should you address hiring managers by their first names?

by Alison Green on May 19, 2015

I can’t tell you how often I address an email to a job candidate using their first name and they respond by calling me “Ms. Green.”

This is weird.

I know people feel like hiring-related communications are a formal thing and that they should formalize it all up. But when someone you’re talking to makes it clear that they’re comfortable with first names — by using yours — it feels odd and out of touch if you continue to call them Mr./Ms. whatever.

You are not a child talking to a grown-up. You’re both adults. It’s okay to use first names.

In fact, in most fields it’s perfectly okay to address the person by a first name right from the start, without waiting for them to do it first. After all, if you were meeting new colleagues on your first day on a job, would you address them as Mr./Ms. ____? In most fields, you would not, and it would be really weird if you did.

And before you argue that when you’re job searching it’s somehow different and more formality is expected, let me ask you if you’d be offended or put off if the hiring manager addressed you by your first name right off the bat. I’m assuming you wouldn’t be. So the only thing making you feel that you’re supposed to use Mr./Ms. are outdated ideas about power dynamics in job searching. And those aren’t a good thing.

But if you can’t bring yourself to listen to me on that, at least make sure that you’re mirroring the same level of formality/informality you see from them — which means using their first name once they use yours.

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how to regain control of your time and get more done

by Alison Green on May 19, 2015

If you feel like you don’t have enough control over your time, the problem isn’t your calendar – it’s the way you’re looking at the situation.

Even with an overscheduled calendar, you’re still making decisions about how to spend your time and how not to spend it. Realizing that you control how you spend your time – down to each minute! – can be the first step to figuring out how to make better decisions about  how you do and don’t spend your time.

The two key questions to ask yourself are: Are you spending most of your time on your most important priorities? And are you spending time on things that aren’t especially high on your priority list?

If you’re not funneling decisions about how to spend your time through this paradigm, you’ll end up allocating your time by default, rather than being strategic about it. Most people who aren’t vigilant about asking these two questions end up picking the tasks that they enjoy most or that are easiest or that are right in front of them or that feel most pressing in the moment. But those might not be the most important things for you to do, and doing them will keep you from higher-importance items.

Instead, you’ll feel more in control of your time if you make deliberate decisions about what’s most important to you, so that you can ensure that – even if not everything gets done – the things that are the most crucial won’t be the ones that fall by the wayside. For examples, let’s say that today you need to meet with your boss, draft a memo, call back a client, and sign off on a report. The meeting with your boss and drafting the memo are the two most important things to do; if you don’t get them done today, you will have jeopardized a major project at work. But if you’re not managing your time well, you might start off the day talking with the client, spend some time chatting with a coworker, and get drawn into a non-urgent meeting about next month’s sales goals. Then at 4:00 p.m., you might realize that you still haven’t written that memo or met with your boss (who is now tied up in a different meeting).

If you had managed your time differently in this example, you still might not have gotten everything done, but if you’d started the day with clarity about what was most important to accomplish today, you could have met with your boss and drafted the memo first thing in the morning so that your most important work for the day was completed, and maybe you might have chosen to avoid that chat with the coworker and pushed off that sales meeting until another day. You might have ended the day with items remaining on your to-do list, but the most crucial ones with the biggest impact would have been crossed off.

That’s really what time management is all about: getting clear on what’s most important to achieve, and then making sure that the way you’re spending your time reflects those choices.

I originally published this at Intuit QuickBase’s blog.

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how should I have handled an older married colleague’s interest in me?

by Alison Green on May 19, 2015

A reader writes:

I am a woman in my mid-20s. I started at a company a few months ago and took a very junior position. I had recently moved to the area and did not have much of a support group. A mid-40s married male colleague in a leadership role was very kind to me, and I felt he really facilitated my integration into the company (e.g. trying to include me in the lunch conversation, and saying generally complimentary things about me).

Soon we were talking frequently in the mornings before work at the company gym, and also during his breaks. We had many shared interests and a similar background. At times, I felt like the attention was a lot, but he was very well-respected and liked at work so I thought he was just being very friendly.

I enjoyed talking to him, but due to our difference in positions he had to initiate most of our conversations. I couldn’t distract my senior colleagues from their work, but he’d come by my desk a few times a day and chat with me for five minutes. He told me that he was unhappy with his job and hinted that he was unhappy in his marriage. Since I was new to the area, I was very lonely and talking to him was the highlight of my day.

