t have those opportunities, and in fact may never have even heard of LinkedIn.

        2. Apex Mountain*

          LinkedIn is free (there is a paid option but most don’t need it). Not sure what wealthy parents have to with having a LinkedIn account

          1. A.P.*

            If you’re in an upper-middle class environment then likely your parents have LinkedIn accounts. Maybe your guidance counselor suggests it as an option. Or one of the tutors at your SAT test prep course. Or maybe your friend who’s also applying to the Ivies set one up.

            But kids who aren’t from that social and economic setting are much less likely to be plugged into the whole ‘applying for college industry’. They may not have ever even heard of LinkedIn, so the idea of getting an account would never have even occurred to them.

    6. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

      One of the benefits of being on LinkedIn is making the connections. A college student’s profile can stay fairly basic, but a LinkedIn account allows them to 1) connect to others they come in contact with during class, internships, outside activities in ways that aren’t “follow me on Insta” which can then help build a base of a professional network, and 2) establish a platform on which they can do exploration of career paths that could lead to better early decision making.

  8. MaskedMarvel*

    chatgpt is surprisingly good at interview prepared for behavioral questions.

    my wife hadn’t interviewed in many years and behavioral questions were a decided weakness of hers. that certain questions might come up wouldn’t occur to her, or that certain answers might be problematic.

    I created an assistant to act as an interviewer. I would feed it the job description, the company website, her resume, and ask it to give her behavioral questions.

    it really helped her prepare better.

    1. Superhero Girl*

      Yes! I commented above that I did the same thing.
      I’ve never left an interview feeling better than that interview (and I got the job)

    2. State worker*

      Maybe I didn’t prompt it correctly, because when I fed ChatGPT a duty statement, it basically just turned the bullet points into question format. That’s like first grade reading comprehension. I didn’t find it particularly helpful for interview prep.

  9. Greyhound*

    I want to reiterate something Alison said about ChatGPT (or similar services), because I think a lot of people aren’t familiar with it. In the context here, do not use it to give you the content of answers – eg what should I say if I’m asked about a time I messed up. Do use it to ask, what sort of questions might I get in an interview at a teapot factory. It’s lousy at the first and even if it’s not the answer risks being very generic. It’s very good at the latter – it won’t pick up everything but it will give you a very good steer. You might ask for hints on ways to structure your answer and see what comes up. In other words, it’s much better at the how to do things that the what to do. just my experience, but it can be a ver useful tool.

    1. KJC*

      I would also ask it to pretend it is interviewing you and then give you feedback on how you could improve the answers you provided. I would suspect it’s pretty good.

      1. KJC*

        To clarify – what I mean is, a student can prompt it, “Can you please give me 3 interview questions, which I will answer, and then can you give me feedback about my responses?” The Chat GPT can say “Tell me a little about yourself,” “Tell me about one of your biggest accomplishments,” and “Tell me about a time you made a mistake and how you responded.” And the kid can type their answers and then remind it they would like feedback. I would bet the ChatGPT wills say things like, “Such and such is a good answer about a mistake you made. However, it would be stronger if you also described how you made a plan to not repeat the mistake again.”

        2. Your Former Password Resetter*

          TBH this is interviewing 101, and I’m not sure why ChatGPT is even used here? Isn’t it much more straightforward to just… teach the kids that stuff directly, instead of trying to poke a generative algorithm into giving basic and generic advice?

          Like it’s not going to be useful as a source of in-depth feedback (or probably any feedback), and most of this information could be skimmed from an article about popular interview questions. That’s where the algorithm got the info from after all.

          1. Ginger Baker*

            It’s about time spent practicing! Most people are not going to have someone available to coach them through interview question practice more than once for say an hour (if they even have that). ChatGPT – while terrible at supplying answers since they should come of course from your own unique experience – is a chance to get a lot more TIME in practicing replies to (relatively applicable to your job search) behavioral questions you expect to come across.

          2. Malarkey01*

            It’s the feedback part that’s so helpful when practicing. I use ChatGP a lot at work to help improve writing for different audiences. It’s surprisingly very useful at pointing out when your writing is going over/under your audiences head, using too much insider jargon, when you should edit down or expound more, etc.

            I could see a huge benefit in trying your interview answers out and getting feedback on them (and honestly most of these kids are not going to have someone sit for hours with each of them and practice/provide in depth feedback).

          3. SunnyShine*

            It’s extremely privileged to have someone teach you the “system”. As someone whose parents were blue-collar workers, I was the first in my family to get a degree. Luckily, I had a couple of contacts who taught me. Aside from the first person who helped me, I never received feedback from an interview. Most don’t.

            The plus side of using GPT is that you can interact in a role play setting or get it to reword answers that matches your style.

          4. Apex Mountain*

            I’ve recently used ChatGPT to help me put together a 90 day plan for a VP level job (which I was offered). I didn’t use it verbatim but with some editing and refining it gave me alot to work with

    2. fhqwhgads*

      Going a step farther:
      If the school counselor is directing the kids to use it for the types of questions they may be asked, that’s reasonable advice.
      If they’re suggesting using it for the content of answers OR if they’re simply not making it clear which they’re suggesting, that’s yet another school-based career counseling epic fail, and worth complaining about.

    3. Superhero Girl*

      And the even better prompt is:
      “You are an experienced hiring manager at a teapot factory looking to hire someone to paint teapots full time. Here’s the job posting that you published: “copy/paste.”
      Please generate 5 interview questions that you would ask to help you find the best candidate.”

  10. Pumpkin cat*

    For #1, will it be anonymous to him? And will his boss see these comments? If so, I’d give him a justifyingly bad review. Talk about his ineptitude, speaking when he shouldn’t, pandering thank yous instead of apologizing for his mistakes, causing you more work than necessary.

    Dude is experiencing mediocre man syndrome and has a good shot at eclipsing you someday – shut this down. He’s already making more money than he should as you point out. Bet he wouldn’t hesitate to do it to you in a heartbeat.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      I don’t think there’s any reason to approach this competitively or with hostility. If OP is really concerned about disparate pay, they need to raise that with HR or as a group, or decide that the company is systemically sexist and nope out; it’s not the fault of one individual. I agree that the concerns with this employees’ performance should be flagged, but it should be constructive and objective, not a personal takedown.

      1. KateM*

        Disparate pay depends a lot on how long ago did OP hold this same position and if there have been some general pay increases in the company perhaps.

        1. linger*

          OP1 only has a few years’ seniority on Bob, so we should trust OP1 that the 1/3 difference in wage is not entirely explained by increases over that time.
          True, Bob is a few years older than OP1 was at the time she was performing the same entry-level role (hence, as stated, OP1 is only one year older than Bob now), so the discrepancy may be as much age- as gender- related. Or maybe Bob completed some extra educational qualification in that extra few years before starting, which could have boosted his initial salary level. But regardless, it’s still a discrepancy not reflecting any meaningful difference in the role itself, and especially not reflecting the standard of performance of that role.

          1. KateM*

            I just seem to remember that the company I worked for a couple years ago had a big overhaul of wages (as in increase of base salary across the board) in 2023, to adjust to inflation. I have no doubt whatsoever that people who are in the same position as I was in 2022 have clearly bigger salaries in 2025.

            1. linger*

              OP1 commented below. Bob did indeed benefit from a substantial salary increase for that role: an increase that OP1 (and her successor, also female) pushed for, but neither benefitted directly from. So, maybe not gender-/age-/education-based, but still OP1 can be excused for feeling bitter in the circumstances.

          2. Jen*

            As for gender, you’re right that it could be gender-related and at the same time for all we know LW 1 is male too.

            1. linger*

              My assumption was based on the fact that Bob thanks OP1 for their “leadership” after being corrected, rather than owning & apologising for his mistakes. That’s consistent with a certain type of patronising sexism, and OP1’s reaction suggests that’s how it’s landing. But sure, that’s not any kind of proof. Bob might well be equally inconsiderate of all his coworkers (as seen in his approach to scheduling).

          3. Great Frogs of Literature*

            I mean, both can be true. The company overhauled salaries at the start of 2024, and OP now makes more money than Bob (I hope), but spent the first several years of their career making significantly less money than Bob is now. That’s not inherently “unfair” in the way that companies look at salary (in that the salaries are appropriately benchmarked among each other), but if OP is looking at Bob’s work and saying, “Employer got 5x as much work out of me for 2/3rds as much money as they’re paying Bob,” of course it rankles! I’d feel the same way, for all that I’d try to talk myself out of it.

            Or possibly Bob was offered/negotiated to a better salary, and there was a while when he was actually making more money than OP. That’s also an option.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        Reflecting, especially on the use of your word, justifyingly, I think I got the tone of your comment wrong. You don’t tell OP to take him down before he eclipses them, more ‘how would you feel if you say nothing at all, and then he eclipses you’, I think?

      3. LaminarFlow*

        Totally! Also, does this guy know that he is supposed to ask board members for a good time to meet? TBH, it seems like a gigantic bottleneck to ask a group of people when they can meet since…..they can update their calendars to reflect availability, and respond yes or no to a request. If he has been talked to about these things, then sure, go ahead with giving critical feedback that isn’t a personal assault on him. But, if nobody has bothered to mention that he needs to ask people when to schedule something before he schedules it, he can’t be held accountable for using a different method.

        1. OP#1*

          Hey there! This is a fair point, but I’m not his boss, so I can’t know. To me, it seems like four years into the working world, you should know that when scheduling a meeting between your superior and an external VIP, when you can’t see the VIP’s calendar and know that they have a job and a life, it makes sense to ask them “When would be a good time for you? Boss is free all of Tuesday and Thursday afternoon” instead of picking an hour on boss’s calendar and sending that without any discussion. But I could be wrong! My impression is Bob needs to be trained/talked to like a first time job haver, which is the issue I was asking Alison to help me phrase.

