Ask a Manager

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. My boss and my employee won’t stop asking me to spend the night at their houses

A few little details to clear up things that were brought up in the comments and one big one that I think ended up being the root of the issue (maybe). I am in a large metropolitan area on the east coast, and it is not in any way normal for people to invite other people to spend the night at their house in this area. I grew up Mormon, so my views on alcohol are a bit skewed. I do drink but I find it highly unusual to drink at children’s activities, holidays, and other times when a lot of people think it is normal. Also, when I said I can be a little wild on the weekends, I meant smoking pot and swimming naked in my pool, nothing more.

The biggest thing to clarify, which I think was the root of the invites, is that I actually lived three hours away, but my boyfriend lived about 30-45 minutes away. We (the kids, him, and I) split our time between the two places. We have been dating for many years and the kids had bedrooms and friends in both locations. When I needed to be in the office, I would stay at his house. Most of the time, we were at my house. We referred to both places as home. Since then my kids graduated and went off to college, we sold both houses, and bought a house together that was near his old house and are thoroughly enjoying empty nesting! My coworkers all knew about all of this, but for some reason after the move the invites stopped. The only thing I can think of is that they for some reason thought I (and/or the kids maybe) were not 100% comfortable staying at his house … maybe? Or they didn’t understand that I was only driving back to his house somehow … We stayed there regularly, so I really don’t know.

I definitely agree with you that there are some loose boundaries and sometimes an assumption that everyone else feels the same way. I did say something to my boss about my employee inviting me to spend the night after I had been drinking at a work event and she responded, “I invite you to spend the night too and it isn’t weird when I do it.” To which I just blinked and changed the subject.

As far as my boss and my employee spending too much time together outside of work — my employee has given notice that she is retiring soon. I have been promoted and am being groomed for the C suite. My boss is still my boss, but as the only two women on the leadership team we have developed a very close bond and genuine friendship. All of this makes it feel less awkward to spend time with them outside of work.

2. Should I accept my employee just isn’t well suited to a task?

For the second/final meeting of 2024 where the note-taking was needed, I reassigned the task to someone else, a recent part-time hire we’ll call Sally. Sally did great; she was able to immediately pick up the process, keep up with the conversation, and she tracked edits accurately and with apparent ease. I am really hoping she remains available to do this for 2025 meetings.

I approached the reassignment pretty straightforwardly with Callie, who was, interestingly, surprised and a little embarrassed (I’m not sure that’s quite the right word to use, but it’s in the ballpark). She asked if she’d been doing a bad job and I let her know it just wasn’t a task she was well-suited for and, more importantly, wasn’t using her strengths to their best advantage. She has plenty she’s good at and it makes more sense to have her focus on those tasks than this one. She did say she wasn’t sad to not have to do it anymore, because she found it stressful and difficult. The fact that she was surprised that she wasn’t performing the task satisfactorily did open my eyes to the fact that perhaps I was being less direct than I thought I was in coaching her/giving feedback on her performance, so that was definitely a learning moment for me.

A lot of the commenters focused on how weird the overall group review process was and offered some interesting alternatives, which I appreciated! I don’t have immediate plans to shake things up, but it’s always good to hear (or in this case, read) the outsider perspective to see where there may be room for improvement. While any given chapter of the book itself has a single author and a single technical reviewer, the group review process is a needed third step. The type of stuff we’re writing about is open to interpretation, in many instances, so it’s a case of more heads are better than one to ensure we’re covering content completely and accurately. Person A could read the guidelines and come to Conclusion A, leading them to Implementation A. Person B could read the guidelines, also come to Conclusion A, but they’d choose Implementation B. And Person C could read the guidelines and come to Conclusion C, leading to Implementation C. And so on and so forth. There is usually one right answer, and the group discussion leads us to home in on it and write about it correctly. There are also times where multiple interpretations could reasonably be accepted and it’s important to have that captured in the book as well. All that is to say, it’s content that benefits from discussion more than just multiple people editing the same Google doc or something.

I really appreciate Alison’s reply and all the comments!

