our ex-CEO’s son can’t do his job and is overpaid by Alison Green on November 13, 2024 A reader writes: I took over a new job about eight months ago, and knowingly inherited an abundance of issues, ranging from minor (previous CEO of 20 years did not believe in pest control so there were mouse remnants everywhere) to complex (ex-CEO had hired their unqualified child, Jasper, into a role that has large organizational impact). As the old CEO’s replacement, I’ve been untangling the nepo baby situation over the past six months, and it is nothing but a mess. Jasper was directly supervised by the ex-CEO and was never held to any kind of workplace expectations. No one had a job description, including Jasper, and there was no enforced personnel handbook. I’ve addressed both of those and, to his credit, Jasper has been taking feedback about his work to heart, if not executing it as well as I’d expect. From what I hear from other staff, Jasper shows more personality and initiative than ever before (but still a LOT less than I would expect from that role). All that’s to say, I now have the documentation in place to work through his performance in a specific, unbiased way that may or may not lead to a future for him with the organization. The bigger issue is that he is being paid disproportionately for his job. His rate of pay would imply that he has supervisory responsibilities and an advanced degree, neither of which are true. He is being paid more than other, more qualified and effective employees both in similar roles and even those who would be above him in the chain of command. I’ve just completed a comprehensive wage review to ensure we are competitive and equitable within our industry, and it all balances out … except for Jasper. He is being paid 10-15% over what is appropriate for his role, where other employees are being paid as much as 20% under their market value. What should I do? I hate the idea of docking anyone’s pay, but at the same time, I can’t afford to up everyone else’s pay to keep it in line with Jasper’s. Do I keep paying him more than he’s worth? It’s not exactly his fault that the ex-CEO/parent put him in this situation, but yet we are there. P.S. To complicate matters further from an emotional standpoint if not a technical one, Jasper also still lives at home with the ex-CEO and receives a ride to and from work from one of his parents. So it’s not like there’s a ton of breathing room for this situation. Parents are doing their kids no favors with this kind of special treatment, as this situation illustrates. Now Jasper has a job he can’t do, a professional network that probably doesn’t think highly of him, and extra scrutiny because he’s being overpaid. I’m always curious about what parents who set up these situations think will happen to their kid when they’re no longer there to champion/protect them! In a lot of cases, the parent’s network ends up taking over and finding them their next gig, and obviously there are tons of other ways society advances people based connections rather than merit … and as a result a lot of Jaspers go through life without even realizing that’s what happening … but isn’t it a parenting failure (if not a character failure) to want that for your kid? Anyway. It sounds like you need to have a really straightforward conversation with Jasper where you lay out the facts: he’s not currently performing at the level you need, he would need to be doing XYZ to meet the job requirements, and currently his pay is out of sync not only with his performance but with the job itself. Leaving the pay aside for a minute: realistically, do you think Jasper will be able to perform at the level you need within a reasonable amount of time (months, not years)? If not, the kindest thing, and the best for the organization, is to be frank with him about that. Explain the gap in what’s needed with his current performance, and tell him you can’t keep him the role. You could consider setting an end date that’s a bit in the future (maybe the end of the year) to give him some time to job-search … but if you wouldn’t do that for anyone else you were letting go, it might not be the right move here. (I tend to think that’s always a decent thing to do when you have to let someone go through no fault of their own — someone who’s trying hard but just isn’t well matched with the job — and it can make things feel more amicable, but if the organization has never done that for anyone else, you don’t want it to become yet one more way Jasper is getting special treatment. That said, political considerations might mean it’s the best course of action regardless.) But if you do think he can reach the level of work you need from his role and it’s really just the pay that’s at issue … level with him about that. Give him some notice because it’s not fair to cut someone’s pay without warning, but it’s fair to say, “We’re both in a tough situation. You were hired into a role and at a rate of pay that normally would require supervisory responsibilities and an advanced degree. I’ve completed a wage review for all positions to ensure we’re equitable internally and within the industry, and your salary is the one salary that’s out of sync with that structure. You’re being paid 10-15% over the market rate for the role, while we have other employees paid as much as 20% under their market value, including people above you in the chain of command. The best your role can fairly pay is $X, and so I need to give you notice that we need to change the salary for the position to $X effective on (date). I understand you might not want to remain in the job in light of that, and if that’s the case, we can work on a transition plan. For now, though, I want to give you notice of the change and some time to think about it.” Will that be messy? Yes! But the situation is already messy, and addressing it head-on and candidly is your best shot at cleaning it up. However, don’t go through all of that if you don’t think you’ll ever be satisfied with Jasper’s performance. It’s not fair to slow-roll that news over months, with first a salary cut and then a continuing stream of negative feedback. If he’s just not the right person for the position, no matter what’s he’s being paid, cut to the chase and move him out of the job. Alternately, you could skip all that and lay him off with severance, explaining that you simply need a different skill set for the position (which is true). That might be cleanest all around. You may also like:I am the nepotism hire who no one likesa DNA test revealed the CEO is my half brother ... and he's freaking outour boss hired his emotionally unstable son to work with us { 232 comments }