One day after work, he told me that he wanted to take me to a place, and without giving me any details or letting any of our coworkers know, he asked me to get into my car and follow him in his car. We drove to a park, and he told me that we were talking too much at work, and people would suspect that we were having an affair. And he said that if I wanted to talk to him, we could arrange to meet in a park. He said we might lose our jobs.

He then went away on a business trip/ vacation and while he was gone, he started texting me. At first, it was innocent enough and regarded work stuff, but then he asked me for a selfie. Thinking it was a bad joke, I sent him a picture of a cat. But he continued to pressure me to send him a photo, and when I stopped responding, he said something to the effect of, “I see that you’re busy and I’ll stop bothering you now.”

After that, working in the same office with him was very uncomfortable. He started asking me a lot of personal questions about dating and relationships, and I stopped going to the gym. He has since moved onto another company, but he made me feel extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable. Was I overreacting? What should I have done? Since he was so well-liked, I felt like any tension between us would have reflected badly on me.

I have asked a male colleague about this, and he said that while it was weird, he found nothing inappropriate about it. But my female friends find this off putting and one said I had an emotional affair.

I know it’s done and over, but for a while I was terrified that I would get fired or feel pressured to leave, if his wife found the texts. I was worried that whenever we talking, people would think we were having an affair, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop interacting with him because it’s a small company and we all work closely together.

An emotional affair is basically an affair without the physical component and would imply that you had feelings for this guy. It doesn’t sound to me like you did. Rather, it sounds like this dude was being incredibly inappropriate and skeevy toward you. (Which makes me think your friends are being weird in labeling this an emotional affair rather than something more one-sided.)

It’s not that an older married man can never have a friendship with a younger woman, but genuine friendship doesn’t come with attempts at secret assignations in the park and intrusive questions, and it doesn’t leave one of the parties feeling “extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable.”

This dude was at a minimum attempting to carry on a secret flirtation with you, and he was almost certainly interested in more. His conduct with you was pretty much a walking red flag:

  • Telling you that he was unhappy in his marriage: red flag
  • Asking you to send him a photo: red flag (Do your platonic friends nag you for selfies? Do your coworkers? That’s pretty much the province of people with non-platonic interest.)
  • Telling you that your relationship needed to be on the down-low: huge red flag
  • Saying you could lose your jobs: red flag (For what? Office friendships don’t generally jeopardize people’s jobs; he had something else in mind.)

And the biggest red flags of all: making you feel that any tension would be seen as your fault rather than his (which is a really convenient side effect when someone with more power hits on someone with less power), and making you feel trapped in a situation that you weren’t comfortable with.

So I’m pretty comfortable concluding that he was a skeevy dude taking advantage of a professional power dynamic that — intentionally or not — made it easier for him to get away with making you uncomfortable because you were hesitant to call him out.

I wouldn’t call that an emotional affair. I’d call it unwelcome and inappropriate conduct and possibly harassment.

You asked what you should have done. First, let me say that no one tells you how to handle this stuff, so you shouldn’t beat yourself up for anything you did or didn’t do. You tried to be friendly to someone who you thought was being genuinely friendly to you. You’re not responsible for him crossing lines with you or for not perfectly shutting it down when he did.

But in the future if someone’s behavior starts making you uncomfortable (which in this case sounds like it might have been the day of the trip to the park), ideally you’d be clear that you need the person to back off. How you do that is up to you and depends on what you’re comfortable with. Some people are most comfortable doing that by pulling way back on the social relationship and keeping the interactions strictly professional in order to give the other person a cue in a way that lets the other person save some face. (However, some people will respect that cue and some won’t.) Other people prefer to directly tell the person that they’re not interested and the behavior is unwelcome (which can range from “I’m really not interested in meeting you outside of work” to “I’m not comfortable with this conversation” to “please leave me alone”).

If the person doesn’t back off after you’ve directly told them that their behavior is unwelcome, at that point you have a potential harassment situation and you should talk to your manager or HR or someone in a position of authority in your company who you feel comfortable approaching. No healthy company would blame you for the situation if they heard about the fact that you’d asked him to stop and he hadn’t. That’s pretty much textbook harassment and most companies take it seriously.

I’d say that the best thing you can do here is to see this situation for what it was: not an emotional affair, not you being responsible for any potential tension, but an older married colleague getting you comfortable with him and then coming on to you in a way you found unwelcome. That reflects on him, not on you.