3. My company announces employees’ babies … but skipped mine (#3 at the link)

First, I appreciate the supportive comments on my post! (And in terms of the conversation it sparked about work-life boundaries, I’ll just say that I’m on the reserved side of things for my team/organization, and I’m quite confident that no one I work with would call me an over-sharer.)

In terms of the baby announcement itself: I followed Alison’s advice pretty much to the letter. I emailed the HR person, said I realized an announcement had never been made when my son was born, sent a few up-to-date pictures, etc. The update was posted, I received a few well-wishes, and it made me feel like there was less of a weird silence around the topic of my baby. So all good there.

As is often the case with these types of questions, and as I knew to some extent at the time, this small thing was made bigger by the fact that it was a difficult period overall. My son’s medical condition required him to have some surgeries that I needed to take time off for, and some recovery time where he couldn’t be in daycare and I was juggling caring for him, managing a part-time home health aide, and still trying to perform at work to the same level I always had. I felt like my director manager was emotionally supportive but still expected me to get my work done at a busy time of year. My grandboss, who I have worked with for years and with whom I typically have a very good relationship, was clearly so uncomfortable and unsure of what to say about my son that he completely ignored anything to do with my personal life. It was hard logging in to a casual team meeting the week after my son’s surgery and hearing all my coworkers’ weekend stories but not having anyone ask how my son was doing. So it was a hard time, and I felt unsupported at work in general, and the lack of baby announcement fed into all of those feelings.

But: my son had his last (for the time being, and maybe/hopefully forever!) surgery in late April, he resumed full-time daycare after Memorial Day, and he is THRIVING. He is a happy, rambunctious 15-month-old who keeps me very busy and I am so grateful. Now that his health and my home life have stabilized, work is back on good footing as well, and the coworkers who were clearly uncomfortable asking about my son are now comfortable asking the typical “is he walking? what is he being for Halloween?” type questions. So that feeling of having a big thing going on personally that was unaddressed at work has receded.

4. My employee refuses to do her job and leads me in circles about why she won’t (first update here)

I am the manager of Bartleby, who, a couple of years ago, would prefer not to do a lot of the work that was part of their job. Since you asked for updates, even uneventful ones, I thought I’d send a quick note.

I can share that the transformation seems to have stuck for well over a year now: Bartleby has continued to be cooperative and collegial, and they communicate in appropriately-sized chunks of generally pertinent information. If they don’t have paying work, they stop by to let me know that they have time available, and when pointed in the direction of things to do, they do them well. They’re not gonna win Employee of the Year, but they remain solidly on the higher end of “Achieves Expectations.”

I remain more than a bit surprised, but the absence of unnecessary drama has been such a relief.

Thank you, as always, for one of the most interesting and useful sites on the internet.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

1. Our boss hired his emotionally unstable son to work with us

First off, thanks so much for answering my question and publishing it for others to chime in on. Reading the input from you and the commenters made me feel much better about my difficult position, and what I should expect from myself and others.

Phil still works in the lab, still under his dad. Since writing my letter there haven’t been any major repercussions, but also no major outbursts, luckily. I don’t think anybody ever explicitly brought up the issue to Cyrus. Phil has been doing OK work but still gets away with things that he probably couldn’t if he wasn’t the boss’ son. He sleeps in his office while “attending webinars.” He was also taking days off when he had no available PTO, but Ezra found an ally in Phil’s de jure manager who helped curb some of that.

I’m pretty sure that nothing further will be done to try to rectify Phil’s behavior or Cyrus’ transgression in hiring him, because everyone in the lab is leaving or planning to leave! Ezra found another job and Edward is leaving to focus on med school applications. Sam will be on paternity leave in December and told me he’ll be searching for a new position while he’s off.

As for me, I was encouraged by the comments assuring me it was time to go. I came across a really interesting position, read every AAM post about applying/interviewing, and got the job. It’s still in academic research so the raise is modest, but it’s in a really impactful field I have been interested in since high school but never had the chance to pursue. Also, for the first time in my STEM career, I’ll be able to work with other women of color, which I’m really excited for. I start this coming Monday, wish me luck!