manager dislikes his new employee, firing an employee who went viral for attacking football fans, and more by Alison Green on November 13, 2024 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I manage a manager who dislikes his new, qualified employee I run a small nonprofit. I’m less than six months into the position and have inherited some HR challenges. One of the directors I manage, Dave, is, frankly, a terrible manager. He only manages three people, but in the six months I’ve been here, one person quit and one was fired after a dramatic meltdown. Dave just hired a new person, Julie, who he wants to fire within the first 45 days. She has excellent experience, more than he does in the program he is running. She has raised some concerns directly to him about the quality of the work via email; I saw the message, and she approached it professionally. He said she has been late three times and refuses to do the data entry that is a part of her job. She says she hasn’t been adequately trained. My assessment is that they just don’t like each other and are now looking for things to justify their positions. She thinks he’s incompetent and he thinks she’s rude and undermining his authority. They both came to me about this situation last week. I’ve been sitting on what to do next because I do not want to lose the new employee. While Julie is not perfect, she does have excellent skills that we need. How do I deal with this situation? You need to manage Dave much more closely — and you need to lay out for him very explicitly that you’re concerned about the situation in his department and that, having just lost two people in quick succession, you’re not going to fire a third simply for being late a few times. Moreover, given that you know Dave is a terrible manager, I’d be inclined to believe Julie that she hasn’t been adequately trained and that her frustrations with Dave are well-founded — which means that you’re going to need to get much more involved in the situation than you’d normally be doing, including reviewing the training plan with both of them and coaching Dave pretty intensely on your expectations for how he manages people. Plan to spend at least a few weeks intensively involved with both of them, so that you’re setting expectations about how you want things to go and also so that you’re getting a more detailed sense of exactly how Dave operates and what’s going wrong. Stay open to the possibility that you shouldn’t have Dave managing people at all, but you’ll have a better sense of that once you spend a few weeks more enmeshed and have a stronger feel for exactly what’s going on. If you’re thinking you don’t have time to roll up your sleeves and dive in like that, the alternative is letting Dave keep cycling through employees, which will slow the organization down more in the long run. If you absolutely can’t make time for that in the next few weeks, consider having Julie report to someone else temporarily until you do have time to dig in more. Related: how do I get my direct reports to be better managers of their own teams? 2. Firing an employee who went viral for attacking football fans I just saw an article about a Baltimore Ravens fan who was seen in a video attacking two men who supported an opposing football team. He was identified and fired from his job the next day. This happens regularly when moments go viral. But can companies do this? Is it because there is video proof? I thought we couldn’t necessarily let someone go even from an arrest. They are still innocent until proven guilty, right? In this case, the guy hadn’t even been arrested, just had a really stupid, violent moment go viral. Can he come back and say he was unfairly fired, as the moment didn’t even happen at work? In most states, employers can legally fire you for behavior you engage in outside of work, as long as the firing doesn’t violate a specific legal protection you have. (For example, most people couldn’t legally be fired for attending a union protest, because unionizing is a protected right.) There’s no legal protection for physically attacking an opposing team’s fans. In this case, the company likely figured that they don’t want to be associated with someone who publicly engaged in vile behavior that went viral, and that’s their legal prerogative. You mentioned laws that prohibit firing someone for being arrested, but federal law actually doesn’t prohibit that; it’s dependent on state law. Some states do limit what an employer can do in response to an employee’s arrest, depending on the nature of the crime and how it might relate to their particular job. But in this case the firing was about the behavior itself, not an arrest. 3. My employee is accessing files from our previous employer In my industry, movement between companies is fairly common. So I am now supervising someone who used to be a peer at OldCompany, which is a direct competitor of NewCompany. Today, my direct report shared a “helpful” reference document that I know for certain is a proprietary document from OldCompany. We are working on a project very similar to what we worked on at the previous employer, so it’s sometimes tempting to bring in ideas from our old work. However, this was not simply referring to an idea, but sharing a link to an internal, unpublished document from OldCompany. The relative obscurity of the file she shared makes me think that either she somehow saved everything we worked on at the old job, or else she might still have access to her old account somehow. I told her right away that we cannot have access to documents from OldCompany at NewCompany. I also let my current boss know, since I don’t want there to be legal issues with