miscellaneous

if you’re encountering problematic ads here…

Hey, y’all. I know some of you have had problems with the ads here recently — video ads that automatically play sound without your permission and Flash ads that hang up your browser. My ad network is working on it, but there are also several things you can do that will help: 1. Ads with sound: […]

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cheerleaders at work, misdirected selfies, and more

It’s Labor Day, so in place of a final post today, here are a few articles I found interesting recently. 1. Internet companies in China are bringing in “programming cheerleaders,” women whose job is to “that help create a fun work environment,” including buying programmers breakfast, chatting, and playing ping-pong with them.  No, seriously. 2. Job seeker […]

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want me to review your resume?

I get a lot of requests to give people feedback on their resumes, but because it’s time-consuming to do it well, I usually turn them down unless they’re friends or family. But for a short time, I’m re-opening the resume review offer that I’ve run a couple of times before. When I’ve offered this in […]

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resume reviews are coming tomorrow

Resume reviews are coming soon! When I’ve offered limited-time resume reviews in the past, slots have filled up quickly and I’ve closed the offer pretty fast (once after only 10 hours). Last time, people asked for a heads-up before the next offer so that they wouldn’t miss it. So in case you want to be […]

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carpool drama, employee time-off demands, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My coworker is making it tough for me to share a ride with our executives I’m at an organization where we’re in a lot of transition. We have a consultant working with us, “assessing our skills and capacity,” and we have a couple of executives […]

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the most surprising thing about Ask a Manager letters

A reader writes: I was curious, after years of writing this column, do you still get letters that surprise you? Do the reactions from the commenters ever surprise you? Have you ever thought that the conversation about a letter would go one way and it went completely the opposite way? What surprises you the most […]

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