That’s every single full-time employee in the lab (besides Phil) with one or both feet out the door. I’ve heard rumors through the grapevine of the lab shutting down entirely. I think there are alarm bells ringing in admin – my grand-boss, whom I never met in my ~3 years working there, asked to arrange a call with me. She also asked Ezra for an exit interview. As far as I know, before this she’s never asked to talk to any of the employees that resigned from our lab. Since it’s after my official last day I wasn’t obligated to but I agreed to do it, maybe against my better judgement. Out of a self-interested desire to move on smoothly, my strategy is to not bring up anything controversial if not directly asked about it. I have no idea if my grand-boss even knows that Cyrus hired his son.

This whole situation was a dose of reality for me and a lesson that sometimes, the best solution for yourself is to just move on. It was tough to become disillusioned about my ‘dream job’, but this situation may end up being the catalyst for significant development in my career. I really loved my coworkers and I wish them well in all their new endeavors. Despite everything, I also wish Cyrus and Phil the best in fixing the issues they have going on, and hope I’m not the only one who has learned a lesson from all this.

Former lowly research assistant and now shiny new research engineer, signing off :) thanks everyone!

2. New chair sends non-urgent texts in my off hours (#3 at the link)

Midwesterner that I am, I am unable to be overly direct when I have a conflict with someone. The magic answer was to respond to these text messages asking, “Oh, did you need me to deal with that right now?” It’s indirect, but the message should be clear to most reasonable people: “Why are texting me about this on the weekend?” These texts largely disappeared, but her life also got busy when she had a baby, so correlation or causation?

3. Do I have to refuse to use first names because my manager won’t?

I don’t have a dramatic update, but basically I resolved to respect people’s wishes, even if that meant using first names in front of my supervisor. In the case of people who haven’t specified or who told me they have no preference, I use last names.

My supervisor mostly does not seem to mind; she did once refer to the phenomenon in passing, and while she didn’t sound thrilled, she also didn’t express disapproval (and I think she would if it were a problem for her; she takes a lot of pride in developing us). She has also recommended that the supervisory position I covet remain vacant until I am eligible (about 4 months from now) and frequently talks to me as though the promotion is a foregone conclusion, so she can’t be too displeased with me! Thank you so much for the advice; it gave me the courage to follow my instincts in this situation, and I think it was the right decision.

4. Pregnant coworker keeps saying awful things to my terminally ill sister (first update)

The pregnant coworker actually left that job shortly after the confrontation so we didn’t have to give her any more thought. My sister had to work until the last few weeks of her life (yay capitalism), and we are so grateful for your help in making sure she didn’t have to deal with a bully on top of everything else.

She passed away earlier this year. She spent her final months doing almost everything on her bucket list, including hosting her own funeral a few months before she died (she wanted a party, not a memorial).

She was the kindest and funniest person I have ever known and the stars are dimmer with her gone. It’s kind of special to know that sometimes when I am down an AAM rabbit hole I might bump into her.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose employee kept coming to work sick? Here’s the update.

I wrote to you back in May requesting help in managing a staff member who insisted on coming to work when he was ill – both when he was contagious and jeopardizing others, and when he was too ill to function in the workplace in a safe and healthy way. I was really wrestling with balancing the need for this employee’s right to medical privacy, their right to work, and the rights of both my staff and members of the public to not be jeopardized by his possible contagion. I really appreciated your reply and I read through all the comments – you have no idea how validating it was to hear from everyone supporting both the need and my responsibility to take action to protect my staff and members of the public. The staff member went on another vacation right when my original letter was published, which gave me a lot of time to think and plan, and by the time he was back from his vacation I felt fully prepared to tackle this issue.

