Ask a Manager

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

1. We’re being unknowingly videotaped at town hall meetings

I’m a full-time remote employee who works for a large company. We regularly have “town halls” at multiple levels — full company, full department, full “section,” etc. These town halls are through Microsoft Teams and to simplify things, when you log on, you’re muted and don’t have video. You can only see the presenter. There is no gallery mode and there are no video/sound options presented to you.

Except! As it turns out, you are on video! The director of each section (ours has about 40 people in his section, others may have less or more) gets to view you and your reactions to every town hall word being said, unbeknownst to you! (I learned this recently while at some in-person meetings — my boss and everyone at her level didn’t know this, but as we all watched a town hall together on a big screen, he was watching everyone else on his computer.)

This horrifies me. The number of ways this could go wrong seems staggering. Is this normal?

What, no! This is not normal and it’s not okay. You should never be filmed without your knowledge and consent. Not only is this a huge invasion of privacy, but it’s asking for all sorts of problems — think about the sorts of things people do at home when they just forget they’re on video, let alone when they didn’t know they were on video in the first place.

It’s worth taking a look at exactly what notifications/disclaimers you see when you’re logged on (I’d be really surprised if Teams didn’t have something informing you that your video would be on, even if it’s not prominent). Either way, at a minimum it’s something you should let your coworkers know about, and you might consider asking for it to be stopped or more prominently disclosed (or just cover your camera).

2. Should I always be job-searching?

I read the letter from the person whose coworker was putting mistakes in her work in horror — I’m super anxious and also pretty conscientious, so this kind of thing would mess me all the way up — and noted the number of commenters suggesting that OP might want to go ahead and start job searching regardless of which path they take to address their coworker’s shenanigans. And searching for a new job is something you often recommend as a possible option for folks who write in. An acquaintance of mine is always job-searching — “for leverage.” I’m wondering about your thoughts on this. Pros? Cons? Are there folks who are always job searching, regardless of whether they feel good about their current jobs? Why? Does it feel like “leverage”? What kind of guidelines do they set for themselves to keep it manageable?

No, it’s not normal to always be job-searching, if by that you mean actively searching through job listings and applying for jobs. It’s more common to always be open to something new if you happen to hear about the right thing, but the idea of always being in job-application mode sounds exhausting and most people aren’t. Also, if you’re constantly changing jobs it’s going to hurt you after a while; you’ll become less employable and eventually you’ll have a harder time getting the jobs you want.

In the letter you linked, there was a serious problem with the person’s manager — the writer was being reprimanded for things she didn’t do and didn’t trust her boss to listen to reason. That’s a big deal, and it indicates both her job and her reputation could be in jeopardy, so it makes sense for her to think about leaving if she can’t resolve the situation another way. But that’s not a typical situation! Most people’s situations aren’t nearly that dramatic.

When your acquaintance says she’s always searching “for leverage,” she probably means that when she has other options, it’s easier to set boundaries or walk away from a job that isn’t serving her interests anymore. Hopefully she doesn’t mean that she’s explicitly using it as leverage with her boss — like regularly announcing that she’s on the verge of taking another job — because that’s the kind of thing you can do once, not multiple times; doing it regularly would drain it of all its power (and she’d likely just be told to go).

3. I don’t want my manager’s job when she leaves

I work on a team of five people at a company of about 1,000 people. Our role is fairly niche and requires specialized training and education. Our supervisor has started hinting that she’s looking at retiring in the next couple of years. She has started bringing me into meetings with her, teaching me elements of her role that don’t apply to mine, and other actions that make me assume she’s expecting me to step into her role when she goes. I suppose from the outside it makes the most logical sense. Of the remaining team members, three are nearing retirement age and one just graduated from college, while I’ve been in the field for a decade and am in my late 30s.

The thing is, I don’t want her job. I really enjoy my current role. Each day brings enough unique challenges that I don’t get bored but I also feel comfortable. If I step up into my supervisor’s role, I’ll have to add additional meetings in the evening hours that will cut into my time with my young children. I’ll have to drop my favorite task that I currently perform and pass it to a more junior employee. In addition, I’ll be responsible for the department budget (I’m terrible at math!). Honestly, I’m just not a natural leader and the prospect of taking on her role fills me with anxiety.

When I’ve told people this, I’ve been told I’ll be “shooting myself in the foot” career-wise. My husband feels it will give my company a bad impression of me and a coworker I confided in expressed concern that I might lose my current job if I refuse.

How do I professionally let people know that I’m perfectly happy where I am and that I have no desire to climb the ladder any higher without sounding like a slacker or emphasizing my weaknesses?