          1. Also-ADHD*

            Does he know the VIP’s calendars are not up to date? That’s different at different organizations so seems more like an onboarding thing to me than a “first-time-job-haver” thing.

    2. BatManDan*

      I’m with you. Lots of people in here not understanding how utterly disrespectful it is to Bob, to not tell him where he’s coming up short. Clear is kind. Hoping people figure it out on their own (weak feedback will get you worse results than NO feedback, but it gives room for it to be read as POSITIVE feedback) is like wishing you could fly, or be invisible. Nice thought experiment, but it will never happen.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I think I disagree. Totally sinking somebody’s 360 review when you’ve never even mentioned any of these issues to them is really going scorched earth. It’s just not necessary. To me it’s like, this is the first time you’ve ever felt any power over this coworker and you’re waaaay overboard. You can just damn with faint praise and point out some areas for growth without going in guns blazing. If you truly want to help your coworker grow (which … why would you, it sounds like you don’t like him and don’t want to spend more of your valuable time coaching an adult who is making more than you did) you can try to bring up more stuff one on one as you notice it.

    3. OP#1*

      Hello there! Lots of good questions in this thread I thought I would clarify. Yes, I’m a woman! He makes more money than I did in that role not because of literally anything about him, but because I and the person who had that role in between us raised literal hell with our bosses and HR about the unlivable wage for that area. They caught on, too late for my successor, an extraordinarily competent woman. I mentioned it just to flag that I may harbor unfair resentment because I know when I held his role, I went above and beyond, took on duties of people twenty years senior to me, and worked hard to make up for mistakes, and received way less money. I mentioned it more for color. And yes, I make more money than he does now! I am not worried about him being promoted over me.

      1. Sam I Am*

        How much of the problem is Bob, and how much of the problem is that you are going above and beyond for your employer without being recognized or rewarded for it? “Taking on duties of people twenty years senior to me” while being grossly underpaid doesn’t say anything good about your company. Now you’re doing hours of extra work because of Bob’s mistakes? That shouldn’t be a surprise that comes up on his 360 review — because it needed to be flagged right away for your sake. I don’t doubt that working with Bob is highly annoying, but you’re resenting the wrong party. The unfair burden he is creating for you is on his manager, your manager, and your company to fix.

    4. Andromeda*

      I agree that OP should point out issues where they’ve caused her to lose “hours of work” (!) and that she is likely to have been socialised into being softer/more conciliatory than necessary as a woman.

      But I don’t know about using this review to try to pre-empt progression that her colleague hasn’t even had yet — or that he would do the same to her. OP says he’s frustrating but kind, and the things she’s saying about him imply that he actively and vocally appreciates her work even though he’s oblivious and not very good at his job. I don’t wanna be all “but won’t someone think of the people who make everyone’s jobs harder!”. But this just seems way too calculating especially when you’ve never brought this up before. And especially in 360s when everyone tries to be as nice as possible even though they do bring up issues or honest feedback when required.

      I think going to manager makes the most sense, not least because OP would have much more space to be *real* about the issues with his work without needing to worry about the etiquette of a review. Plus it means manager gets a bit of a heads up that her direct report is difficult before all the reviews come in, which helps her too.

  11. nnn*

    The thing about #2 is, in a world where ChatGPT exists, you need to be better than ChatGPT. And this career office is getting in the way of learning that.

    1. Earlk*

      I agree, as much as I find a lot of ways places are currently using AI annoying and unnecessary (Google AI results are a complete joke) learning how to use it is an important skill and the lesson is on building good prompts so even if they didn’t use it in an interview setting it could help in other ways.

    2. Waiting on the bus*

      Without knowing what the class is teaching exactly, you don’t really know that. The class could teach how to use ChatGPT as the base and then how to adjust the results to make them usable for themselves. If the class teaches how to use ChatGPT properly, it’s uses and limitations, I’d say that’s a very pragmatic course by the school. GenAI is here and will be used, one way or another. We’re not putting that genie back in the bottle.

      It’s really popular on here to dunk on ChatGPT or GenAI in general, but it can be very useful in a lot of cases. (The ethical and environmental issues are a different beast.)

      1. Alumni interviewer*

        +1. This criticism of generative AI is wildly out of touch and strikes me as akin to employees of buggy manufacturers grousing about the internal combustion engine.

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          If we want to use your analogy, then it would be the same as people knowing at the time that the internal combustion engine was going to significantly impact our planet and our sustained ability to live on it, and maybe we should make different choices about how we transport ourselves instead of just saying “Ah, what’s done is done, stop living in the past.” We know it’s bad now and we have the option to make different choices.

      2. Your Former Password Resetter*

        Ignoring the ethical and environmental issues is a pretty big ask though.

        And frankly, just because you can use it doesn’t mean you should, or that you should encourage people to use it. That’s how you help to normalize and ingrain these kinds of harmful practices, along with whatever the next overhyped tech scheme to appeal to venture capitalists will be.

    3. bamcheeks*

      You do for anything with intellectual substance, like writing a report which says something worth reading, but I’m not convinced you do for applying to jobs. Succeeding at applications and interviews means capturing unique information (who you are and what you’ve done) in a very standard and relatively rigid format (cover letters, resumes, competency-based answers.) Gen-AI is no good at identifying the former, of course, unless you give it great prompts, but it is very, very good at the latter. And that’s a huge advantage for a lot of people who have the skills and experience, and may even know what it is, but not the facility to put it into what is basically a marketing document.

      “Talk about your skills and experience in a very specific standard formula” is not actually the skill employers want to hire for in many sectors, but it often is because we don’t have better processes for identifying what people’s skills, experience and potential are. If Gen-AI can do that effectively, then it has the potential to significantly improve hiring practices with less burden on the applicant.

      (caveats about ethics and the environment, but IMO that’s a separate question from what Gen-AI is actually good at.)

      1. Emmy Noether*

        I agree that “sounding like corporate speak with all the right keywords” is one of the things AI can actually do. You probably have to craft the prompt really well to get your actual skills reflected, and proofread well to make sure it doesn’t hallucinate an additional degree, but maybe it can at least break that fear of the blank page?

        Of course, you risk sounding literally exactly like everyone else (since that is how AI works – it analyses how often words go together and then spits out the most frequent combo – which makes it sound normal, but also unoriginal), but maybe that’s better than standing out in a bad way.

        [insert motal and environmental caveats]

    4. Carys, Lady of Weeds*

      Yeah, I’m not sure where I read/saw this, but someone called using generative AI “cognitive offloading”. The answer is right there in the letter – someone with more experience would know what to do with the information ChatGPT spits out, which shouldn’t be the end result that you then use, but a high school student? No. They’re offloading the thinking to the AI, and that defeats the whole purpose.

  12. KJC*

    I actually disagree that high schools shouldn’t be providing interview prep. My husband interviews high school students for college for our (selective) alma mater, and he reports there is a HUGE difference in students that have obviously received coaching about what kinds of questions they will be asked and know how to frame an answer and provide relevant examples. He says that while he tries to remember that not everyone’s parents are giving them that level of coaching, and not hold it against someone, it’s also just the reality that every student has so many accomplishments that you have to find some way to delineate them. If he has one 5 to give out that year, it’s realistically going to be for someone who can give insightful and reflective answers with good examples over someone whose answers are just….average. I know 20 years ago my parents didn’t prep me at all – they literally said, “just be yourself,” and even as a top-performing, well-spoken, passionate, super involved student, I was a TERRRRRIBLE interviewer at that age! I interview students for graduate school now, as well, and also find a major difference in student preparedness. We both wonder how in the world we got into college at all given the pressures and preparedness of kids these days, but it’s just the college landscape. This probably only applies to highly selective colleges, but I think there’s also a lot of competition for paid internships and the like, and every little bit helps. As for the Chat GPT thing, my personal opinion is that Chat GPT thinks and writes like a moderately sophisticated high schooler, so it’s about at the right level of writing for something they would say. But I do think whatever it teaches should subsequently be discussed with an actual person to confirm and practice!

    1. PurpleCattledog*

      I’m interviewing people that are junior (in an area where 30 year olds are junior) – and I see huge discrepancies in how good people are at interviewing. I couch my really junior staff in his to apply for jobs and interview (in my field). I’m no expert – but I’ve seen people loose jobs because they can’t interview.

      I completely agree with you – someone has to train them!

    2. TeachingJobSeeking*

      I agree in theory, but…

      Norms change too quickly for the average teacher or even guidance counselor to keep up and develop reasonable curricula when they have other stuff to do. And expectations/norms vary a fair bit by type of job and (sometimes) industry. And teaching is very, very different from almost any other type of job so their personal experience is not applicable and could be harmful if applied. There’s a reason why college career counselors are often disparaged here; they’re wildly out of date and out of step with most expectations in the real world.

      1. Buzzybeeworld*

        While it is true that norms are ever changing, that’s actually why teaching it in school is better than not teaching.
        If the students aren’t taught in school they will look to the rest of their contacts (family, peers) to get info and that may be worse than being a little out of touch!
        At least a teacher engaged in trying to teach this stuff will feel a sense of responsibility to try and provide relevant guidance to their students. Grandma and Aunt Jo and Jimbo in study hall might give wildly bad advice.
        It would be fine to say the school shouldn’t be doing it IF we could be sure the students had an actually good source for leaning this stuff. As seen on this website, many people do not.