First off: I called our HR assistant director to ask for guidance. She was remarkably helpful, and she said that while the phrasing in the employee instructions was “should stay home” if you’re sick, “should” can mean “must”, and that I could move forward with implementing that phrasing immediately. Then, I drafted signage to post in multiple locations in the staff work area/bathroom/break room, and I spoke with every employee personally about it to ensure they saw the signs and understood. Finally – and most importantly – I met privately with this staff member when he returned from vacation to explain these new guidelines and expectations, and to convey in no uncertain terms that any attempts to come to work when impacted by illness would be met with documented action. I stressed to him the need to protect and safeguard our colleagues – which appealed to his good nature, as he’s truly a nice person – and I also was very forceful in expressing to him that no staff member will engage in discussions about whether or not he should be at work, nor would any staff member be able to drive him home due to illness in the future. He accepted it all without argument, and we ended the discussion on good terms. I’m very, very glad to report that I have had no issues with this staff member about this since that meeting.

In case anyone would find it helpful, the verbiage I used on the staff-area signage is below. Thank you, Alison, and thank you to everyone who commented for your amazing help with this!

Guidelines for staff illness/symptoms

While the CDC has dialed back the restrictions regarding Covid, please read and understand the following based on guidance from **locality’s** Human Resources:

If you are symptomatic of any contagious illness, you must stay home until symptoms completely subside. Symptoms include, but are not limited to:

• Coughing (if you believe your coughing is “just allergies”, wear a face mask)
• Sneezing/congestion
• Sore throat
• Fever – Temperature of 100* or more — must go home and stay home until below 99* without fever-reducing medication for at least 24 hours
• Muscle/body aches
• Chills / body sweats
• Upset stomach (diarrhea/vomiting)

Returning to work after an illness:

You may return to work only after your symptoms have fully subsided; guidance suggests “getting better,” but HR clarified that you must be well to return to work, not just feeling less bad.
Masking: With any respiratory illness (including but not limited to Covid-19) the CDC suggests masking for 5 days after symptoms have fully cleared. If you have tested positive for Covid, you MUST wear a mask for at least 5 days after you have returned to wellness and can return to work; this is to prevent contagion from possible rebound infections.

Prevention:

• If you have been exposed to someone with a contagious illness (Covid, flu, etc.) please wear a mask to prevent the spread.
• Continue to use Clorox wipes to clean the circulation desk (keyboards, phones, etc.) and other high-traffic areas.
• Continue to practice good hand-washing techniques.
• Masking: masks are freely available to library staff. You have the City’s full support in deciding to wear a mask (for example, if you’re working the circ desk, if you’re helping someone on the computers, if you’re working one-on-one with a patron, etc.).
• Please err on the side of caution and do your part to maintain a healthy work environment by masking or staying home when you’re sick. Your actions to help keep our library patrons and library staff healthy is vital.

Please understand that it is your responsibility to recognize and manage your symptoms; do not come to work if you are symptomatic. If you are at work and develop symptoms during the workday, speak with your supervisor and leave work until your symptoms have fully subsided. If you have been exposed to anyone who’s been sick, wear a mask for 3+ days to make sure you don’t spread germs. If you are concerned about missing time, please talk with **supervisors** about make-up hours or to find out if WFH is an option.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer wondering if they’d need to fire someone due to his lack of child care? Here’s the update.

We did wind up letting the employee go, but it wasn’t because of the childcare issue.

As I mentioned in my email, I was waiting for guidance from HR but I knew what they would tell me: that being on call is a requirement of the job and if he could no longer meet that requirement, he could not remain in the position. We have a company policy that he was informed of before taking the job and it had to be maintained. HR is located in another state, so we had a Teams meeting with HR, his immediate supervisor, and me. He was not happy after the meeting, but he understood. After discussing with the rest of the team, we decided to move him to the end of the on-call rotation, giving him three weeks notice to figure something out for childcare for that week.

As a few readers suspected, he had a contentious relationship with his ex-wife and she was initially unwilling to budge AT ALL on their scheduled custody days. However, once she realized he could be fired over this, she agreed to accommodate and switch up custody arrangement for his on-call weeks. This seemed like the only solution all along, but it took the threat of job loss to get her to agree to it.

Just to clarify a few things I saw in the comments: he did not have this custody dispute when he took the job (it was a recent development), there aren’t enough calls or work at night to hire a night shift person, and he did not make enough money to hire a night babysitter or nanny for seven days straight. The on-call arrangement is normal for our industry and the rest of the team, while open to some accommodations for now, did not want to split up their on-call weeks over the long term.