it somehow coming out that NewCompany employees are accessing competitors’ IP. Do I need to notify my old boss from the previous employer that my current employee still has access to their files? With my employee, does this warrant more than one clear conversation about this being not okay? To me, this feels like a big violation, but my current boss didn’t respond as if this is a huge deal. For example, my boss didn’t ask which employee of mine it was, just told me to make it clear it’s not okay. In my mind, though, this is a serious judgment issue with my employee. My employee apologized and said it won’t happen again, but I’m not sure if this is something I should drop. What do you think? You addressed it and she said it won’t happen again. You don’t need to go back and repeat yourself unless something about her response made you think she didn’t take you seriously or didn’t understand that you meant all OldCompany documents, not just this one. If either of those is the case, then yes, go back and say you want to make sure you were clear about the scope of the prohibition and how seriously she needs to take it … but otherwise, it sounds like you’re equating repeating yourself with pounding in the seriousness of the message and, assuming you communicated clearly the first time, you don’t need to do that. 4. I don’t want to be called by a shortened version of my name I’ve been at my job for over five years now and everyone there calls me by a shortened version of my name. I didn’t say anything at first because it was only some people, some of the time. Gradually everyone shifted to the nickname, even people who were meeting me for the first time. Is there a way I can get people to call me by my actual name? Yes! “I actually prefer Valentina, thank you.” You’ll have to say it a lot, but eventually it will stick with most people. Just be straightforward and prepared to have to reiterate it. If you want, you can also acknowledge that you didn’t speak up earlier — “I don’t know why I didn’t say this earlier but I go by Valentina.” 5. Should I tell a recruiter I’m pregnant? I’m currently 16 weeks pregnant (yay for secondary fertility!) and in a job where I’m really not happy. A recruiter from a placement agency reached out to me for a general interview. I know talking to a recruiter doesn’t mean I’ll actually be offered a job, but I was wondering if the advice to not tell an employer before you’ve received an offer still stands if a recruiter is involved. I feel like if I tell them they’ll be less likely to try to place me, but I also don’t know if having them involved would change what happens if I do get an offer. If I were to get an offer and then disclose my pregnancy to the company, is it easier for them to pull the offer and say it has something to do with the agency even if the real reason is I’m pregnant? Not sure how to proceed but I would really like a new job, even if it means changing while I’m pregnant. Nope, working with a recruiter doesn’t change the advice. Wait to disclose until you have an offer. The company will have the same legal risk pulling the offer at that point that they’d have without a recruiter involved. You may also like:my coworkers have a crush on my boss ... and are taking it out on mean employee is out to get my star performer, and no one else caresI resent my employee for being richer and more qualified than me { 300 comments }
a team whose boss was AWOL for 2 years is angry and resentful now by Alison Green on November 12, 2024 A reader writes: My department had a manager, Beth, who spiraled into a drug addiction crisis post-Covid. The details of how that happened and how long it took to remove her from her position could make up several letters, but I will leave out those details as it’s not what I’m writing about now. Beth’s team did their jobs (or did not do their jobs) while their boss was in the midst of this crisis for close to two years. Now Beth is gone and the team is in chaos. After she left, it became clear that over this period Beth was not checking that anyone was actually doing any work. She ignored almost all emails expressing concerns about her team. She also approved many hours of late night overtime, during which it is very unlikely any work was actually being done. Some new people joined the team during this time and got essentially no training, so have been just making it up as they go along, with no one checking in. Like I said, chaos. Beth’s director, Janet, has decided that instead of going back two years and trying to pick apart this web of problems, most of which cannot be proven at this point, they are just going to start fresh. People are now held to working the right schedule, they’re no longer allowed to clock overtime without prior approval, and customers are getting served appropriately. The problem is that there is a handful of employees who are VERY angry over this issue. These are employees that did everything “right” over the last two years and are very upset there are no consequences for those that didn’t. My impression is that these are great workers who got so fed up during this time that they can barely stand to be in the same room as the people who took advantage of their manager’s breakdown to not do their jobs. These “good” employees are so hostile that it’s a terrible work environment for everyone. I feel bad because I know that under a different manager, this ball of hate would not have developed. These employees have been around for years and I know under their previous manager they flourished. I am not directly involved in this situation at all, but I am currently training Beth’s replacement and have shared the same details I‘ve shared here with you, and I’m not sure whether there are any further tips I could give them. Any advice would be much appreciated! I mean, it is pretty unfair. It’s understandable that people are upset. Apparently they too could have kicked back for two years, not done any work, gotten paid for overtime they didn’t work, and in the end received no consequences for it. It makes sense that they’re irritated. I’d also bet that they ended up picking up the slack for their lazier coworkers during