    3. Superhero Girl*

      Agreed. We need to teach these skills to provide equity among our students. AND ChatGPT is a great tool for students who don’t otherwise have access to coaching. It’s not perfect, it doesn’t replace expert advice, but it’s eons ahead of no support at all.

  13. Observer*

    #4- Still getting invites

    I can’t imagine that you would get into trouble for this. You are about the one person who really had no power here. But yes, now is a good time to reach out again and get it finally fixed.

    Firstly, when you reach out to get this fixed, note the other times you tried to get this fixed, so they can look at their prior notes to figure out if there is some information that’s missing. Because it is weird that this is still going despite more than one attempt on your part to resolve the problem. Perhaps someone will figure out what ball got dropped.

    Secondly, *everything* is done via tracked messaging. Either initially or as a follow up to a phone conversation. And start cc’ing people up the chain if you need to. Sometimes that’s the only way to get traction on an issue that really seems trivial.

  14. Irish Teacher.*

    LW2, my concern here would be how much understanding the guidance counsellor has of chatGPT. My experience as a teacher is that teachers, like most people, vary greatly in their understanding of it. There could be excellent advice or it could be based on assumption that chatGPT will do all the work for you.

    And I would also be concerned about how students will hear it even if it is good advice. The reality is teens (and a certain number of adults too, as we’ve seen from letters here) will take the message that “chatGPT will do all the work for me” even if they are taught how to use it as a tool. We spent a lot of time teaching students how to research online, how to cite the information, summarise, etc and invariably, when it comes to time to do a project, a large proportion will either print out sections of a Wikipedia article and stick it on or will copy out what it says, maybechanging a few words, like changing “Michael Collins was killed in Beal na Blath in 1922” to “Michael Collins was murdered in Beal na Blath in 1922” (not a great example but doing that with the entire account).

    It takes a lot of work to teach kids how to use these tools appropriately and I’m skeptical they will get enough input to ensue they understand properly.

    1. Varthema*

      Agreed, but as you say, even with training, kids have been copying paragraphs out of Wikipedia and before that regular encyclopedias since time immemorial. My concern is that if they don’t get at least SOME training in using Gen AI in school (which also signals that their teachers have at least some level of cop-on), then they’ll get ALL of their training out of school/from peers/siblings as “this cool illicit tool for scamming your teachers”, and that’ll be worse.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        Yeah, that’s true. I really don’t have any answers here.

        I do think it’s going to be very hard to convince teens that answers need to be based on their “experience and expertise” as Alison says and that there isn’t “one right answer” that chatGPT or the internet or your teacher or mum or dad can give you because young people are often convinced there is always “one right answer”. I remember a lecturer at college telling us another lecturer blew the 1st years’ minds by telling them he didn’t agree with her because “if the lecturers don’t agree, how do we know who is correct?”

        But like you say, it’s not like we can hide chatGPT from them anyway, and if they aren’t at least told that “this is just for getting an idea of the questions you will be asked and the sort of answers that are expected. It can’t tell you the ‘right’ answer for you because that is going to be specific to your life and your voice,” they are likely to have a peer or slightly older sibling suggest, “use chatGPT” and be even more convinced you can just get it to tell you the “right answer.”

        And “don’t use chatGPT ever” isn’t really helpful advice either as they are not likely to believe that.

        I guess my concern is really about doing it in one talk rather than embedding it in general advice about interviewing,

      2. Media Monkey*

        i think that’s what some of them hear anyway! i had a conversation with my daughters school in the UK when she came home saying they’d be told to learn english exam question answers from chat GPT. School confirmed (and clarified with the kids) that it was about getting chat GPT to pull out the key points they should cover in their answers, not to copy it word for word.

      3. Lenora Rose*

        The most effective sounding ChatGPT assignment I’ve heard of involves teaching the subject, then getting the kids to get ChatGPT to produce an essay — then having the students grade the essay, highlighting what it gets right, what it gets wrong, what bits are right but irrelevant, which bits are too vague, plus what sources are real and which ones are faked. The teacher mostly grades the grading, and the kids’ reasoning for it.

  15. Catherine*

    I have recently learned about how much power and water goes into even a single question to chatGPT and was shocked, I think we shouldn’t be using it at all to be honest.

    2. Michigander*

      Yes, I’m slightly surprised that there was no mention of the environmental effects of using AI in the response.

    3. BatManDan*

      I boycott AI for ethical reasons (mostly related to power consumption), not for practical reasons. No way to put the genie back in the bottle, I don’t think.

    4. Observer*

      The thing is that this is already rapidly changing and will continue to change.

      There is an *enormous* amount of work going into making these models more efficient – mostly because if they don’t get there, the companies won’t be able to make any money.

      It’s a pretty interesting case of odd interests being aligned.

  16. Nebula*

    I used ChatGPT last year to help with my application and interview prep for my current job. I wouldn’t use it now for anything, as I’m more aware of the impacts of it – particularly climate impact – but it was helpful for making some tweaks to my cover letter, reorganising my CV to highlight relevance to the job, and suggesting interview questions. The whole process of applying for a job is generally pretty formulaic, after all, and that’s what ChatGPT is good at. On the flipside, I had to do a presentation as part of my interview, and its suggestions for how I could structure that were very bland and boring, and I was able to create something much stronger by ignoring everything it said.

    So yes, it can be useful, and I think showing kids how to use it well is not a bad idea, since they’re all using it anyway, but the question is whether the person offering this course is going into the nuances of it or just saying like ‘Look, it’ll write your answers for you’. You’d hope it’s the former, but I’ve seen enough ‘training’ or advice on gen AI which is just the latter so who knows.

  17. Cabbagepants*

    chatGPT and LLMs aren’t going anywhere. Take this opportunity to teach your kid how to use it properly. Yep, it has flaws and downsides. So does just about all tech. Don’t be that buggy-whip maker pooh-poohing your kid wanting to learn to drive.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      I paint, do pottery, and write fiction. I will HAPPILY refuse to have anything to do with a plagiarism machine who will steal my work — and the works of others that I like to read and look at — and try and sell me back a poor imitation of extruded nonsense in their place.

      And that’s before its absurdly high environmental costs for minimal benefit (the few other things with a comparable cost all have much greater visible benefits), the way it has helped exponentially increase the trash sites on the internet, the way people keep wrongly trying to use it as a search engine, the way it is being used to replace news with fact free garbage and write morally repugnant opinion pieces in major papers (literally this week it added a counterpoint to an article on the KKK that was APOLOGISM – and that was the LA Times, not a nobody paper), and the actually life-threatening information it has notoriously produced.

  18. JSPA*

    For #1, I’d call it “situational awareness.” That encompasses social, politics, awareness of his own role and much more.

  19. Beth**

    I was really struck by this sentence from OP1: ” In general, I would like to only be positive in these, as that’s what I want in return!”

    1. Why is the OP assuming that everybody wants to receive feedback the same way that you do? This seems like an odd assumption.

    2. What is the value of 360 feedback if everyone just says nice stuff to one another? How does that help anyone grow and develop? Maybe this is context-dependent, but in my company we’ve had a big push in the past couple of years on giving and receiving feedback — giving developmental feedback respectfully and helpfully and receiving feedback in the spirit in which it is given. Soft soaping everything doesn’t help.

    3. It seems like the OP has identified things that are specific and actionable. Why wouldn’t the colleague want to know this since it sounds like the errors he’s making could have an impact on his career. One of the ways we’ve been framing this at work is, “if your sister/brother/son/daughter/best friend was making this kind of mistake at work, wouldn’t you want someone to tell them? Framing feedback as a kind act rather than a dig helps you see why it’s important and valuable.

    4. I hat getting 360 feedback that’s full of platitudes and doesn’t give me a chance to improve. That said, I have received feedback in 360 reviews that I don’t recognise/doesn’t resonate. If so, I have discussed it with my manager to see whether it’s likely to a blind spot and something I do need to work on, or more reflective of the person giving the feedback than me.

    So, for example, I once got some feedback that I don’t celebrate people’s achievements enough, which I didn’t agree with. I had a sense that the feedback had come from a member of my team who was struggling a lot. So no, I wasn’t celebrating their achievements because they weren’t having any. I was instead spending a lot of time re-doing their work to meet deadlines. My boss agreed with my interpretation. I have tried to become more conscious of not taking good work for granted and letting my team members know when they have done a good job — and praising them in front of peers where they have done something out of the ordinary. So in that case, even I thought the feedback was off target, I still managed to do something useful with it. (And in retrospect, I should probably have realised how far the team member’s perception of their performance was from my perception and ensured they were getting more regular big picture feedback so they were aware of the pattern I was seeing.

    1. bamcheeks*

      in my company we’ve had a big push in the past couple of years on giving and receiving feedback — giving developmental feedback respectfully and helpfully and receiving feedback in the spirit in which it is given

      I think this is SO key, and should be the baseline for any kind of 360 feedback. With the exception of client feedback, you shouldn’t be asking anyone for open-ended feedback: it should be structured, specific about the kind / scope of feedback which specific people can provide based on their relationship to the feedbackee, and everyone should have received training on how to give constructive and useful developmental feedback. But lots of places implement 360 feedback without that framework, and that’s when it becomes the popularity contest described by 360Reviews below.

      1. Sloanicota*

        That’s well put. Above, I said I wouldn’t go scorched earth on somebody else’s 360 but a better framing and support system around the review process could help make it valuable for all. You would also need a lot of support in processing a 360 review if everyone was encouraged to be super honest – it could be really damaging if you’re going into it expecting it to be like any other work review where a ton of critical feedback is very bad. I assume that’s not what OP / this coworker are getting though, unfortunately.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        Giving feedback in a useful, constructive way, is a skill. Which like other skills can be taught. If the company isn’t teaching workers this skill, asking them to just be good at it anyhow is probably not going to give helpful results.