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our employee runs an adult website on the side, manager is pushing me to use public transportation, and more

by Alison Green on May 19, 2015

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

1. Our employee runs an adult website on the side

It was brought to our attention that we have an employee that runs an adult website that is classified as “adult glamour,” so it is nudity but not porn. (As far as we know; we have not subscribed to the site.) Should that have any ramifications on her job? We are a healthcare office. She is a wonderful employee and we would have never suspected this from her. She is not doing anything criminal and it does not affect her job.

If it doesn’t impact her ability to do her job, I’d let it go and write it off as her private business. If the person who brought it to your attention was an employee, you should also make sure that that person knows that they shouldn’t gossip about this with other coworkers (both in order not to create a workplace distraction and to protect her from being harassed).

2. My manager is pushing me to use public transportation

I took a new job over a month ago. The hours and shifts suited me so well that when I’ve been accepted I’ve moved closer to the office to be able to walk to work and avoid daily commute. A few days after my move, the company has announced that they are moving the office 20 miles away! Shifts I took involve 7 am starts and night shifts. Public transport during weekends and early mornings is not an option.

My partner has offered to take me to and from work until I will get my license sorted. We would then share the drive and work around it. When I announced to my employer that I got the transport sorted, he for some reason asked me if I could try to commute anyway?! Which to me is more expensive and time consuming, not to mention physically impossible, when on 12-hour shifts because the commute takes 1 hour and 40 minutes. I’m puzzled!

I’m puzzled too, unless he’s concerned about the reliability of this plan. But why not just ask your boss why he suggested it? (You really don’t need to try to read tea leaves when your manager says something mystifying; it’s fine to just ask for clarification on the spot.) Regardless, though, you don’t need to loop your manager into your transportation plans at all. If he asks, you can say, “This ended up working better for us.”

3. Can I change the amount of notice I’ve given?

Several weeks back, I learned that my position is being relocated to the company’s corporate headquarters in a different state. I was offered the opportunity to relocate, and declined. It’s just not something that works with my life right now. They understood my decision and gave me time to transition out of the role. We mutually decided on a last day, which is about a month from now.

I’ve had a couple of promising interviews now for a position I’m very interested in. I know that offers are never guaranteed, but if I do receive an official offer, I would be interested in starting as soon as possible. I’m not enjoying being in “job limbo,” so to speak, and I’m having a hard time remaining focused on my current role. What I’m wondering is – how much notice do I have to give my current company if they already know I’m leaving? Am I expected to stay until the last day we chose, or would less time be appropriate? I was thinking of giving them a week, but is that not enough time?

In general, if you told them you’d be leaving in a month, they’d be unlikely to be pleased if you suddenly announce it’ll be a week instead. They’ve made plans based on what you told them, and it’s possible that they would have done things differently if they’d known they had less time — moved up certain meetings, or had you train someone faster, or asked you to complete a piece of work that you now won’t have time for.

However, in this case, where you’re being laid off, the rules are a little different; it’s reasonable to ask for some flexibility if you get an offer earlier than you expected when the whole reason you’re looking is because they’re eliminating your job.

4. Is it normal to offer only one week of vacation a year?

I recently relocated to Texas with my husband for his new job, and I’m happy to say that after nearly 4 months of being unemployed, I was offered a job. The pay is great and we’re keeping my husband’s health insurance through work, so I don’t need to sign up for their benefits (which are a lot more expensive per check then his). My question is about standard vacation time. I was only given one week off for the first year with a couple of sick days. The position is for a mid-level graphic designer position – so I’m not entry level… does this seem low to you? I tried to negotiate with them but I got the “this is completely normal” talk. I really like this job but I feel like this is a serious downside – I assumed I would get the minimum of two weeks.

Am I being unreasonable? I’ve looked at all kinds of reviews online but I can’t seem to figure out if this short of vacation time is normal or not.

No, that’s really, really low. Prohibitively low, in my opinion, unless you really need this particular job.

5. Did my employer lie about the reason I was let go?

I was hired as a web editor for a major telecommunications company. Four weeks into the job, my recruiter called and said there was no work for me and I was being terminated in two weeks. But I had been busy and did all the work that was asked of me with no negative feedback whatsoever. An editor’s work on a website with new content every day NEVER goes away. Do employers actually lie about the reason for terminating contractors? If I didn’t live up to expectations, why not just say so?

Sure, people lie about the reasons for terminations all the time, in order to avoid having tough, awkward, or unpleasant conversations. That’s especially true with contractors, where the company tends to have invested less in them and often feels less obligation to give feedback.