You’re surrounded by bad advice! It’s not “shooting yourself in the foot” to avoid a job you don’t want. And you’re highly unlikely to lose your current job if you decline (!). Your manager is assuming that you’d be excited for the promotion because people often are, but it’s a completely normal and okay thing to explain that you’re happy where you are and not interested in that specific role right now. Since it sounds like she hasn’t explicitly said what she’s planning for you, you could say, “I noticed you’ve started mentoring me in things like X and Y and I wondered if it’s because you figure I’ll be looking at management roles in the next few years. I wanted to say that I’m really happy with my current role and don’t have management as a goal. I’d like to keep doing what I’m doing now and get better and better at it.”

Related:
I don’t want to move up into a leadership role

4. HR says we can’t contact a coworker on leave even to find out when she’ll be back

I’m a teacher and we had a question about what’s allowed with FMLA. A colleague told us she would be out for a surgery. She asked the department to cover for her for three weeks, after which she would be back. The department arranged teachers to cover the extra classes while she is out (I’m one of the teachers covering a class for her). It’s day two of this colleague being gone and our department head just got told by HR that we actually need to hire a long-term sub for the next 12 weeks, which is not what we understood from our colleague. HR says we can’t reach out to our colleague now that she’s gone in any way to understand what the discrepancy is, but from what we know of our colleague and what she told us about the surgery, we are almost positive there is no need for coverage for that long.

The department head ended up getting around this by emailing the department email list letting us know we would need to put together a hiring committee to hire someone to cover several classes for the next 12 weeks, and she mentioned the classes that our colleague teaches. Our colleague almost immediately replied to the department head and cc’d HR to ask what was going on and to reiterate that she will be back in three weeks.

So there are two questions: is HR right that there is no legal way to ask our colleague whether she will be out for three weeks or 12? And did our department head do something wrong in her approach?

Your HR is being weird. It’s true that federal law forbids what’s called “FMLA interference,” meaning asking someone to perform work while they’re on FMLA leave. But courts have been clear that fielding occasional calls about your job is a professional courtesy, as long as it’s “reasonable contact” limited to things like “inquiries about the location of files or passing along institutional or status knowledge.” Confirming the length of time someone will be out is completely fine (as long as it’s not done in a harassing way, like calling them daily to pressure them to return).

Your department head’s approach — emailing the department list, knowing the coworker on leave would see it if she chose to check her email — seems pretty smart, given the circumstances.

Read an update to this letter. 

5. Telling people I’ve resigned

I recently resigned from a job and my manager asked me to let my full team know (after her bosses and relevant senior people were informed by her). I’ve always had a manager handle team updates when I’ve departed past jobs, whether in a full team meeting/quick regroup or via a team email. I called the people I worked closely with 1:1 (I am remote). I started to call people I don’t work as closely with, and it got awkward so I switched to IMs. The team is big, and some people report to other people who aren’t my manger, are technically in different departments, and/or have a person between us with whom they most often work. I have no idea if I handled this correctly. Would it have been better to push through the awkwardness with everyone or was I okay IMing?

IMing is fine, but really email would have been ideal — you could have put everyone you wanted to inform on the email and done it in one message. That’s a pretty typical way to do it; you definitely do not need to call people individually, unless there are people you actively wanted to tell individually.

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

1. How can a teenager get a job when our family travels full-time?

I am a teenager (16) and I want to get my first job but I don’t know how. My family lives in a 5th wheel camper and we travel around the country full-time. We don’t own a house. My parents both have work-from-home jobs but both of the companies they work for require employees to be over 18, with a college degree, and must have experience, so trying to get a job with them is out of the question.

We don’t have a permanent address, just a couple of P.O. boxes. My parents use my grandma’s address for really important things like their driver’s licenses, but besides that all mail goes to the P.O. boxes. However I know my grandma’s health is failing and I’m not sure what my parents are going to do after she passes away.

Due to my family traveling around, I can’t go and apply to McDonalds or Walmart. My mom and I have searched and searched the internet for jobs but it’s impossible to find work-from-home jobs. They basically require you to have been working with them before the pandemic started and/or you have to be over 18 with a college degree and experience. There are also many times we don’t have internet/phone service for 2-3 days (sometimes a week if we can stay in one spot and mom and dad don’t have to work). My sister and I are homeschooled so we don’t have to do online classes.

I tried making jewelry and selling it on Etsy but I never made any sales. I can’t go door to door and ask people if they need their lawn mowed or snow shoveled. We don’t even own a lawn mower and since we stay at campgrounds we are always in rural areas, not around houses.

I don’t know how to get a job in my situation. I’m not legally old enough to live on my own yet, and I don’t even have any money to live on my own because I don’t have a job. I really want a job before I go to college because I’ll be living and working on my own. I need some kind of experience. Before anyone asks, my parents aren’t going to sell their camper and buy/rent a house just so I can have a minimum wage job.

I hate to say it, but realistically, I don’t think you can have a job in this situation. I wish you could, but I can’t think of an option that would work. (I’m happy to throw it out to commenters for ideas if anyone has any, though.)