        (And I did wonder if OP only wanting positive feedback was learning how these things work at OP’s company, where blandly positive feedback had the best results. Like the metric is to achieve bland and positive feedback so you can check that box.)

      3. Great Frogs of Literature*

        I’ve never gotten helpful criticism in a 360 review. I’d say the categories it falls into are:

        – “Um I can’t think of anything so I will say something bland and vaguely critique-like”

        – Critical but vague and lacking in actionable context (“Frogs’s email style is too blunt and rude” in the same review in which five other people praised my clear and concise communication… I did manage to deliberately add in enough fluff that I never got that critique again, but “Anna likes a more effusive email style and you should make sure to always add a greeting/signoff and never drop the salutation even fifteen emails into the chain” would have been much more helpful.)

        – Beef over conflicting departmental priorities that came out in the form of someone being pissed with me personally and recommending that I get training in customer service (again, in a review filled with glowing comments about how I build rapport with customers). My boss was like, “Yeah, the Sales Team in Location X is pissed that they lost that $40k sale because you didn’t talk the customer into buying an unsuitable product, but they would not have been satisfied and supporting them would have been a nightmare. You made the right call and should just ignore that feedback.”

        Giving good critique to colleagues is HARD. Most places don’t provide training in it at all, and even when they do, it’s still hard.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      I think praise and confirmation of what is going well is hugely powerful, but it depends on what the overall structure of the feedback to employees is going to be at this company. So, I think that very critical feedback is something that shouldn’t wait for review-time and it needs to come from someone with authority over the person, so that may be why OP doesn’t feel like this is the appropriate opportunity for negativity. But I agree with you that there should be at least some space for recommended improvement.

    3. ZSD*

      I agree with Beth that 360 feedback should be honest. That’s the idea! When I had a 360 review, it was SO helpful to get the negative feedback I didn’t expect. For example, I learned that although I had never once felt angry with a student, something was going on with my face that made them *think* I was angry with them. I was stunned by the feedback but resolved to work on looking more pleasant as a baseline.
      If you don’t give the negative feedback people deserve, they can’t improve!

    4. Caramel & Cheddar*

      I was genuinely surprised LW said they would only want to receive positive info in a 360 because that’s not the point of a 360. You don’t have to be needlessly critical in a 360, but you should be honest and if you have constructive feedback to give, then you should give it.

      I know it can be hard to do this, of course. Even when the responses are anonymized (which they should be for the recipient), sometimes the examples are so specific that it’s easy to figure out who gave the feedback. That can absolutely cause tension on a team. But part of receiving negative feedback (or even just neutral feedback) is learning how to deal with it professionally, which LW’s coworker won’t have the opportunity to do if LW doesn’t speak up.

      1. Ginger Baker*

        Pretty sure the urge to be positive comes from the way that reviews directly affect salaries, and most people I work with strongly prefer to give constructive feedback in person/outside the formal review for at least the first few times you hear something (like: unless you think this person needs a PIP) because they don’t want to fuck over their money and believe they can still improve without the threat of a salary hit. YMMV but that’s def a factor where I work.

        1. Dinwar*

          First, behavior as bad as the LW describes SHOULD impact promotions and raises and such. You don’t want to reward such behavior!

          Second, and more generally applicable, this is what the meeting/phone call is for. You write the good stuff in the review, but have a sidebar conversation with the reviewer so that the reviewer can let the reviewee know the issues they need to work on. Verbal communications aren’t as formal and don’t have as much of a record as written communications, so that lets you be a bit more…not harsh, but real, without it negatively impacting the person’s salary.

          You can also do these reviews periodically. For example, at the end of a project you can do a review–something along the lines of “In the future, I’d like to see X, Y, and Z.” This allows you to address very specific behaviors or issues, because it’s a fairly narrow scope. “I want you to start taking over X, I’ll answer questions but you’re going to be the lead person” sounds less harsh when it’s part of a postmortem on a project.

        2. Joron Twiner*

          This. Even if I suck at my job, I don’t want my coworker to tank my chance at a bonus with harsh truths straight to my boss that they never mentioned to my face. I’d rather hear it directly, or in a conversation with more context where I can improve without it immediately impacting my livelihood.

    5. Dinwar*

      I tend to agree with you. I try to use feedback in one of two ways: 1) What am I screwing up that I need to fix? and 2) What do I need to learn to reach the next step in my career? Praise in a review doesn’t benefit me–I’d rather you praise me to other people, because that gets me work and builds my reputation, making it easier for me to work with people in the future (“Your name is in the mouths of others; make sure it has teeth!”). I’ve got enough accomplishments under my belt that I don’t need someone stroking my ego in a review; I need to know how to move forward in my career.

      The other thing is, even “anonymous” feedback is pretty easy to trace back to the source. Other people are watching this guy and seeing his flaws. By not presenting them, the LW risks damaging their own reputation. It may not be a big deal–I know people who hate giving feedback, and avoid it as much as possible, and they’re in roles where it’s generally okay to do that so no one cares. But they’re the exception, not the rule; for most people coaching and feedback are part of the job. If people know they can’t trust you to do that in fairly egregious situation, will they trust you to do so in cases where it’s not as bad?

  20. 360Reviews*

    I hate 360 feedback in general, and I loathe it at my current company which requires that you only include feedback you’ve already at least mentioned to the person, preferably discussed.

    I had a coworker similar to yours and I had to blunt my feedback to the point of ineffectiveness because you just can’t tell a coworker who doesn’t report to you they’re incompetent (no matter how widely phrased) and don’t ever learn no matter how many times you try to help them do so. It took his getting a new boss who had to rely on him for stuff that mattered to her and thus experienced it for herself for any changes to take place at all (eventually a PIP and then being let go).

    In other places the ones I’ve seen were closer to popularity contests; if people were popular they got evaluated on how everyone liked them, if not they got nit picked to death. Not helpful, especially if you took them at face value.

    Down with the 360 review!

    2. Sloanicota*

      Also people who are struggling this much are unlikely to be able to absorb the 360 correctly either, IMO. So it’s just going to be an exercise in futility and possibly cruelty.

      1. A. Lab Rabbit*

        Yes, but doesn’t this feedback get back to their manager, as well? This way the manager may learn of issues or wins from an employee that they weren’t aware of. Then it’s on the manager to address these issues.

    3. toolegittoresign*

      I also loathe 360 reviews. I feel like it takes important managerial work and puts it on employees. And I feel like it’s not a good way to give constructive feedback because it’s going to be anonymous and, therefore, vague when delivered to the employee in question. My company does these and there have been times where there’s been constructive feedback but because my manager was keeping it anonymous, they couldn’t tell me what project the feedback related to. So a comment like “in one case your teapot plan felt a little underdeveloped” is useless if you can’t tell me which one and why. And if the reason you can’t tell me is so that I won’t “be mad at” the person who gave the feedback — that’s nuts because now I’m just upset in general that 1. People aren’t giving me feedback in real time on my work even when they feel like it’s missed the mark and 2. I have submitted 8 teapot plans so now I’m anxious about which one fell short of expectations and second-guessing myself, which will affect my performance. I have told people many times that I would far prefer someone tells me my work sucks to my face than get vague feedback later. I used to work in retail and have had customers scream in my face. I can take my coworkers giving me feedback and we should all be encouraging workplace cultures where feedback isn’t so fraught with emotions.

    4. Area Woman*

      We had 360’s that were anonymous except that I got to choose who to ask. It was super difficult to read, but they were all framed in a way that really improved my relationships with my coworkers. I also got both positive and critical, so the positive really balanced things out. It was great to know how there was respect behind it.

  21. ItLies*

    The problem with AI is most people don’t understand how it works or how to use it. This is more of an issue for things like machine learning where “yes” or “no” generally means greater than/less than N% likely but is often taken as fact, but is still true for generative AI. You need to understand the topic well enough to know when it’s lying to you (the technical term is AI hallucination) and understand what is and is not applicable. AI never replies “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” so a human has to evaluate the likelihood of those states and adjust responses accordingly. If it’s not something you know/understand well or have other other trusted sources to compare it’s incredibly difficult to reasonably make those judgements.

    1. knitted feet*

      Absolutely. I have to work with AI, as well as reviewing other people’s AI-generated material, and I’ve seen some really poor use of it. A lot of people have very little understanding of what generative AI is and what its limitations are. I’ve had colleagues wanting to throw a lot of data at an LLM, thinking they’ll get accurate maths out of it. Or they think that, well, it’s a computer, and computers are accurate and reliable, so you can ask it anything and it’ll tell you the right answer. Mm, no. It can do certain things quite well, and others horribly badly, and you have to know enough yourself to tell good from bad.

  22. Apex Mountain*

    I was confused by parts of the answer to #2. What is wrong with HS students creating a LinkedIn profile? It’s usually done as part of a business class or similar, where it’s a way to introduce students to aspects of the working world. Same with interview prep – to me these are things we should want to see more of in schools.

    1. bamcheeks*

      I think LinkedIn is amazing for careers research, but you do have to create a profile in order to be able to see much of other people’s profiles, and there are lots of reasons to be concerned about u18s creating profiles that include their names and locations, never mind photos. Whenever I have run LinkedIn sessions with college-age students, I’ve emphasised the advantages of having a profile and being able to look at other people’s profiles and possibly start conversations with people in the industries and sectors you’re aiming for, but the trade-off is that there are weirdos who mistake LinkedIn for a dating app or will approach you with scams, and that they should make their own decision about the trade-offs. That’s not necessarily a decision I’d be happy putting into the hands of a 15yo, and I don’t really think it’s ever OK to tell students they have to create a LinkedIn profile for credit or similar even if they are over 18.