that time, and now they’re not being recognized for it. I’m not saying Janet’s solution is the wrong one. Maybe there’s no practical way to sort through what happened, and maybe just moving forward is what truly makes the most sense for the business. But it’s unrealistic to expect people won’t have feelings about that. I do wonder if there’s no way to reward the better employees now. If there’s any way to tell who kept the department afloat during that time or went above and beyond to cover for others, ideally they’d be recognized in some way — a bonus, better positioning for future promotions, whatever it is. Instead of looking at it as “give consequences for people who slacked off,” the right lens might be “reward those who didn’t.” But I also realize there might be no practical way to do that at this point — or no practical way to do it without missing some people, which would risk demoralizing them even further. It’s going to be particularly tough for Beth’s replacement — who sounds like she’s coming in new to the situation — to sort through all that, even though she’s stuck dealing with the aftermath. In her shoes, I think I’d do a couple of things: First, talk one-on-one with each team member about their sense of how things are going and what the top priorities for stabilizing the department should be and, as part of those conversations, create room for them to air any grievances or frustrations. She should be open to hearing them out, while also being clear about what they can and can’t expect going forward. If it’s clear that someone was instrumental in keeping the department functioning during Beth’s chaotic reign, she should be openly appreciative of that and say that going forward she’ll be rewarding that kind of initiative/responsibility/effort (assuming that’s true, which it should be). She can’t go back and retroactively manage a situation she wasn’t there for, but she can assure them that the team will be managed effectively from this point on, which includes recognizing good work and addressing problems forthrightly. That might not be enough for some people, but that’s the piece that’s within her control. And from there, it’s reasonable to hold everyone to a basic expectation that they will operate professionally. They’re allowed to feel demoralized or discouraged (what happened was demoralizing and discouraging), but they do need to work civilly with colleagues. If they don’t do that, she’ll need to have some hard conversations with people about the reality of the situation — yes, things were mishandled in the past … we don’t have a way to undo that now … we’ve got to move forward and that includes being civil and professional even to people you’re unhappy with … and we’re at the point where you’ve got to figure out whether you can do that or not because we are moving forward. But it’s also very likely that as she gets to know the team better, she’ll get a good feel for who slacked off over the last two years and who didn’t. Chances are good that those same tendencies will show up in their work now, just perhaps in less dramatic ways, and she should watch for opportunities to reward the people who carried things. All that said, unless you’re senior to Beth’s replacement, I don’t know if it’s your place to give this sort of advice to her. But this is what I’d tell her if I could. You may also like:my coworker is dating a convicted pedophileI promoted one employee instead of her coworker, and now my whole team is upseteveryone is frustrated with my "lazy" coworker, but she's actually hiding a serious illness { 194 comments }
this is how to write a good cover letter by Alison Green on November 12, 2024 Over the course of my career, I’ve read probably tens of thousands of cover letters. (And yes, that’s as boring as it sounds.) What I’ve learned from doing that is that most job applicants’ cover letters are truly awful – and as a result, if you’re willing to put in the time to write a good one, you can stand out from your competition in a really effective way. A great cover letter won’t get you the job if you’re not qualified, but it can make a hiring manager notice you in a sea of applicants and encourage them to interview you when you otherwise might have been overlooked. In fact, a good cover letter can be such an effective way of boosting your application that I’m always amazed by how many candidates don’t bother to take advantage of the opportunity they offer. At New York Magazine today, I wrote about how to get cover letters right. You may also like:whoever told you to be creative in your cover letter has led you horribly astrayusing martial arts at work, I saw my job posted online, and morean employee is putting magic curses on her coworkers { 59 comments }
my boss treated me like her therapist … and it blew up by Alison Green on November 12, 2024 Warning: contains mentions of a suicide threat. A reader writes: I had an insane boss situation a few years ago that still lives rent free in my head and I’d love to see if there’s anything you think I could have done differently. While I don’t think I’ll ever be in a situation quite like this ever again (one can only hope), I probably spend more time than is healthy thinking about how I should approach it if I’m ever thrust into a similar situation in the future. My old manager, Lily, was originally a coworker and friend. We had both left the original job we worked at together, and I was miserable in my current role. So when she became the general manager for a new retail installation, she reached out about me joining her leadership team and I jumped at the opportunity to start fresh somewhere new. Initially, our working relationship was good, albeit with very few boundaries. I realized pretty quickly that Lily had some narcissistic tendencies as a leader, and I was clearly her Golden Child. Another member of our leadership team was her scapegoat, who always got the blame for anything bad, and the last member got lost in the shuffle. It was a mess, but at the time I leaned into being the favorite because I was the only person who could talk sense into her and whose suggestions she would take seriously. This favoritism caused the