It sucks, but the reality is that it’s hard to tell someone that they’re not meeting the standard you need. It’s the reason why so many managers put off dealing with performance problems long past the point where it’s reasonable to operate that way. That doesn’t mean that’s okay or reasonable to do, but it’s certainly common.

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when I overhear speaker phone conversations, is what I overhear fair game to share?

by Alison Green on May 18, 2015

A reader writes:

I serve as an executive assistant in a very large educational organization. My office is located between my boss’ office and an executive director’s office. The executive director often takes calls via speaker phone and leaves her door open all the time, so I can hear her conversations. My boss supervises the executive director, who, at times, undermines our boss.

Today, the executive director received a (speaker phone) call from a clerk in another building that the building was being evacuated because fire alarms were activated. About 200 people were inside the building. I waited a minute or so for the executive director to call our boss, and she did nothing. So I discreetly stepped into our boss’ office and called her cell phone to let her know what was occurring.

For future reference, is any information overheard via speaker phone “fair game,” especially when the information would be valuable/helpful to my boss? Or should I pretend that I can’t hear many of the executive director’s conversations?

Interestingly, when another exec assistant and I have conversations about weekend plans, family, etc., the executive director sometimes joins the conversation with her thoughts, obviously having listened to the conversation for a while.

When it comes to overhearing colleagues in general, it’s good to preserve a polite illusion of privacy. That’s just good for everyone’s mental health at work. (Of course, speaker phones are very much not good for people’s mental health at work, so you could argue that she’s forfeiting some good will there.)

But you’re not required to pretend that you didn’t hear big, startling things that would obviously impact you and others. If you overhear a caller telling your coworker that the building is on fire and then she continues sitting placidly in her office without taking any action, it’s fine to stick your head in her door and say, “Did I just hear that the building is on fire?” That’s a normal, understandable thing to react to.

Regarding discreetly passing information along to your boss … It depends. It’s true that part of being an executive assistant is making sure that your boss knows the things she’d want to know. And if you can easily hear the conversations from your desk (as opposed to, say, standing outside the door intentionally listening), and if the information is clearly something your boss needs to be/would want to be aware of, and if you have reason to think she’s not being informed on the schedule she’d want to be, then the answer to whether or not you should inform her is … sometimes.

The thing is, there’s still a judgment call to be made. You don’t want to undermine the executive director by constantly scooping her, or by removing her ability to exercise her own judgment. You also may not have all the information she has, and thus won’t always be as well equipped as she might be to judge exactly what should be passed along to your boss and when.

That said, if you hear something truly big and alarming that you think your boss would be upset not to be in the loop on (for example, you hear her talking about Bob’s resignation when your manager is actively working on a new role for Bob and has no idea he’s leaving), it’s reasonable to mention that. Even then, though, you should frame it in a way that acknowledges that you just overheard this, don’t have all the information, and might be getting it wrong. It’s the difference between “OMG! Bob is leaving and for some reason Jane hasn’t mentioned it to you” and “I don’t have full context, but I thought I should mention to you that I overheard what sounded like Jane discussing Bob’s plans to resign.”

But aside from rare exceptions like that, I’d err on the side of assuming that the executive director is conducting herself capably and making the correct judgment calls about keeping your boss in the loop.

(And if you start to notice an alarming pattern that indicates that’s not the case, that would be something to discreetly mention to your boss.)

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what to do when your boss wants you available 24/7

by Alison Green on May 18, 2015

When your job is increasingly encroaching on your evenings and weekends, and you’re regularly finding yourself emailing late at night or working on non-urgent projects over the weekend, is there any way to push back?

If your office expects you to be available outside of work hours more often than you would like, here’s what to do.

1. First, be realistic about the requirements and norms of your field. Some fields are notorious for having long hours, like law, political campaigns, and start-up companies. In some fields, the norms of the field mean that you are indeed going to be expected to stay constantly plugged in. If you’re in a field where this is the prevailing way of operating,you may need to decide whether or not you want the lifestyle that comes with doing that work. If you don’t, there’s no shame in that – but in that case, realize that you need an exit plan and a way into a field with different hours and expectations.

2. Second, be sure that you’re interpreting your workplace’s expectations correctly. You might be assuming that when your boss emails you late in the evening or over the weekend, she’s expecting a response quickly and that you can’t wait until you’re back in the office to field her query. Or you might assume that because you see others around you working long hours, the same is expected of you. And sometimes that may be the case. But plenty of the time, your manager will be just fine waiting until Monday and is just emailing you on Friday night because it happened to be the most convenient time for her.