    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      Yes, the assumption that young adults don’t need to know how to interview in their teens is off to me. I had my first job at 14. I did go to college but I continued working while in college at various part time jobs around my class schedule. Fall of freshman year of college we were interviewing for internships for next summer as well.

      High school is a great time to start talking through interview/resume/linkedin. We didn’t have that sort of thing, hilariously it was the hs tennis coach who taught us the elevator pitch introduction, and how to shake hands properly, and that sort of thing. He was an older guy, and was offended by how “weak” our handshakes were after tennis matches then realized no one had ever taught us any of this and filled the gap.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        I didn’t take the answer as saying they didn’t need to learn interview skills in their teens but rather that teachers aren’t always the best people to teach interview skills for the sort of jobs teens will be applying for. A lot of teachers haven’t interviewed for years or decades and then it was for a teaching job, which is somewhat different from the sort of jobs teens will be applying for. And teaching very much has its own norms.

        I took the point as being they do need to know how to interview and therefore, they need accurate information, not something that may or may not be helpful.

        And also that the interview skills they need have to be appropriate for the kind of jobs they are applying for at that time. If teachers are thinking about their own last interviews, they are going to be giving advice that is more appropriate for professional jobs and that will seem out of place from a 16 year old applying for a Saturday job.

        1. Apex Mountain*

          But the classes where this sort of thing is taught are usually a “Business 101” or one that has a focus on job search/career. So the teachers would know this exact topic.

          1. Elsewise*

            A Business 101 class in a high school? I’m not sure if it’s geographical differences or generational, but where I live the high schools can barely manage to scrape together the funding to offer the core requirements. Business 101 would be a college class, and probably not focused on finding jobs.

        2. Ann O'Nemity*

          If not at high school, then where are students going to learn it? It is incredibly privileged to assume that students have access to this kind of help at home.

      2. bamcheeks*

        This doesn’t surprise me at all. When I’ve worked with students, it’s quite marked that the sports students who all had second lives as county cricket or football players or coach younger students are often way more comfortable with that kind of networking because they’ve been interacting with adults in semi-formal settings.

    3. WFH4VR*

      They are minors, not adults. There’s no way I’d let my kid have a linkedin profile when they’re 16! The scamming, spamming, and downright fake information on there is not something a teenager needs to be exposed to.

      1. Seashell*

        Do you have a teenager or young adult child? By 16, they’re basically all on social media and have phones and email addresses, so they’ve seen plenty of the above already. LinkedIn is about the most benign site they will see.

        1. knitted feet*

          This. Speaking as the parent of a teen, the idea of preserving a 16-year-old’s innocence by keeping them off LinkedIn is… well, it’s cute.

    4. fhqwhgads*

      I don’t think it’s wrong per se, but I do think it’s pointless. There’s a big difference between introducing teens to the idea of interview prep, and the notion that networking in a business context is in any way relevant to them. It’s like…first you need to know what it’s like to have a job. Then you need to know what it’s like to have a job in a desired field. Then networking matters. It’s just sort of…jumping to the end in a way that I think will set them up to fail. Even entry level folks who are not teens still probably have a learning curve in which it’s just too soon for this to be relevant or useful.

      1. Apex Mountain*

        Plenty of teens have had jobs throughout their high school years, and some certainly know what networking is, at least in a rudimentary way.

        I don’t follow how it will set them up to fail. I don’t think anyone’s saying create a LinkedIn profile and wait for the job offers to roll in, just that it’s another tool to learn about like a resume, cover letter or interviews

        1. fhqwhgads*

          It’s not a guaranteed set up to fail but it will frequently end up that way. I think knowing what networking is in a rudimentary way is far enough from “capable of using LinkedIn without looking like a clueless gumption machine” – which frankly a TON of career-having adults do anyway – that the probable benefit to a teen is minimal. Is there probably some teen in existence for which this would be a productive thing to do? Sure. But I still think it’s a mostly pointless exercise.
          I also tend to think LinkedIn is mostly pointless anyway, regardless of age and experience. So there’s that.

  23. WellRed*

    I would be so annoyed by hearing “I m sorry” constantly by someone effing up, thank you might be preferable. Not sure who all were taught that but OP, that bit does feel BEC.

    1. SorryCharlie*

      This came up on the weekend threads too – some people get upset when you don’t say sorry ad nauseum, others get annoyed when you do. This is one of those areas where balance is hard because it feels somewhat arbitrary.

      I grew up being blamed for things my siblings did and learned at an early age to apologize for everything. This led to feedback as an adult that I apologize too much. I try to self-police this (it’s a process) and may overcompensate compared to some preferences. To me, it seems like a no win area.

    2. Aneurin*

      Yes, that part reminded me of the advice to say thank you *as a form of apology*, e.g. saying “Thank you for waiting for me” rather than “Sorry I’m late”. But I’ve generally seen said advice used to counteract the socialisation of women/female-presenting people to (over-)apologise *unnecessarily*, not to never say “I’m sorry” when you have something to apologise for!

    3. Myrin*

      I think this point in the letter isn’t so much about how constant (or not) the “I’m sorry”s are but rather that he never apologises for screwing up but always just says “thank you for your patience until I’ve got the hang of this” or whatever when OP is not feeling patient at all and would rather just hear him acknowlede that he’s causing extra work for her.

      1. WellRed*

        I guess I feel like either phrase acknowledges the issue but without being there, it us of course, hard to say.

        1. Don’t know what to call myself*

          I don’t think it does.

          “Thank you for your leadership” (the specific phrase in LW’s letter) doesn’t make me feel better if I’ve just worked multiple hours fixing someone else’s mistake. I would like that person to acknowledge that they did something wrong and it inconvenienced me.

          I do think the frustration with never ending apologies and the frustration with never receiving apologies comes from the same place. The frustration isn’t being cause by the wording the offending person is using, it’s coming from the fact that this person continually does multiple things that would warrant an apology and doesn’t appear to be learning from their mistakes and stopping the behavior.

          1. Sloanicota*

            Yeah, “thanks for your patience” acknowledges that you personally are not killing it right now and is akin to an apology (but better, because it doesn’t require the other person to say “that’s okay” in order to close the loop). “Thank you for your leadership” is condescending and puts the speaker in a higher position than they deserve if they are screwing up – like someone who is suffering from the error of another person wants their approbation and encouragement!

            1. Not That Kind of Doctor*

              Ideally I would like to hear some kind of specific recognition of whete the error occurred, eg, “Yeah, I guess I probably should have started with the CEO’s admin to set up a time, it’s kind of their job.”

              I manage one of these currently and spend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to teach someone good judgment.

      2. Caramel & Cheddar*

        I feel like he’s misusing advice I’ve seen elsewhere to sort of reverse the issue into making it a positive for the other person, e.g. instead of “I’m sorry it took so long to get you the info!” you say “Thank you for your patience, here are the details on the Llama Account.” But you can’t do that every time you’re slow/late/incorrect on something, it’s a strategy that must be used sparingly because it makes you sound like a customer service rep when you call your bank to ask about a weird charge.

        2. Jack Russell Terrier*

          This really gets my goat – you need to take responsibility for *putting someone out*. To me that’s the litmus test. That just blithly *tells you how you felt about it/should react*, to add insult to injury

    4. Not That Kind of Doctor*

      TBH, when someone repeatedly screws up in the same way, without any apparent effort towards improving, anything they say about it is going to be annoying.

      1. Emmy Noether*

        Yeah, the first time you screw up in a way your coworkers have to fix, you can just say thank you. The second, it should probably be apologetic or self deprecating, depending on vibe. Third time, it better be “this will never happen again, because I put the following safeguards in place”. Tenth time, there’s just no good thing to say.

  24. Dr. Rebecca*

    LW4, I know it’s probably all handled with tickets and stuff, but have you actually physically *gone* to IT? They may respond more succinctly to you walking into their offices and demonstrating the problem. #gumption

    1. EngagingIT*

      You have a physical IT department? I haven’t seen one of those in almost a decade, and they were already rare at that point.

      It is either outsourced or contracted for on an as needed basis (at smaller companies) or entirely at a centralized location (at some larger orgs) or is one person who is never at their desk because they’re off helping people.

      Plus, it doesn’t sound like they’re not engaging, it sounds like they’re not doing the follow up steps that would happen later. So even if there is a physical IT location to ambush I’m not sure how it would help in thus case.

      1. Dr. Rebecca*

        I work at a university, so yeah, we have a physical IT department, and I think it’s worth trying if the LW does as well. I’m not saying it’s *going* to work, I’m saying–as does Alison, on occasion–that if one method of contact has failed (in this case, repeatedly) trying another might get different results.

      2. HonorBox*

        I’d honestly just take IT out of the equation. They’ve acknowledged the LW’s multiple emails, but that’s it. The easier solution is walking directly over to the colleague’s computer and telling them how to remove calendar invites. LW probably had a hand in setting that up years ago, and that seems like the path of least resistance.

    2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      They may respond more succinctly to you walking into their offices and demonstrating the problem.

      Speaking as an on-site IT department PLEASE don’t do that. Don’t come up to us with your issues unless you have an appointment or we’ve asked you to.

      It’s a sure fire way to your issue ending up in the bin. We’ll tolerate it from the senior management (because we have to) but nobody else.