boundaries to blur even more and I also started feeling anxious about what would happen if I fell out of favor, so I picked my battles very carefully and ultimately enabled a lot of very bad behavior. Unfortunately for everybody, Lily’s partner left her, and she had to navigate a messy divorce and custody battle. Her mental health completely tanked, and it caused everything negative at work to ramp up tenfold. I was still the favorite and the confidant, and this turned into me becoming, essentially, Lily’s work therapist. We spent hours locked in her office with her crying and telling me every detail of her personal life, and my anxiety reached a new high as I tried to navigate supporting her erratic and turbulent emotions while also picking up the slack of things she wasn’t doing at the store — things that were technically beyond my role and ability. Lily was terrified of losing her job and she knew she was dropping balls, so I felt like it was my responsibility to keep everything running smoothly. I was also terrified that if I upset her, she would turn on me and fire me. At the time, I thought that I was doing the kind thing, the right thing. I now recognize that I was in an impossible situation, and I was setting myself on fire trying to keep everyone else warm. Lily eventually shared with me that she was suicidal and said the only thing keeping her going was my support and friendship. So now, on top of feeling responsible for my job, her job, the store, and her emotional well-being, I found myself in a position where it was my job to literally keep her alive. I was wildly stressed out, so afraid that I’d say or do the wrong thing and then she’d die, and it would be my fault. The culmination of all of this was that one day, on her day off, when I was in charge of the building, she texted me and said that if I didn’t get to her home immediately, she was going to kill herself. She needed me to come stop her. I didn’t have a car that day, my husband had dropped me off, so I gave the keys to the building to one of my employees, and called an Uber to rush to her home. I should have called 911, but the state we are in has some pretty intense laws around wellness calls, and I worried that if I called and she got put into an involuntary hold, it would financially ruin her and make her life crumble even more. So I rushed over, broke in through an open window because her door was locked and she wasn’t answering, found her unharmed, removed all of the pills from her general vicinity, and then pulled her sobbing, terrified child out of the closet she had barricaded herself in when her mom’s episode started. I stayed for hours watching Disney movies, trying to take care of and soothe both of them. Lily ended up going on a forced paid medical leave because her out-of-state boss realized something was off and called me, and I spilled everything. She was appalled that I hadn’t raised things with HR sooner. The end of the story is kind of anti-climactic: Lily went on leave, I took over as temporary GM, my mental health improved some because I wasn’t seeing her every day, and she was finally in intense daily therapy instead of relying on me. She ended up coming back after her leave but immediately leaving for a new job because she felt betrayed by the company for forcing her on leave. Once she wasn’t my boss and didn’t hold my livelihood in her hands, I let her know via text that while I wished her the best and genuinely hoped she’d be okay, I couldn’t continue our friendship to protect my own mental health. We haven’t had contact since. Typing this out, I wouldn’t believe any of that had actually happened in real life if I hadn’t lived it myself. I recognize that I had a lot of missteps along the way and that I shouldn’t have let things go as far as they did … but I’m having a hard time determining exactly what I should have done differently. I still have a lot of guilt and anxiety around that period of my life. What would you have advised I do had I reached out while this was happening? HR, HR, HR. This was all so above your pay grade, and you got drawn in at a level that an employee should never be expected to take on. I suspect there was a frog-in-the-boiling-water effect here, where things escalated gradually enough that it was hard to spot when you needed to send up a cry for help to someone above you … which is often how dysfunctional workplaces evolve (and dysfunctional relationships too, for that matter). If you’d been dropped into that final terrible day out of nowhere, you likely would have realized immediately that this wasn’t something you should or could handle on your own … but things deteriorated gradually enough that by the time that day came, you had already been primed and wired to see your role as Save Lily. But really, once Lily had shared with you that she was suicidal, that was a sign that you were in over your head, that she was looking to you for things an employee absolutely cannot provide, and that you needed to loop in someone else in your company (presumably HR). Since you’re struggling with what to do if anything remotely similar happens in the future, hopefully it’s good news that you can simplify it all dramatically: it was not your role to fix what was happening with Lily, and the right step in the future would be to alert someone whose job that actually was. It will also never be your role to do someone else’s job for them on top of your own to cover for them; if you’re ever in that situation again, you can let those balls drop. If your presence is the only thing keeping someone else stable (or employed), that’s a sign that the solution you’ve landed on is the wrong one. I do think it’s worth noting that you fell into this role not just because you believed your job was to save Lily, but also because you thought your job was to save everyone else too: you stayed in a bad situation because you were the one who could talk sense into Lily and who she would listen to — no matter the personal costs to yourself, and no matter how many indications that you’d never be able to fix the fundamental conditions there, only small things around the edges. I strongly believe there’s a certain personality type that is way too willing to walk into that role — to embrace it, in fact — while most other people would take a look and nope out of there. So I do think it’s worth asking whether there have been other times where the pull of being The One Who Can Fix Things has led you to stay in bad situations longer than you should have (and perhaps whether your family dynamics early on set you up for that assignment), and to spend some time thinking about how you want to handle it the next time you feel that pull. You may also like:I just found out my BFF has been my employee's therapist for yearshow to tell coworkers "you need to do that yourself"can I bring a friend-with-benefits back to my hotel on a work trip? { 226 comments }