There were some unrelated job performance issues that began long before the on-call issue and it was ultimately a repeat offense that led to us having no choice but to let him go. He wound up being let go just before his on-call week came up.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

Remember the letter-writer whose coworker made a mean “self-evaluation” for their boss, who punishing everyone? Here’s the update.

A lot has happened since I last wrote.

First, I’d like to clarify some details. I didn’t write the self-evaluation, and at the time of the letter, I didn’t even know who had written it. I read it because it was stuck on a whiteboard that I needed to use during a meeting, and the person helping me move the whiteboard read it too. We threw it away afterward. I know that the malicious self-evaluation was also posted on the bulletin board, on the kitchen wall, and mixed in with other documents. It became popular partly because Rhonda isn’t well-liked at the company and partly because it was written in a humorous style. So even those who didn’t read it directly heard quotes from people who had.

One commentator said that this fake evaluation was distracting from the real issue, and you said Rhonda was a terrible manager and likely to continue doing awful things in the future. You were both right.

Some of us went to HR to question why flexible hours were no longer available, and Rhonda claimed it was all a misunderstanding. She said she only suggested stricter hours and that we weren’t required to follow them. I asked HR if it was possible to review my evaluation because I disagreed with some of Rhonda’s points, and I wasn’t the only one. To say that Rhonda didn’t like this would be an understatement.

The level of micromanagement after that reached absurd levels. She would interrupt people at random times, and we had to give her a complete report of everything we’d done since the last time she asked. This happened several times a day, and Rhonda expected lengthy or detailed responses, or she would interrupt you again and again. She also replied to emails vaguely, forcing you to talk to her in person for a proper answer.

Rhonda was also determined to blame someone for the letter. She interrogated all of us in groups and individually about it. She tried to figure out which groups of people typically went out together after work and concluded that a group who regularly drank together after hours was responsible. She told everyone that she knew who the culprits were, and so did we, and that the cover-up was only making things worse. Things escalated between her and this group. Rhonda claimed they deliberately scratched her car; the group said she was stalking them during lunch breaks. I’m not sure how much of this made it to HR — I tried to stay far away from all the chaos.

Fortunately, it lasted only a few months. One of the employees Rhonda was harassing as the supposed culprit missed an important deadline on a project. Rhonda didn’t notice until it was too late. We lost the client, and when Rhonda tried to put all the blame on the employee, she ended up being penalized herself for not realizing there had been no progress on the project for a significant amount of time. She and the employee had a very public argument during which the author of the letter was revealed (and it wasn’t the employee involved in the argument). Voices were raised, insults were exchanged, and both of them were escorted to HR and never came back.

The author of the self-evaluation claimed to have received a warning from HR and a compliment for their writing skills. I can’t say if that’s true, but I find it amusing to think so.

HR didn’t allow the evaluations to be redone, citing that there was no one available to redo them. This accelerated my job search, and I’m happy to say that I recently found a new job and have left all the drama from that company behind.

I thank you and the readers for the advice.

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. My boss gave me thank-you money in secret, but it feels like hush money (#3 at the link)

I thought both pieces of advice were solid options and landed between the two. I spent considerable amount of time asking myself if I keeping the money would prevent me from functioning authentically in the future should I have issues. I decided it would not.

I chose to assign good intentions since I had no tangible reason not to although my “spidey senses” were still tingling. Not taking the money seemed it may create bigger issues. Things seemed fine, and he seemed very pleased I accepted it.

Fast forward six months to yesterday. Someone on the leadership team reached out to provide notification of their role change in the company, and provide a personal word of warning to watch my back with the seasonal employees. Additionally information provided me with the backdrop for why I was given such a large amount of secret thank you money.

Apparently one of the seasonal employees was jealous of me and operating behind the scenes to sabotage me and my role. Leadership became aware of this toxic situation and talked about it among themselves. However the key authority personnel (the Money Giver) willingly chose to not address it because it didn’t personally affect him. Arguments among leadership ensued, pressure was applied to support me in my leadership role with said staff and Money Giver turned a blind eye.