      1. Frankie*

        That’s… *wildly* unprofessional. OP has tried numerous times for 10 years and walking in would be perfectly appropriate. It sounds like your IT dept has a major attitude problem that you are all lucky I’m not overseeing.

        1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

          Okay, I think we have a cultural misunderstanding here and I’m sorry I didn’t state I’m in the UK. Here, our IT department has a door and a code lock and it’s considered exceptionally rude to just show up. If you have an issue with how we’re responding then there’s a complaints procedure.

          We do not have a major attitude problem and I AM the manager.

        2. fhqwhgads*

          Frankie, I gotta disagree.
          I get that this issue has persisted for 10 years, but also tremendously minor in the scheme of things. You don’t just show up and make somebody drop everything for you when there’s a queue and a ticket system. It’s super rude. That there have been delays on this don’t really change that given the incredibly low stakes.
          Am I surprised a help desk person didn’t resolve this in 5 minutes the first time? Yes. Is it bad they didn’t? Also yes. But this issue does not merit “march on down there and demand immediate action”.

    3. HonorBox*

      OR… just go to the colleague and help them change the calendar settings. I’m making an assumption here, but I would guess that LW has knowledge or could at least do a bit of googling to find out how to remove those permissions. If IT needs to help because it requires some sort of permission to do so, then set an appointment for them to address it. But starting at the coworker’s computer seems like the path of least resistance.

  25. Ash*

    From LW2, the “NLP for Interview Confidence” is also giving me the ick. I believe NLP stands for “Neurolinguistic Programming,” which is a pseudoscience and scam. No high school should be promoting it to students.

  26. HonorBox*

    OP4 – I’m kind of shocked that this has gone on this long. I’d have been marching my butt to an actual person as soon as I moved to another role and this continued to happen. I don’t think you need to go to IT. It may be more difficult for them to fix it. Go to your former boss, now colleague. Stand with them and walk them through the steps for removing you from their calendar. If that doesn’t work for some reason, walk directly to IT and ask them to go to the colleague’s computer to get it fixed. This has been going on far too long, and clearly no one is feeling any sort of urgency to fix it when you email. You’re not asking someone to spend half a day fixing an issue. It will likely take longer to walk to your colleague’s desk and back than it takes to fix it.

  27. Hybrider*

    LW4 – I’m not sure this is an IT issue. I think it’s an email setting issue. If you are ever physically in the office with the executive, I would ask him if you could change the setting on his laptop for him. That’s probably the quickest way to resolve the issue.

    It’s possible IT has set him the instructions on how to make the changes and he hasn’t done it.

  28. Jay*

    Unfortunately, right now, a LOT of first jobs (maybe even most, at this point) have all of the initial interview questions written by AI. And AI makes all of the choices for the first few “rounds” of interviews. For job openings with a lot of candidates, a human may never even SEE their application. As such, tailoring a first resume to impressing ChatGTP, rather than an actual human, is actually a good competitive strategy. I hate it, and I hope that I never actually have to deal with it again, but I’ve seen it happen.
    Once they’ve got some experience under their belts and are applying to roles where other humans will be making hiring decisions early on, well, that’s when an actual GOOD resume comes into play.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Good point. I hate it. But it’s possible the job skill of the future will be to tailor your resume to impress the AI vetting of your AI text.

    2. Your Former Password Resetter*

      Is it actually though?
      People have claimed for decades that hiring got automated to where a human never sees your application, but I’ve never seen anyone who said their hiring processes actually worked that way. At worst it’s an overly rigid application process of the “must have X degree” variety.

      I’m sure some terrible hiring managers just throw all the applications into ChatGTP, but as standard practice at large organizations?

      1. bamcheeks*

        Yeah, I would like a source on this, because it’s been going around since people said, “an algorithm” rather than “AI”, and I meet a lot or recruiters and I’ve never one who says this is how their process works.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          I have heard of a few hiring managers who were aware that they had an algorithm sort the resumes based around key requirements in the job description. MOstly this came up because they found it annoying, as they sometimes had to look into the rejected ones and pull one for a candidate with a human recommendation, and sometimes someone had the requirement but wasn’t flagged due to not using the exact right phrasing. It was mostly imposed from above. (And I’ve heard it called AI, but this was pre generative AI and they definitely did not mean ChatGPT. Please remember generative AI, the heinous one, is only one subtype.)

          I’ve never heard of one where the next steps were anything but human.

    3. Observer*

      For job openings with a lot of candidates, a human may never even SEE their application. As such, tailoring a first resume to impressing ChatGTP, rather than an actual human, is actually a good competitive strategy

      Not really. Because even the systems that use AI (and not all of the automated systems use AI), don’t use ChatGPT or any of those models anyway.

      And basing a job hunting strategy that assumes humans are just not in the mix is rather dangerous.

    4. Ferret*

      I think this is massively over-exagerrated. A lot of interview questions are rote and unoriginal, but this is because they don’t need to be original. People have been saying stuff like this for years, well before the rise of generative “ai” and I’ve never seen much actual evidence. We certainly don’t use it in my company

  29. TX_trucker*

    #4. Does the Director have a current admin? I would contact them for help. This is likely an easy fix that doesn’t require IT assistance. It just needs someone to show the Director where to click to remove you as a delegate.

  30. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    #2 – I was laid off, along with several other coworkers, a few weeks ago. We’re software engineers who understand how LLMs work, and have written ChatGPT prompts and dialogs as part of the product we were developing.

    We’ve been using ChatGPT for interview prep exactly the way that you describe. We feed in public info about the company (industry, stuff from their values page, etc) and the job description, and ask it for questions that might come up in the interview.

    I think the questions might get fuzzier the farther you get from an actual company and an actual job description, so they wouldn’t necessarily be things that would come up in an interview. But even then I suspect they would still be good for teaching students to think on their feet in an interview setting.

    1. Sloanicota*

      I just think it’s so risky for teens specifically, who have so little perspective/common sense, to teach them to use AI *without* then having an experienced person reviewing the answers and discussing them with you. I have not been very impressed with the accuracy of AI in terms of random hallucinations – what are you going to do, be like “but ChatBot said this was a good answer!!!”

      1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

        So here’s the important thing. We implemented this in our code.

        Treat each of these as a one-off. Don’t use it in back-and-forth chat mode. The longer the session, the more likely that it will go off the rails.

        Each time you prompt it with “I’m interviewing with xxxx a company that does yyyy and is looking for a zzzz that can do wwww: what are some interview questions they might ask”, start with a fresh session.

        If you want to use it to evaluate the answer to the question, do “I’m interviewing with xxx….. and they asked me aaaa and I responded with bbbb. Tell me what the interviewer would like or not like about my response and why”

  31. Do You Hear The People Sing?*

    I looked at AI-generated interview questions to help me prepare for job interviews. The questions weren’t bad.

    What were awful were the answers AI generated. That I would be good for the job beause I’d rescue people from a burning building, etc.

    I mean, I follow AI’s logic there. Rescuing people from a burning building IS good. But unless the job is firefighter, employers don’t usually look for it.

  32. Bonkers*

    Fun story about 360 reviews from my early professional life:

    I was fresh out of college. I went to a small school that had a very strong culture around giving feedback. Feedback was constantly requested at all levels, and “deltas” (aka growth opportunities) were required. I actually love that culture – it really fostered a growth mindset.

    Anyhow, here I am, fresh out of school, asked to give feedback to a senior engineer. I was flattered, and immediately crafted some feedback that included positive feedback and areas for growth. I had to think about the growth for a long time, because this guy was really great!

    What I didn’t appreciate was that 360s were definitely NOT viewed as a vehicle for growth opportunities at this workplace, especially for junior employees giving feedback to senior employees. The relationship was suddenly strained and awkward, and I still cringe when I think of it.

    Long story short: I think you just have to know the culture. A positive-feedback-only culture isn’t going to suddenly see the light and thank you for giving (even carefully worded) negative reviews.

    1. Aggretsuko*

      Exactly right. You have to know the culture before you answer, and you have to know what kind of answer is expected/wanted–Ask vs. Guess culture again. You also have to know your place in the hierarchy.

  33. Alex*

    The high school and college kids I know all use ChatGPT constantly to complete stuff that is asked of them, whether or not they are allowed to or if it is a good idea. One way to view this assignment is that the teacher is acknowledging this reality and hopefully showing students what could be useful and where there are pitfalls. Of course, we don’t have any way of knowing if the teacher is doing a good job of that, but I could see how it could actually be very educational.

  34. Wembem*

    Alison, would you mind posting that ChatGPT log regarding the interview questions? If nothing else I would love to see how you got anything useful out of it.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      I don’t have a log but I literally just wrote, “Tell me 3 likely interview questions for (job title)” for a few different jobs. I didn’t ask for suggestions of what good answers would include, but it included that in the response anyway (and what what was good was that it did not suggest specific answers — which would have been bad — but rather “good answers will include things like” and then a list of bulleted points about the *type* of things you should include from your own experience).

  35. SunnyShine*

    LW1 – “…As an example, he scheduled our boss to meet with board members, assigning them a meeting time without asking them for input on their schedules.”
    That’s for his boss to handle. Not sure how that affects you. If it doesn’t, just move on.

    “I’m worried I may have bitch-eating-crackers syndrome with him”
    You described him as a baby in a man’s body. I think you’re already there. Lol

    “his incompetence has resulted in hours of extra work for me and he thanks me “for my leadership”! It probably doesn’t help that when I held his role, I was paid two-thirds of what he earns now.”
    This is a problem with your organization. You did the job and now you can let go. For the extra work he caused you, those would be the things to write about, not the annoying habits or words he uses. If you cannot articulate that well in a review, then I suggest meeting with his boss or not answering. Potentially slamming someone in a review can reflect poorly on you.

