Ask a Manager

A reader writes: I work with a very talented team of individuals, and I feel like I can’t operate at their level. I consistently complete fewer tasks than the rest of the team, and I need guidance on things I’ve been working with for years. I’ve improved greatly from where I was when I started […]

Last week we talked about wild overreactions at work. Here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The cups At my company, we used to use paper cups at our cafe (where we get lattes for 50 cents). When we switched to reusable cups, it was OUTRAGE. The announcement post on our internal […]

Here’s a round-up of posts about pregnancy and work. interviewing while pregnant is it dishonest not to disclose you’re pregnant when you’re interviewing? interviewer said they would hire me if I weren’t pregnant interviewing while pregnant — but I’m not the mother when should I tell my interviewer I’m pregnant? working while pregnant how do […]

A reader asks: My employee, who is fresh out of college, is often not very thorough or good at his job. He’ll submit work that clearly lacked any attention to detail. And 90% of the time, there are errors that I end up pointing out. I am fair, factual, and give context to why the […]

A reader writes: I recently applied for a promotion at work and was passed over in favor of an outside candidate. I won’t go into all the details, but hopefully it suffices to say that I was a very strong candidate, I had a lot of internal support, and everyone I’ve talked to has been […]

Last month’s salary survey received more than 13,000 responses. You can view all the responses in a spreadsheet that you can sort by industry, job, location, and more. However, that’s a lot to sort through so reader and data analytics professional Angelique Dawkins created graphs looking at some of the data.

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. My coworker interrupts me with questions she could answer herself My coworker and I used to work in the same extremely toxic workplace. We leaned on each other, commiserated, and when I told her I was done, she pointed me in the direction of a […]

It will come as a surprise to exactly no one that Americans don’t get enough vacation time from their employers. The average American worker in private industry gets only 11 paid vacation days after a year of employment (plus, generally, federal holidays and paid sick leave). That’s awfully stingy compared to how much leave workers […]