If you’re not sure, have a direct conversation and ask! It’s reasonable to say something like this to your manager: “I’m assuming that it’s fine for me to wait to reply to emails sent over the weekend until I’m back at work on Monday, unless it’s an emergency. Is that safe to assume, or do you prefer that I respond in the evenings or over the weekend?” You might find out that it’s fine for you to wait. But if not…

3. If your boss makes it clear that she does indeed expect round-the-clock availability and you don’t want to work that way, try pushing back a bit. For example, you could say, “It’s important to me to have time to recharge outside of work. I will of course put in extra time when something is an emergency, but otherwise I prefer to use my evenings and weekends to recharge so that I’m refreshed when I’m back at work. Assuming I continue to perform at a high level, can we try that and see how it goes? If it causes problems, we could revisit it at that point.”

4. Offer a compromise. Even in offices with demanding hours, you might be able to find a middle ground. For example, you might agree to check your email once each evening, but that you’ll only respond if something is truly urgent; otherwise it will wait until the next business day. Or you might agree that you’ll be reachable most evenings, but that on weekends you’ll be truly off the clock. The idea here is to have a discussion with your manager about what might work for both of you. (And if you’re a good employee and your manager is a decent manager – and the work allows for this kind of compromise – your manager should be motivated to try to find a solution that works for both of you.)

5. Know your bottom line. If your manager tells you that in fact you areexpected to regularly work in the evenings and over the weekend, and that that’s not going to change, then you need to decide if you want the job under these terms, knowing that this is part of the package. But the key is to have this conversation and find out where things really stand, not just leave the topic unexplored.

I originally published this at U.S. News & World Report.

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should I email my whole team to air my grievances when I resign?

by Alison Green on May 18, 2015

A reader writes:

Would it be career suicide to send an email to everyone at my current job explaining why I’m leaving it?

My boss turned out to be a two-faced liar who viciously targeted and drove out several coworkers (while quite a few who weren’t targeted left because they couldn’t stomach how others were being treated). Because I’m not social and she was so nice to those of us she liked, I never questioned anything until very late when someone who worked close to me was targeted and driven out. I’m still pissed at the sheer WTF nature of what was done to so many people. I liked that job and team too!

It possibly wouldn’t help matters because my boss was forced to leave one departure before me (at that point she’d lost all the experienced teapot-makers save me), but still, HR and upper management sat on these problems for over a year! I’m also upset that to many she’s seen as an angel and they think that I’m leaving to show support of her.

Here’s the full potential letter text below, in case you’re interested. I’m pissed enough that it’s actually fun to write the story out. Probably TLDR though. Names have been completely changed, including my own.

Hello all,

Today is my last day at Vanilla Teapots Inc. I’ve had fun here for most of the last three years, but it’s now time for me to be moving on. Best of luck to you all in the future and maybe our paths will cross again!

I do want to clear up one thing before I go. I am not in any way leaving because of the change in management in my group. I am leaving despite it. I like what I see in our new manager so far. As a manager, she seems both nice and competent. If I wasn’t so already with one foot out the door, I’d feel excited to have her taking over my (soon-to-be-former) team.

I have been job searching since a few weeks after Angus left the company. If I wasn’t so dang lazy at it, I’d have been out long before now. It was far too much to watch him be stonewalled at every turn, taken off all projects, and have his every attempt to contribute and publicly ignored. One particular instance that stuck out to me was his idea to reform some of our spout-making techniques to meet a growing business need. His idea was shunned for weeks until the day after I advocated it. I only meant to support an idea I liked and yet I learned later that our manager had accused him of going through me and demanding what he meant by it. For months, I watched a coworker I liked whose work I respected be miserable and depressed at work and I could not find remotely adequate our manager Lucinda’s stated explanation of “Well, those two people he referred are gone so he’ll be searching next.” I could not and cannot understand why an excellent employee who “might be looking” should receive such draconian treatment. I spent about two weeks after his departure anxious and wondering whether this was really normal in the business world to mistreat and push people out like this. Eventually I decided that, normal or not, I would be gone before anyone could decide that *I* might be looking, or worse, before I’d have to watch it happen to someone else.