asking to change desks because you don’t like someone, are typos in a draft a huge deal, and more by Alison Green on November 12, 2024 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Is it unprofessional to ask to change desks because you don’t like someone? Two years ago I started a job as an engineer at my current company and was assigned a mentor, “Rob.” My cubicle is directly adjacent to his. For various reasons related to his behavior towards me, Rob will no longer be my mentor going forward. I’m not sure yet who management is going to assign as my mentor, but I’m confident they’ll be better than Rob, who has caused me a lot of stress over the last year. Would it look unprofessional or immature to ask to move seats? Rob’s behavior has mostly consisted of giving me really bad feedback to the point of gaslighting, not anything like harassment, but I’d still like to move seats to make it a clean break. Can you come up with a reason that’s not related to Rob? Ideally it would be something like there being less noise at the open desk down the hall, sitting closer to someone you collaborate with a lot, preferring not to sit right under a vent that blasts cold air, or so forth — not “I’d rather have a clean break from Rob.” The latter isn’t impossible to say, but there’s pretty high risk of it reading as more drama than you’d ideally want. Exceptions would be if (a) “for various reasons related to his behavior towards me, Rob will no longer be my mentor” means Rob behaved so egregiously toward you that anyone would understand the discomfort of remaining where you are, and/or (b) you have the kind of rapport with your manager where you could say, “The situation with Rob has been rough; any chance I could move into that open desk in the corner just to have a clean break?” Read an update to this letter. 2. Are typos in a draft a huge deal? I work at a not-for-profit that relies heavily on volunteers. I manage one staff member and around 30 volunteers across two sites. Recently, our on-site graphic artist designed a sign for one of my sites, and I sent it to one of the volunteers to get her thoughts on it, and also as a second pair of eyes as I was slammed. This volunteer called me and went off about the design, saying it was sloppy and had two spelling errors (typos) in it. To me, typos in a draft are not a big deal — that’s why we check drafts before they go to the printer. Also, we are seriously understaffed and I know everyone is doing several people’s worth of work, so small things are bound to slip through the cracks (I have no power over staffing). I’ve been guilty of forgetting to do small things because I’m constantly trying to stop the sky from falling in, so I’m not going to criticize someone else for the same thing. I told the volunteer this and it all seemed fine — but then I was telling the story to someone else, and they said any spelling errors/typos are unacceptable. I just don’t think they are a big deal unless, of course, they get printed. Basically I’m looking for a third opinion! Are typos in a draft unacceptable, or are they not worth getting stressed about? It’s a draft! In most contexts, typos in an early draft are not a big deal, as long as you have a reliable process in place for proofing and ensuring any errors (typos or otherwise) are caught before it’s finalized. Did you proactively make it clear to your volunteer what stage things were at when you sent the draft and what kind of feedback you were looking for at that point in the process? It can help to say, for example, “This hasn’t been proofed yet and is in rough form but I wanted to get your thoughts on the content and overall framing.” Or, conversely, “This is close to being finalized so if you see anything we missed, please flag it.” But also, any chance your volunteer was reacting to something more than this one draft — like that they feel there’s been a problematic amount of sloppiness overall and they’re getting fed up with the big picture, more than truly thinking typos in a not-yet-proofed draft are a big deal? That might explain what’s otherwise a pretty intense reaction. 3. Did I put my foot in it about my company’s post-election plans? I work for a large consulting firm that mostly works in the U.S. We do a lot of work for all levels of government. People are tactful about not crossing professional lines about politics at work, but our office has a pretty relaxed and friendly culture, and lots of people do express their feelings to other like-minded people in indirect ways. As someone who at different points in my life has been in both major parties and has in both cases been at times a minority in the office, I appreciate the importance of maintaining a fairly neutral environment, though I believe some things are beyond the pale. The morning after the election, our area manager, who I have have a very friendly relationship with, sent out a thoughtful and appropriate email acknowledging that this may be a stressful moment, reminding us that there are different views in our company, reiterating our commitment to being a client-centered company working to improve humanity, and inviting us to follow up with any questions. I thought this was a perfectly good precautionary email to send out, but I did reply directly to just my area manager to ask about how to get a better sense of what our leadership’s bright lines are for maintaining our commitment to both the client (the