    1. HonorBox*

      While it doesn’t work well to slam someone in a peer review, there’s a way of pointing out that Bill has created extra work without it coming across as slamming him. If Bill isn’t good about proofreading the newsletter before it gets sent, and LW has to go through and correct all of the hyperlinks, as an example, that’s a point that is easy to articulate. It doesn’t have to be “Bill is paid more than I was and yet is too stupid to even check hyperlinks in the newsletters every week.”

  36. CTE Teacher*

    LW #2, as a Career and Technical Education teacher in a state where the department of education writes our curriculum for us with a team of experienced leaders in their industry, we have an entire unit on writing resumes, cover letters (which they refer to as letters of application) and one of the activities we are encouraged to have our students do is create LinkedIn accounts/profiles. I don’t. I don’t see a need necessarily for my students to create a profile. I show them mine, and we discuss the uses of LinkedIn, and we move on to other things.

    I also teach my students interview prep, dress, and we have mock interviews. Our district partners with a nonprofit group in our area to have the junior classes participate in mock interviews with business leaders. My own spouse, a 30+ year veteran in manufacturing plant management comes in an does mock interviews with my business and career management students. He also talks to them about what employers expect, and how to utilize their transferable skills in the workplace.

    As far as AI, our state education department is encouraging us to teach responsible use of AI. I discuss it at length with my business students, and with my Adobe Visual Design students. The ins and outs, and we look at AI generated photos and writing for the discrepancies. I focus mainly on how AI can be used to bully people, but we also discuss the ethical use of AI.

  37. Sabrina*

    LW 3 my boss does something similar, it’s incredibly frustrating. I’ve learned they do not handle being questioned in the moment well at all, they are a very anxious person and me questioning a direction at all causes them to panic. So what I’ve learned to do it first say yes, I’ll do that, wait about 15 minutes, and then send a “just to clarify…” email where I ask the question I wanted to ask when they assigned the work. I am so many emails from them that start out “Good catch!” and then we figure out what they really want. It took me months to figure this out, but our working relationship improved greatly once I did. People are weird, good luck!

    1. ScottW*

      I also have an anxious boss. I think they feel like if they don’t ask for changes, then it’s their fault if something goes wrong. They even said to me about a project that it was probably going to fail (under my leadership) and they’d be left to pick up the pieces. This when I have 30 years of experience to their 15. (The project was a success, got tons of appreciation from higher levels, and their surprise/relief was palpable, although they’ve simply moved their anxiety on to other projects.) Anyway, I’ve learned (A) not to ask for feedback unless I have specifically been directed to ask for feedback, (B) it helps to ask for feedback on a part I don’t care about, and (C) I can ignore (or plausibly misunderstand) their comments if I disagree and they don’t in the end care. YMMV.

  38. OP#1*

    Hi!

    Alison, thank you for responding to my question, just in time for me to write the review! I think I will ask the manager running his review what she thinks, but probably stick to your phrasing. Yes, some of the issues are not just problem solving and political awareness (thank you for that phrase!) but also time management, and I feel ok here.

    Thanks to everyone commenting! I hear y’all that good feedback should be direct and it’s a kindness, but like others have pointed out, my issue is not that I am worried about hurting his feelings. I mostly care about myself, lol, and I don’t want to create tension, nor do I want to be seen as someone who always has negative things to say about her coworkers. It’s been a tough two years for my team in terms of 2 competent people shouldering the work of three incompetent people, and I have ranted a LOT, and gave two (constructive but) negative reviews last year. Neither staffer improved, and both were on PIPs that just lapsed with no action or improvement. Yes, this is a culture problem. I can’t fix the culture problem, and was mostly looking for Alison’s phrasing on what Bob’s issue actually is.

    Agree with the commentators who said down with 360 reviews!

    1. bamcheeks*

      I mostly care about myself, lol, and I don’t want to create tension

      I think this is very legit, and not something you should apologise for! IMO 360 feedback processes only work well if the organisation puts a lot of work into training people in how to give good feedback and what kind of feedback to include in a 360 process: if they aren’t doing that, you shouldn’t be putting in significantly more work than the organisation to try and work out what kind of feedback is beneficial and how to structure it. If there’s a risk that critical feedback is going to damage your relationships and you aren’t confident that the process will manage it well, defaulting to bland and positive is the sensible option.

    2. Jennifer Strange*

      It’s been a tough two years for my team in terms of 2 competent people shouldering the work of three incompetent people, and I have ranted a LOT, and gave two (constructive but) negative reviews last year. Neither staffer improved, and both were on PIPs that just lapsed with no action or improvement.

      So he’s just a symptom of a larger issue. That really sucks. I hope you’re able to find a better job at a better company.

  39. Sportsball*

    he constantly says “Thank you” instead of “sorry” as we’re all taught to do

    Ha ha what? Sorry but I didn’t know this apparently was a thing. And now we know why it maybe shouldn’t be a thing?? Because then you have idiots causing chaos in the workplace and not even bothering to apologize for being idiots.

    1. ScottW*

      Thank you vs. sorry really depends on the personalities. For people who are too self-critical, saying thank you and moving on is a little less needy than falling on their sword over and over, asking for reassurance. But I agree, it doesn’t work that well for people who are just careless. Someone once said, about a critical error they had made, “Well, we’ll get it next time”, and it really sent me over the edge.

    2. Saturday*

      People have suggested saying thank you instead of sorry to people (especially women) who tend to over-apologize. It might be helpful in some contexts, but some people have take this to mean they should never apologize, and that can be really annoying for the people around them.

      Causing a big problem that requires other people’s time to fix and not apologizing (in a normal, non-groveling way) seems a good way to annoy your coworkers. Even showing up late and saying “thank you for waiting” instead of “sorry I’m late” is annoying in my opinion.

      1. Jack Russell Terrier*

        This gets my goat too – you need to take responsibility for *putting someone out*. To me that’s the litmus test. That just blithly *tells you how you felt about it/should react*, to add insult to injury

    3. Irish Teacher.*

      It’s become a suggestion on social media. “Replace ‘sorry’ with ‘thank you,’ eg, instead of saying ‘sorry I’m late,’ say, ‘thank you for waiting.'”

      I get the idea, that it puts the focus on the other person rather than what you did wrong, but…I think it can feel a bit manipulative. It’s hard to say “actually this really inconvenienced me” when the other person has just thanked you for being patient or whatever.

      1. Kelly L.*

        I think it’s supposed to train people out of saying “sorry” when they really haven’t done anything wrong–like telling your best friend “sorry I blathered at you about my stupid problems!” Instead you’d say “Thank you for listening,” because you haven’t done anything wrong and that’s just part of friendship.

        But it starts to sound manipulative when people use it when they really have messed up and should actually be saying sorry.

  40. fhqwhgads*

    LW1, I’d also put out there for you to consider: if you only intend to give positive feedback in the thing, that somewhat defeats the purpose of it. It isn’t something you should do for others OR want for yourself.

    1. HonorBox*

      I was thinking this too. If you’re asked to give feedback, wouldn’t it be helpful for that to be ALL feedback? If you’re a boss, you’re not only giving positive feedback. If the company has peers reviewing peers, why wouldn’t you want to include things that will make them a better colleague?

      Some of this feedback is a bit nuanced, so it does make sense to take it to their manager before dumping it into a 360 review.

  41. CubeFarmer*

    Jumping on the high-school question to ask how are current college students being coached in interview prep? Are they being coached? Does AAM have enough student readers to justify a post on “getting that internship?”

    We recently interviewed three graduate students for an internship. None of them brought a copy of their application materials to the interview (I thought that was a standard thing to do, but has that fallen by the wayside?) and only one of them followed up with a thank-you email (I KNOW that’s still something to do, and it reflected poorly on the applicants.) Interestingly the only applicant to send a thank you was slightly older than a “traditional” student.

    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      Interview preparation for college students varies widely by institution, major, and individual engagement level. Some universities integrate interview prep directly into coursework, particularly in business, engineering, and health sciences, while others rely on career services to provide coaching. Students may access one-on-one practice interviews, workshops on behavioral and technical questions, AI-driven tools like Big Interview or VMock, and employer-led sessions that offer real-world feedback. On some campuses, career readiness courses are actually required. Employer partnerships also play a role, with recruiters hosting practice interviews and first-round screenings on campus. While many resources exist, student participation varies—some actively seek coaching, while other students may not seek out help until they begin applying for jobs. In my experience, the students who need the most help are usually the ones that don’t even know these resources exist.

    2. Nontraditional student*

      Both of those things sound really outdated to me. They are certainly not consistent with the hiring environment I’ve encountered after returning to the workforce in the last year.

  42. Margaret Cavendish*

    #3, this is my life as well! What has helped me is realizing that there are some people who will always have feedback, regardless of what you’ve turned in. Especially with managers – the work of managing is *so* different from the work of being a subject matter expert, and can be hard to let go of being a SME. So I think often this a way for them to feel like they’re still part of the process.

    It probably doesn’t matter if paragraphs B and C are included or excluded – what matters is that he gets to express his opinion on it. So from that perspective, his comments aren’t inconsistent at all – they’re very consistent, as it seems he always has the same kind of comment. It’s easier if you just assume that going in – his feedback is about him, not you, and it’s all part of the process of writing for him.

    1. OP 3*

      Thank you so much! This is exactly how it feels, and that makes sense to me. I also sometimes get notes like “change ‘Jim ate the sandwich on May 31’ to ‘on May 31, Jim at the sandwich’” so that does seem to track.