Some time after I made this resolution, Celia also gave notice. I did not manage to feign proper surprise to the news, as Celia had been dropping hints, and Lucinda took this very poorly, leading me to believe that due to my friendship with Celia, I would be next in line to be shoved out. I told Celia I was looking and was surprised to discover that Angus was not the first to be mistreated, or even the worst. Cordelia probably got the worst deal. Lucinda had previously told me that Cordelia got into vicious fights with the Tea Cozy team and others on my team, including Caliban immediately after which she’d been “fired.” When I at this point decided to fact check, the Tea Cozy manager knew nothing about the supposedly recent Tea Cozy team fights and Caliban cracked up in my face at the idea he’d been fighting with and complaining about Cordelia. He’d actually left because of how she’d been treated (one of several). Apparently Cordelia had been dragged before HR with these invented incidents, no one in HR had fact-checked anything, and Cordelia had been forced to leave hastily to avoid being fired for things that had never happened (and she’d been told by Lucinda that she had “a mean face” to boot). When I reconnected with other people who had left, I was horrified to discover a pattern of targeted mistreatment and lies that upper management and HR had done absolutely nothing about for over a year at the least.

I was also horrified that I’d been in the dark for so long and ignored red flags out of a desire that everything be happy and sunny. Lucinda at her best, if she liked you, was a wonderful manager, very sweet and supportive, and if she’d been like that with everyone, she could have brought the best out of everyone and built the wonderful team that this for a while seemed to be. She was also a very convincing liar who only told lies “in confidence” or that she thought would be hard to verify. My stress over her final months was immense, wondering what would cause her to turn and how to, in my extremely limited capacity, protect myself and the recent graduates I was working with.

So much has been kept in silence and suffered in silence. Because it was silent, people were able to get away with allowing it to continue. I don’t wish this to ever, ever occur again with anyone or to anyone.

Do Not Send.

Do not, do not, do not!

Sending an email like this, no matter how right you are in what you’re saying, will reflect far worse on you than it does on your old manager or your company’s managers. Rightly or wrongly, it’ll make you look unprofessional and like you have bad judgment. It’s likely to be seen not as an attempt to set the record straight, but rather as a bridge-burning act and an F-you to your company. It’s the kind of thing that will make people uncomfortable to refer you to jobs in the future, even your allies.

Believe me, we’ve all had fantasies of doing this kind of thing. But you’ve got to resist the urge, because it really will hurt you more than anyone else.

However. You absolutely can discreetly let people know your reasons for leaving in one-on-one conversations (and not in email — you don’t want a paper trail of this after you leave). Do it calmly and objectively, and you’ll get the message out while preserving your credibility.

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your manager sucks and isn’t going to change

by Alison Green on May 18, 2015

Three letters, one answer. One answer that’s awfully similar to this one.

1. How can I improve morale when our president is so difficult?

I work for a very small nonprofit with fewer than 15 employees. We have had a difficult history with a lot of turnover. Due to that turnover, I am now second in command and most of the organization reports to me.

I have been trying to improve morale, but the line I am increasingly getting is “Things won’t improve until the president leaves.” He is a difficult person; he has wild ideas that he will make everyone work on and change his mind suddenly about large projects that take a lot of effort. He also publicly holds people accountable for things that really aren’t their fault, or aren’t realistic, but does it in a group setting so there is no way for them to defend themselves without making him look bad. I could go on, but how can I help build a stronger team that works together without fixing the real problem (the boss)?

Your manager sucks and isn’t going to change.

You can’t build a team that functions as if your difficult, demoralizing president isn’t heading up the organization, because he is. You may be able to make small improvements around the edges, but the fundamental problem is going to remain. Do you want to be second in command to someone who operates that way?

2. How can I make my boss see reason?

I recently started a new job as vice president of content for an online company with about 25 employees. The CEO/owner has a long history of successful start-ups. However, he’s into his 70s now and I’m wondering if he’s losing his grip a little. I’ve been in this business for decades myself, and the money he wants to pay the freelance writers is absurdly low–about half the going rate, and he wants me to cut it further even while he brags that our content is better than our competitors–it’s not. He even found some outsource content providers that send us barely literate copy for next to nothing. The stuff is ghastly. And yet his plans are so grandiose that even if he tripled our budget it would still be a stretch. He approached an old friend of his who’s a fine writer–I checked his work–and offered so little money that his friend was hurt and insulted. The CEO seems very confused at this. Ironically, if he lowered is quantity expectations, I could create a very profitable site for him.