So- all the spidey-tingles I experienced that something was amiss behind the scene were correct. The first commenter to my post was also correct. The money wasn’t hush money. It was “I f’ed up money.” He gave it to me to make himself feel better. But that’s okay. I bought brakes for my car, I now know my discernment was sharp, that leadership here is a mess and same seasonal employees are coming back. Leadership displayed their values – which do not align with mine. I am now job searching to find a place that more closely aligns with my values. It’s still a win for me!

Thanks for the advice!

2. My boss told me to meet weekly with my coworker … but my coworker won’t do it

I took your advice and emailed Jim and pushed for in-person meetings, especially since our boss asked me to establish regular face-to-face time. Unfortunately, he didn’t respond. My attempts to catch him in person about this did not work out.

I went back to my boss one last time. She explained that while she can mandate meetings with Jim, she believes it would be punitive for her to require meetings between the two of us, and feels it would be better for Jim and me to resolve this together without her intervening. My boss also clarified that Jim’s preference for email isn’t personal but part of his standard approach. He likes to process conversations and reflect before responding. Side note: Earlier this year, Jim told our boss that he didn’t see the value in regular 1:1 meetings. Boss had to put in a lot of work to get him to agree to meet regularly with her!

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had two communication issues where Jim expressed concerns through email, IM, or via my direct report instead of speaking to me directly. This has led to confusion and required me to initiate in-person conversations to clarify and resolve the issues. The second instance was particularly problematic, as he discussed his concerns with four other people during a meeting I wasn’t part of, including my direct report. He then messaged both my boss and me simultaneously about the issue without first talking to me. Both times this happened, I was completely surprised by his concerns and caught off-guard. This has been very frustrating.

I’m disappointed that my boss won’t require Jim to meet with me and that Jim hasn’t made communication easier. I still don’t understand why this has turned into such a “thing,” or why I am the one who is solely responsible for trying to better communicate with Jim. I hate to say it, but I am a youngish woman and he is an older man — I sincerely hope that our demographics have nothing to do with this, but who knows? Regardless, I sent him a final, direct request to meet bi-weekly, given the recent issues. I’m waiting for his response.

To address your question on verbosity: ironically, Jim is known for storytelling and lengthy explanations during meetings, so that label might suit him more than me — though I could be biased!

3. I don’t want to participate in my office’s steps challenge

I wrote in about how to manage a steps challenge at work when I was concerned about being pressured to participate. Your advice was spot on in helping to give me a breezy way to respond when two people did push me about signing up.

As is often the case for many who reach out for advice, I realized this one thing was a symptom of a larger culture issue. When I sat back to think about it, I realized I didn’t feel like I fit in with the office culture and didn’t like my work enough to keep trying to fit in. I decided to start job hunting and asked an old boss for help. He put me in touch with a friend of his who connected me with a company that did similar work but was a much better culture fit. Especially in this market, I was glad it was easy for me to quickly find another job that made me much happier.

4. Is it appropriate to want to be told when my manager won’t be in the office?

In the 10 years since this letter, my attitude toward my work and I think in general, Americans’ attitudes towards work and work location have really shifted. Speaking generally, I care less about where people are than if they do good work in a timely manner, and communicate appropriately.

For the specifics of the original question, I did take Alison’s advice that as long as things were getting done, then it had nothing to do with me. I remained in the role for several years, and looking back, I admire my manager for living her own life and also being a supportive boss, who has since been a reference several times.

Due to the nature of the field I’m in now, I’m likely to work for small (tiny) organizations in the future, though they won’t be family businesses. I think more years in the working world have helped me realize what is and what isn’t mine to care about.

5. Managers don’t know we can all read their private Slack channel

I wound up telling them that the Slack channel was open. I decided that they really needed to know. I told my acting manager who was one of the three in the channel. He started to cry. I received an apology from the chief of staff and the CEO thanked me for acting like a “grown-up.” My new manager didn’t understand my role and the leadership team continued to be toxic. I wound up playing my own personal game of survivor as everyone in my department started to leave one by one. It came down to me and one other woman. I left about a week before she did! I am now in a new position with a wonderful new boss. I appreciate everyone’s advice and continue to follow everyone’s stories on AAM!