government) and our moral obligations. I have pretty mainstream politics, and there’s nothing specific worrying me about any of my company’s current work, but my concern is just to know that senior management has some sort of plan or internal moral standards to limit what kind of things we will work in support of, should the incoming administration go in a worst case scenario direction. The response I got from my manager was very nice and replied to my questions in a way consistent with the original email — but on reading it, it immediately became apparent that she hadn’t actually answered any of them, and in fact the responses were so indirect that I now am worried that I am talking to the hand, and that maybe I put my foot in it and caused offense. I’m unsure how to follow up, because while I didn’t have any expectation that my concerns would actually come to fruition, the response’s lack of candor by absence of substance has now made me worried that I do have cause for concern. I’m curious about your take, and before you reply, yes, I am aware that I am an overthinker with an anxiety disorder. You asked a question she couldn’t really answer, and you got a response consistent with that. They don’t know what’s going to happen yet, and they probably don’t know how they’ll respond when it does because the climate is shifting rapidly. Moreover, to the extent that they do have plans for worst-case scenarios or bright will-not-cross lines, they’re unlikely to put those in a casual email (and she may not be the right person to supply those answers anyway). It sounds like you emailed her hoping for some general reassurance and you got … general reassurance, which is singularly unhelpful in a situation like this. What you really want to know is specifically how they will respond to specific individual events, but they’re probably not there yet — or since you didn’t ask about those specifics, they’re not getting into them, or the answers are ones you wouldn’t much like if they did. You asked how to reply and I don’t think you necessarily need to; you asked a general question and she gave a general answer. I also don’t think you put your foot in it; she’s undoubtedly aware lots of people are feeling similar anxiety right now. Depending on the nature of your concerns, it might make sense to refine them more narrowly with your colleagues and ask for strategy planning on those in particular, but that’s something bigger than a casual email exchange. 4. New manager wants me to travel and I can’t I work fully remote, and it’s quite possibly the only thing that has allowed me to keep working. I am disabled, with chronic pain, poor mobility, and all of the fatigue that comes with that. I love being able to take a 30-minute nap at lunch! My whole team is remote, but most of them are concentrated in the same state, fairly close together. I have a new manager, who has had one quarterly meeting and is planning the next one. For the first, he had all of the semi-local folks meet in person, with the five of us outside that area on Zoom. For this next meeting, he has gotten permission to fly all of us outliers in for the six-hour meeting. I just … can’t. Traveling is super hard for me, and flying in one day, the six-hour meeting the next, and flying home the next day may damn well kill me. The time to recover from this will be insane. I tried gently bringing up that it would be difficult for me, but he brushed me off, saying how important it was to meet face-to-face. I’m facing the whole “not a team player” thing here, but I just can’t do it. How do I frame this and stay in his good graces? “I have a medical condition that means I can’t do this sort of travel. Should I seek a formal accommodation with HR or is simply letting you know enough? I’m of course happy to attend over Zoom again.” Depending on your sense of your manager and this company in general, it may make more sense to start with HR — but either way, that’s the framing you want. Since you’ve been doing your job successfully this entire time without traveling, it should be hard for your manager to argue that it’s an essential function of your position. (That doesn’t mean he won’t try, but that’s part of the legal framework around disabilities: can you successfully perform the essential duties of the job with or without accommodations?) 5. Charging extra to add a spouse to health insurance, if the spouse has insurance through their own job My husband works for an insurance company (ironically) and it’s open enrollment season here in the U.S. for health insurance. I have good insurance through my own job and have my husband and our toddler as dependents. My husband was going to add both of us to his insurance as well, so we can have some double coverage as we’re planning to have another kid and we’ve had some health troubles recently. Because I am employed and insured on my own, his company will charge him an extra fee each paycheck to add me to his insurance. It is not a small fee. It would significantly impact our monthly finances. If I was unemployed and/or uninsured, it wouldn’t cost him extra. Even with insurance, healthcare is freaking expensive in this country and double coverage can be life saving, and has been for us in the past. It feels like his company is essentially penalizing those employees who have families. Is this really allowed? It’s legal, and it’s common. It’s called a “working spouse premium,” and it’s because employers don’t want spouses running up their costs if the person could instead get insurance through their own job, and they don’t want to make adding a spouse an attractive option if that person has other coverage available. (In fact, some employers won’t let you add spouses at all if the spouse has the option of being insured through their own job.) You may also like:my mentor gives me terrible advice and berates me when I don't follow itmy mentor has become a QAnon conspiracistmy boss and mentor runs hot and cold with me { 461 comments }