He seems impervious to reason and is getting more and more annoyed with me that I can’t produce the quantity and quality he wants on his low budget. I’m thinking of quietly talking to the sales staff and telling them the boss is going to wreck the company if this goes on, but that sounds dangerous.

Any ideas? I want to stay here–the pay is good and I see a lot of potential.

Your manager sucks and isn’t going to change.

You can try spelling out reality for him (“the going rate for the work we need is $X, the plans you have for the site will cost $Y to do well, and so we need to pay more or accept shoddy work”), but it sounds like you’ve tried and it hasn’t gotten you anywhere. Since you don’t have a magic wand that can make him see reason, and he apparently isn’t changing his mind, you’ve got to decide whether you want to be VP of content for a site with content you consider ghastly.

3. My boss always favors new employees over everyone else

I’ve worked for the same company for almost six years. It’s had its ups and downs, but I’ve remained loyal, putting in long hours and hard work. Having been here this long, I’ve noticed a recurring problem. Whenever a new employee is hired, my boss gravitates towards them and holds their opinions and decisions above everyone else’s.

To me, this seems backwards. Rather than giving the new guy a chance to work hard and prove himself as a valuable employee, my boss automatically gives him that advantage. For example, the new employee who has worked here for less than five months has currently taken it upon himself to redesign our company logo. Said employee does not even have a background in design, yet this is being allowed.

My coworkers and I have brought this problem to the attention of our boss, and yet he completely disregards our concerns. And it’s not just this new employee — it happens every time. Any time a new person is hired, they automatically know more than anyone else and are put on a pedestal. I call it the “shiny new toy effect.” I would think our boss would value and respect the people currently keeping the company afloat, especially since new hires have been like a revolving door. In general, my boss is pretty naive, I just don’t understand why he favors new employees and shows no loyalty or respect for those of us who have stuck by his side.

Your manager sucks and isn’t going to change.

All you can really do is decide whether you can work there reasonably happily knowing that, or whether it’s time to look for another job.

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weekend free-for-all – May 16-17, 2015

by Alison Green on May 16, 2015

Olive watching kittensThis comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. (This one is truly non-work and non-school only; if you have a work question, you can email it to me or post it in the work-related open thread on Fridays.)

Book Recommendation of the Week: How to Be a Victorian, by Ruth Goodman. This is fascinating. You will learn all about how to keep clean without water, how Victorian bathrooms worked (and didn’t work), what it’s like to brush your teeth with soot, and so much more. The author didn’t just research this stuff; she actually lived that way herself and then wrote about what it was like. Soooo interesting.

* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.

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new manager getting pushback from staff, employer keeps tweeting about a job opening, and more

by Alison Green on May 16, 2015

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

1. I’m a new manager and getting pushback from some staff on job requirements

I’ve been promoted to the managerial position for a college program where I was formerly the program assistant and an instructor. I am also much younger than most of the other instructors who were my colleagues and now are my staff (about 10 people) and am taking over for a much-loved manager who founded the program.

While I have great relationships and feel respected by about half the team, there are several others who are having trouble adjusting (to say it lightly). The former manager was very lenient about some of the administrative requirements and I’m being pushed by my own supervisor to be more strict and make sure everyone is doing what they need to be doing. There are several staff members who have been under-performing and not following some of our grant requirements. These are are also staff members who are off-site (about an hour away). I recently sent emails to two in particular having issues, explaining that we need to make sure certain requirements are met in order to not risk our funding. I attempted to come from an empathetic perspective, and in fact the former manager (she’s been training me before she goes) looked it over and thought it was fine. I received fairly haughty responses back, along the lines of “(former manager) was very flexible, are you not going to be as flexible as her?”

I’m trying to be flexible, I’m trying to be delicate and empathetic, and I’m also trying to get respect and fulfill my responsibilities to my own supervisor and our grantors. These are people who have been in the program a long time and are overall good instructors so I don’t want to lose them, but simply don’t know the best way to proceed.

“I know we’ve been more lenient about this in the past, but we’re deliberately making a push now to follow the administrative requirements because ___. If it turns out to be really onerous to do this, let me know what you’re running into and we can talk about how to approach it, but (your own boss) and I are committed to following these requirements going forward.”

If you continue to get indications that some staff members are Not On Board with what you’re doing, talk to them about it directly — and if it’s getting in the way of them doing the work you need or being able to work with them relatively easily, be prepared to handle it as you would any other performance issue. It’s great to be flexible and empathetic, but don’t let that steer you away from being forthright when you’re not seeing what you need.