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who wanted to know how much they could pet their cat on video calls? Here’s the update.

The cats are doing great! And so am I, pretty much. I got promoted recently, and my manager was a big reason why; she went to bat for me and sang my praises, both to me and the higher-ups.

When I wrote in, I was stressed in general because my boss was giving me lots of nitpicky negative feedback and no positive feedback, so I was concerned about my performance / hypervigilant about other things I might be doing wrong. I realized recently that (a) she and I are both fairly neurodivergent; (b) what I thought was needless micromanaging was in fact subtle advice for how to behave when I’m in a higher position — she has said since then that she’s preparing me for a management role; (c) although she rarely gives positive feedback on a day-to-day basis, whenever I ask how I’m doing / meet for a performance evaluation, she effusively praises my strengths / how I’ve grown / how I’m valuable, and says how grateful she is to have me on her team; (d) she is always respectful in her behavior; and (e) she is very open to critical feedback herself, thanks me for it, and modifies her behavior based on it.

As I’ve been understanding more about what she wants from me and putting it into practice, the “nitpicking” has lessened dramatically. Ironically, having instant critical feedback on a day-to-day basis and rock-solid support during performance evaluations, has allowed me to lower my defenses and relax a lot!

Your nuanced advice regarding cat interactions has allowed me to not worry about it anymore. I try to keep my cats off-camera as much as possible, so I don’t forget and kiss them on the head, but luckily most of my meetings are with my tiny team and are camera-free. I think if I’m ever in a more important meeting with with my camera on and Babka decides it’s lap time, I’ll probably need to turn off video / mute while I lock her in another room, because she is Persistent and has Many Feelings. Now that I’m more confident, once in a while I’ll turn my camera on briefly so that my tiny team can see Babka on my shoulder — but then again, my boss loves cats and often has whole conversations with her cat while she’s in meetings with us. :) And I know She Would Tell Me if she wanted me to change!

the cats in question

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer whose performance evaluation was based on activities outside of work? The first update was here and here’s the latest.

I saw your recent call for updates and wanted to share another update now that it has been a couple years since my original letter.

After switching supervisors, I had the opportunity to work with my former supervisor as more of a peer. I realized that she did not have a very technical background, which explains why she seemed unfamiliar with many of the responsibilities I was supposedly hired for. Our skillsets simply don’t overlap very much. I’m not sure why she was initially assigned as my supervisor but I think we’re both glad I was reassigned.

My first review with my new supervisor was completely different. He seemed surprised by some of my previous goals and the way they were set up like checklists. I’m happy to say that I no longer have neverending checklists to complete and hoops to jump through for my review. I do still have goals related to relationships and professional development, but they’re actually relevant to my role, and I was able to give my input on them. My new supervisor also works with me directly enough to give me meaningful feedback beyond my goals.

I did find out that some of my coworkers have had experiences similar to mine, so it really seems like luck of the draw in terms of who you have as a supervisor. In particular, LGBT coworkers were pressured to participate in unpaid activities that would make the company look good in terms of diversity, but luckily they’ve been successful in pushing back. I also noticed a junior level coworker recently started attending committee meetings and reached out to let him know he could be paid for that, which he seemed relieved to hear.

Last but not least, I just accepted an offer for a job I’m super excited about and I plan on giving notice soon. Some of the comments on my original letter pointed out that the amount of professional development and networking my former supervisor wanted me to do could force me to outgrow my role and leave for a better opportunity. That’s pretty much exactly what happened, although I don’t think I got this job offer because of the webinars I watched or happy hours I attended (the professional development I’ve done under my new supervisor has been a lot more meaningful). Still, I can appreciate that some of those activities ended up helping me get to this point in my career. I also have a much clearer sense of what makes a good manager now, which helped me feel confident in accepting this offer. My future boss seems great! And I’ll miss my current boss when I leave, but I know he’ll be happy for me because this really is an amazing opportunity.

Thanks again for publishing my letter and for your excellent advice!