  43. The_artist_formerly_known_as_Anon-2*

    #3 – yeah I had a boss like that once. It was hell. I later worked under supervision of a guy like that, while he was recovering from alcoholism – and couldn’t remember one thing to the next.

    People are human. It’s better to let things ride – ONCE IN AWHILE. Then if it continues, get the hell out.

  44. ruerue*

    OP4: Is it possible to set up your email so that every single meeting email gets forwarded to IT?

  45. hotg0ss*

    OP4- Highly recommend autodeleting! You can set a rule that meeting invites that meet specific criteria (for example, addressed to someone else) skip the inbox and go straight to the trash. Especially if you’re worried about the optics of having access to all of his meetings! That way you don’t even have to see them.

  46. Meg*

    RE Chat GPT: AI is here to stay. The correct course of action is to learn (and teach), how to use it ethically and correctly, and it sounds as though this is what is happening here. I cannot understand the people who just want to run from it. The key is to harness it for what it is good for.

    1. A. Lab Rabbit*

      Lol. We used to say that the Yahoo! directory was here to stay. Guess what? It went away. Technologies come and go. Remember fax machines?

    2. Lenora Rose*

      No, no it really isn’t. Lots of technologies come in with us being told they’re a big thing and go away because they’re terrible. Others come and stay. Tech experts – including experts in OTHER kinds of AI – seem to agree generative AI is the former.

      I’ve seen some examples of genAI where people who aren’t any good at a task say it helps them because it’s better at it than they are. I haven’t yet seen one example of a use for genAI that people who are actual experts at the skills appreciate.

      Even my one favourite example of how to use it as a teaching tool is *directly* based on the fact that genAI will be wrong as often as right, and one of the things it teaches is how to parse that.

  47. Road Tripper*

    360 reviews are supposed to come from peers, subordinates and supervisors. The review, as it was explained to me when I got mine, is supposed to show areas of strength and areas that need improvement. The direct supervisor should then work with the individual to set a goal for improvement.

    As someone who has gone through one, it’s often buggared beyond belief because those implementing the process don’t have a clear process and end up confusing everyone involved.

    LW#1, reviews should contain good and need improvement comments, as well as a goal for the next year. This isn’t about making someone feel good, it’s about helping someone improve in their role or to outgrow it. Ask someone who supervises for assistance in writing up his review to have phrasing that best suits your company/department.
    Additionally, I would like to suggest instead of taking on his mistakes, sending them back for correction: “person A cannot attend due to a conflict. Please reach out to A directly or look at the schedule assisting to make a new meeting date/time.” You are not doing him any favors by taking on this workload.

  48. AppleStan*

    To OP #4:

    I’m thinking there must be something bigger than people don’t know *every* single feature in Outlook, because I assume this next step has been tried (but you know what they say about assumptions):

    1. You need to be in the Executive’s Outlook for any of this to work.
    2. Go to FILE, then ACCOUNT SETTINGS, then DELEGATE ACCESS
    3. In the list of delegates, click on your name.
    4. Click on PERMISSIONS.
    5. Under Calendar, make sure “Delegate receives copies of meeting-related messages sent to me” is UNCHECKED.
    6. Click OK
    7. In the list of delegates, make sure your name is selected.
    8. Click REMOVE
    9. Click OK
    10. Click the back arrow at the top left of the screen to return to Outlook.
    11. You’re done!

    Really, you should theoretically be able to go directly from step 3 to step 8 to solve the problem, but if there is one thing I’ve learned about Outlook is that it is *very* easy for something stupid to go awry, so making sure you’ve covered all of your bases is the best way to go.

    Again, all of this may have been done…but it’s like when you call tech support and they say “Have you made sure that the printer is actually plugged in and turned on?” and it turns out the printer HADN’T been plugged in. So apologies if this has already been done.

    1. Bike Walk Bake Books*

      Unless their current assistant wants to receive copies of meeting-related messages, in which case after deleting yourself go back to that spot and mark it CHECKED again. If they have an admin with full privileges they could take care of all of this for you anyway. I’m kind of surprised they haven’t.

      This is reminding me to go into my calendar and check that I don’t have anyone who provided temporary admin assistance still being annoyed by my calendar emails but I’m pretty sure I cleaned that up long ago.

  49. Ex manager*

    There is a maxim of management that anything in a review should never be a surprise. This should apply to 360 reviews as well. If it is worth putting in a 360 review, you should have long-since raised the issue or issues with Bob, with your manager, and/or with Bob’s manager, as necessary and appropriate, without seeing improvement. The 360 isn’t the time to raise an issue, it is the time to hammer home an issue that has already been raised, repeatedly, without improvement.

    Also, Bob sounds like he’s on the neurodiversity spectrum – there is a certain type of ASD that causes just these kind of ‘cringe’ moments for certain types of neurotypicals who are highly sensitive to protocols. Not saying that is an excuse, it just means there are some things that neurotypicals are just going to ‘know’ that he’s going to have to memorize, like “you have to check with senior leaders on scheduling” and “this is a situation where questions are only for authority figures”.

    1. Andromeda*

      There’s a rule here about not diagnosing people. Also hi, I’m neurodivergent and have both learned my way around an office in 4ish years of working *and* have seen neurotypical people behave exactly the way Bob does. The advice here doesn’t really change whether or not he’s neurotypical; either way it’s causing frustration for LW and others around her. (Bears repeating that he’s causing her to lose time correcting for stuff he does, and things like just shoving a meeting in the calendar when everyone is very busy can cause huge admin headaches)

      1. Ex manager*

        I agree – no change of advice – I just note it because Bob needs to be told that he has a problem first – neurodiverse or not.

      2. Ex manager*

        My point being that I don’t see anything in the letter that Bob has been told there is a problem – by anyone. If he is neurodiverse, he probably has no idea what he is doing is wrong, if no one has told him. If he isn’t neurodiverse, he obviously doesn’t know either, for other reasons. In any event, he needs to be told before he gets the “on his permanent record” treatment of having it in his review.

  50. e271828*

    LW1, schedule a meeting with this poor smol bean who cannot figure out how to use Outlook and an IT person, in his office, where his computer is, and make them take you off his meeting notifications. Stand over them. This has been going on for years.

    Alternatively, start showing up at all his meetings?

  51. Stuff*

    Something I need to complain about with #2 is, LinkedIn has notoriously poor privacy policies. An adult can make the risk/reward calculation about whether to expose themself to that, but for a minor, that is a decision the parents need to be involved in. A teacher has no place whatsoever mandating a minor choose to take that risk in order to pass a class, and if I were the parent, I would be barging into the principle’s office to express exactly how angry I was. I’m not even somebody who generally takes hardline pro-parental rights stances, because being LGBT and an abuse survivor, I understand full well that parents very often do not act in the best interests of their children, but on this issue, the teacher has no right whatsoever.

  52. Ann E.*

    I think (5) could use more nuance. I work for a non-profit but somehow because of the name and my job duties I am having a lot of people assuming I’m a federal employee, including people interviewing me for jobs. I imagine there are plenty of roles that are just as ambiguous to the public but in the other direction.

    1. fhqwhgads*

      I don’t really see how it could be ambiguous in the other direction in the context of a resume and cover letter. If your resume says you were employed by a federal agency, they’re going to know you are.

  53. librarian*

    LW3: I just wanted to say I would absolutely lose my marbles if this were happening to me. Kudos to you for keeping your cool. There is nothing more frustrating to me than when expectations keep changing so I can’t get a handle on what I should be doing. ugh!

  54. 2 Cents*

    #2 The resume brings me back to when I had to help my younger brother with his first resume. He did a stint at a big box store’s garden center and legit listed “Maintained plant life” as one of the bullets (but even funnier, he didn’t because so.many.plants.died. that summer :P)

  55. Art3mis*

    #4 I had something similar happen, except it involved me leaving my employer and then getting my email address back as a vendor and then still being on meeting invite lists and email lists for stuff I shouldn’t be getting. Which was annoying but also a violation of company policy and a HIPAA violation in a few cases.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      My friend had something like that when she was laid off from one team and then rehired for a different department. She was given her old email address back but it had never been taken off the team list for Old Team and she was getting lots of emails she shouldn’t have had.

  56. Amy*

    LW 4 – I work in IT and have had the “fun” experience of escalating these types of requests to the system administration team, which is functionally equivalent to sending them into a black hole. Eventually I asked a coworker who had moved to the system admin department and it turned out they don’t actually have access to remove delegate access on the backend. The person who gave the access (the director in your case) would have to go into their Outlook settings to remove it. It’s really easy, but that person needs to sign in first and do IT can’t do it alone. But I guess they didn’t want to tell anyone that because then the logical follow-up would be communicating with that person and (at least at my work) the backend system admins hate talking to end users and will ignore things that require that and hope they go away on their own. Sigh.

  57. holly*

    I was recently on a interview panel for a fairly high level executive director position in which we, the interviewers, picked up on AI-generated answers during the first round of interviews. We politely let the person continue to read us line-by-line ChatGPT answers until their time limit was up. The leader of the interview panel stopped taking notes after Question 2 and that is when he decided to not call the AI-generated answer person back because it showed laziness / they have no passion for the position. Take what you will from that.

  58. Alexandra*

    “…it was pretty good at explaining the types of things your answers should cover.” ChatGPT can’t explain, it can’t think, it isn’t sentient. It is a glorified copy/paste machine that spits out random words. There is no thought behind it. I’m amazed that very few people understand this. It’s also killing the planet, so maybe don’t use it for things you can use your actual brain for.

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