2. Writing a recommendation letter on a different company’s letterhead

I was asked to write a recommendation letter for a former employee who is now applying to graduate school. He was an excellent team member, so I’m happy to help.

However, the school he is applying to requires that the recommendation letter be on “company letterhead.” Both the former employee and I have moved on from the organization we worked for when we worked together. I called the school, and they confirmed that the letterhead requirement is important to them, suggesting that I use letterhead from my current place of employment (which the employee has no connection to).

The organization I work for now is well known and I’m not sure they’d want their letterhead used for this (something completely unrelated to them). I also don’t want to imply in any way that that I’m speaking on behalf of my new company or that former employee is somehow connected to this new company. Am I wrong to feel “icky” about using my current company letterhead? Are there any other options that I’m missing? (Also, what if I choose not to keep working after leaving my last place of employment? I wouldn’t have much option to use “current” company letterhead, right?)

It’s pretty normal to use company letterhead in this context. It’s not considered unethical, wrong, or weird. You’re not speaking for your current company, but you’re acting in your professional capacity, and this is where you now work. You’ll of course make it clear in your letter where you worked with the person, so you’re not being misleading in any way.

(That said, I agree with you in wondering how the school would handle it if you weren’t currently employed.)

3. Explaining why I don’t have a LinkedIn profile

I’m just starting my job search after completed a graduate degree and am trying to connect with folks for informational interviews where possible. It’s going really well, but I keep running into the same problem — every person I’ve connected with asks for my Linkedin profile. When I say that I don’t have a LI (or any social media), they tell me what a big mistake it is not to have an online presence during my job hunt.

The problem is that I don’t keep social media profiles for safety reasons, as I’ve been stalked online by an abuser from my childhood. I’m familiar with my legal options, but I don’t want to explain this very personal story to strangers or in job interviews. How do I answer this question? It’s exhausting to get a lecture on why I need Linkedin when it’s not an option for such an intimately personal reason.

I’d go with, “I know, and normally I would. There’s a long, complicated story behind why I don’t.” And then I’d immediately steer the subject to something else.

4. Severance agreement stops payments once new work is found

My wife has a severance agreement from her employer where she is paid on leave for a specific amount of time (a week for each year she was at employer). I believe she can not get a new job, and if she does this pay will cease. How would her old employer who she technically is still getting paid by now? They have never sent her anything where she verified she wasn’t looking and/or had other employment.

Does she have a written severance contract that clearly states that the severance will stop if she takes a new job before it’s set to run out? If so, she has signed a legally binding contract and should inform them herself if she accepts new work before the severance payments stop. Otherwise, if they later find out, at a minimum she’s likely to have burned that bridge with them (and possibly impact the kind of reference she gets from them in the future). Worse case scenario, they could take her to court to get the money back.

And they could certainly find out — through LinkedIn, the grapevine, knowing someone at the new company, or who knows how. Plus, there’s the whole acting in good faith thing — she made an agreement that she should honor.

5. Employer keeps tweeting about a job opening

I applied two weeks ago to a job that seemed tailor-made to my skill set. It’s also a job with a company that I’ve been following quite extensively for a few years now.

They tweeted the job out on their Twitter page for the first time on April 27. The job posting itself was first listed on their company website on the 27th. Since then, the job has been tweeted out once every couple of days. It was tweeted out again this morning.

Should I already assume I’m out of the running? After applying I received an automatic reply, the standard “HR will contact you in 2-3 weeks if interested,” and I understand that I should consider a job out of sight out of mind after applying, but… is there any way I could know what this means? Does tweeting the job posting out multiple times mean they aren’t getting applicants they want? Does it mean maybe they haven’t even started interviews yet? Is there any way to know if this means anything?

It means nothing.

It’s no different than companies that keep refreshing job ads until they’ve hired someone. It doesn’t indicate anything about the quality of candidates in their pool or whether or not you are still under consideration; it indicates only that they want to keep the flow of candidates coming until they no longer need to, because they’ve hired someone and closed the position. Smart companies keep recruiting actively no matter how much they like the candidates in their pool, because they have no way of knowing if things will ultimately work out with those candidates or not.

Plus, the person handling their Twitter may have zero interaction with the people doing the hiring and have no idea where the hiring for the position stands, other than the fact that there’s an open job.

I think you’re taking the tweets to mean “we’re increasingly concerned that we need more candidates because we definitely don’t see the right one in the existing applications,” but it really means nothing more than “we have a job opening that has not been filled as of today.”

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