The closest I can get is if you know where you’re going in advance, you might be able to sign up for one- or two-day volunteer opportunities ahead of time. Of course, that wouldn’t give you any money, just some interesting work-like experiences.

However — I wouldn’t worry a lot about this being something you absolutely must do to do before college. It’s a smart thing to do when your life allows for it, but it’s not a disaster if you can’t. A lot of people arrive at college without having had a job before, and you’ll be able to get jobs once you’re there and will quickly rack up that experience. By the time you graduate, you’ll have had four years of being able to work (including full-time in the summers if you want) and at that point prospective employers won’t be asking about what you did in high school anyway.

This must be frustrating though. I hope it helps to know it shouldn’t limit the options you’ll have once you start college (or when you’re otherwise controlling your own living situation).

2. Can I apply to a job when my current job is helping someone else try to get that same job?

I work as a job developer, supporting folks with disabilities in their own job searches. I help with job search, interviewing, reaching out to the employer on the individual’s behalf, onboarding, training, accommodations, etc. While I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed this morning, I saw one of my connections had shared a job posting, and thought it might be a good fit for someone I’m currently supporting, so I sent it to S.

But I kept reading the job posting and thought that, actually, this might also be a really good opportunity for me. It would be a good next step in my career, higher salary, fewer hours, and fully remote.

Now, S applied and wrote a great cover letter. Yay S! Usually, I’ll follow up within a few days with the employer to introduce myself and the work my organization does, and talk up the person I’m supporting.

If I applied, I feel like I could separate myself enough to give everything I normally do for S at the same level, as well as give a good turn out for myself. I could email the employer from my work email saying all the things I normally say about S, and then apply myself from my personal email with a post script of “haha, awkward, you may recognize my name from … here’s the sitch” and be completely transparent. But it could also be too much of a conflict of interest.

Does my duty to the individual I’m supporting preclude me from applying? And if not, how to I handle it?

Yeah, I don’t think you can apply for that job; the conflict of interest is too strong, since your job is to help S get the position you would simultaneously be trying to get for yourself. Even if you know that it won’t affect how well you advocate for S, it would look really bad — and imagine what it would look like to S if you got the job after she believed you were trying to help her get it. It’s also likely to look pretty off to the employer (and could harm both your chances, which wouldn’t be fair to S).

You’ve got to pass this one by, unfortunately.

3. New coworker gave herself a higher title

A new colleague joined our team a few months ago. For anonymity, let’s say her title is the equivalent of project coordinator. In recent weeks, she has started sending emails with her title listed as the equivalent of project manager. Her team already has someone in the formal role of project manager that includes additional duties over and above those of a coordinator, and I confirmed with her supervisor a couple of weeks ago that her title had not changed from project coordinator. It sounded like a few people had asked about this and there was a plan to get this addressed, but the new colleague’s email signature continues to say “manager.” Is this as strange and bold as it seems?

Yes. Even stranger, I’ve gotten probably more than a dozen letters over the years about people just giving themselves their own promotion by using a higher-level title in their email signature without anyone’s permission. It shouldn’t take a whole plan to get it addressed — her manager just needs to tell her to use the correct title, and it’s odd that that hasn’t happened yet, particularly if multiple people have asked about it.

4. Applying directly vs. applying with a recruiter

I recently applied to a job directly because it appeared the organization was hiring for more than one position (a salaried one and also an hourly one) and I was interested in either position. I also applied through a staffing agency — not knowing that both jobs were actually one and the same. I regard that as a mistake on the employer’s part since my submissions were in earnest.

When the recruiter found out about the HR-routed application, I explained that it appeared their client is hiring multiple positions because one position is exempt and the other is not. It was not done to ramp up my odds, per se. He stated he could not represent me to the hiring manager because it’s awkward. I understand that rationale. However, I thought deleting my application at the time of my discussion with the hiring manager would’ve helped.

Now that I know that I lost any possible compensation leverage with the recruiter, I have since re-applied, since the client can land me without worrying about paying the commission. Is this a good idea, or is the overall opportunity one that I should now be worried about, long term?

The issue for the recruiter isn’t that representing you would be awkward; it’s that recruiters don’t get commission for candidates who have also applied with the employer directly. (That’s because there’s no point in an employer paying a recruiter to bring them candidates who they already had contact with on their own, so recruiting contracts generally prohibit it.) Typically when you apply through a recruiter, they “own” your candidacy and the employer can’t deal with you directly … and vice versa. So when you apply both ways, it creates a mess for both the recruiter and the company, and it can be tricky to sort out; some employers will prefer not to deal with you at all at that point rather than risk a contract squabble with the recruiter.

It’s hard to say how it will play out in this particular situation, but it won’t be the end of the world if you just reapply and see what happens.