when can I ask a potential employer about working remotely? by Alison Green on November 11, 2024 A reader writes: I currently have a job that is hybrid/remote, with emphasis on remote. I go into the office when needed, but that may be once every couple of weeks. I fell into this during Covid and I love it for so many reasons, from the lack of a commute to the vastly improved work-life balance. I don’t want to go back to office life. But I am job searching. During the interview process, when should I raise the question of remote work or a hybrid schedule? Remote work is a deal-breaker for me, so part of me wants to broach it immediately so I’m not wasting their time or mine. On the other hand, maybe they would consider it for a candidate they really want and I won’t be that candidate unless I get to the end. Does it depend if the ad mentions remote work as a possibility? What if it doesn’t? Since it’s a deal-breaker for you, raise it early on, whether the ad mentions it or not — ideally in the phone screen if there is one, or in the first interview if there’s not. There’s no point in going through multiple interviews if they’re not open to remote work and you’re not open to the job otherwise. There is a school of thought that, as you said in your letter, maybe by going through the interview process you could win them over so much that they would make an exception, and so therefore you should wait to ask about it until the end of the process when you’ve wowed them and they really want to hire you. I don’t recommend doing that for a couple of reasons: First, there’s a decent chance they’ll just say no and you’ll have gone invested all that time for nothing. You might figure you’re willing to take that risk, but it’s likely to be pretty annoying to them that you didn’t bother to mention such a significant deal-breaker earlier. You might figure you don’t care about annoying them, which is your prerogative, but it could end up mattering if there’s ever another opening there you want in the future. Of course, if they’re still not remote, that may not matter. Second, and probably more importantly, it’s not good for you to be the only remote person on a team, particularly if you start out remote (as opposed to working on-site for a while, becoming a known quantity, and then going remote). Too often, teams that make a lone exception aren’t set up to support remote employees very well, and it can be difficult to build relationships, get the information you need, and make your work visible, and you can suffer from “out of sight, out of mind” in a way that affects what opportunities you get … all of which ultimately harms you professionally. There’s also a higher risk that they’ll decide the arrangement isn’t working well and end it. You’re better off landing in a company that’s set up for and supportive of remote work and, if they are, it’s going to be okay to ask about it early on. You may also like:can I push back on in-office work?does working remotely harm your chances of advancement?are remote workers more likely to be laid off? { 97 comments }
Ask a Manager in the media by Alison Green on November 11, 2024 Here’s some coverage of Ask a Manager in the media recently: I talked to Vanity Fair about how human you should be in your out-of-office message. Bloomberg cited Ask a Manager in a piece about election stress in the workplace. I talked to Reader’s Digest about how to write a sick day email. I talked to Fast Company about how to know if you should turn down a promotion. Huffington Post quoted me on out-of-office messages. The New York Post also quoted me on out-of-office messages. Above the Law featured the recent AAM letter from the person whose coworkers were speculating that she was pregnant because she wasn’t drinking, and reminded people to stop gossiping about their coworkers’ fertility. You may also like:how to write the perfect out-of-office messagemy new employee keeps tagging us in negative social media posts after we've told her to stopshould you turn on an out-of-office message when you're away for a few hours? { 18 comments }
my brother is my business partner and he keeps going MIA by Alison Green on November 11, 2024 A reader writes: I wrote you way back in 2021 when I was trying to decide whether or not to stay in the family business, and in 2024 I sent you my update. I’ve since stepped into the role of CEO, for better or worse, and am now facing an ongoing issue for the first time as the leader of this company. We have three family members who are part of the business now — my father (majority owner and president), myself (CEO, minority owner), and my brother (VP, minority owner). My brother and I have the same ownership stake and the idea was that the company will transition to us, and we will be equal business partners. But my brother is undependable. My guess is that he has depression, anxiety, or some type of mental health issue that he has never addressed, and it means he’s often mildly unreliable and then every once in a while he drops the ball in a spectacular fashion that leaves other people to clean up his mess. We’ve had conversations about this on a number of occasions over the past decade. But about three years ago, it really seemed like he was doing much better. He was showing up, answering his phone, responding to emails, doing his job well, and actively participating in executive planning. He said he wanted to be here with me to lead our family business for the long term. And that felt wonderful. The idea of having a partner in this family business, where it can feel very high stakes and very lonely, was such a relief. My brother is smart and thoughtful, and I trust his judgement and views, which often differ from mine, which is great in a business partner. Shortly after that was when long-term plans for ownership were being put into place, and actual ownership stocks started to change hands. I thought my brother and I were going to be a great team. But 18 months ago, there was a incident where he went uncommunicative for a week and left a project manager in the lurch. We had to scramble to find a subcontractor to complete our work. Eventually he showed up and said he wouldn’t do it again. And then a year ago, he left on his honeymoon having completely failed to get a project with a hard deadline started, leaving me having to scramble to make apologies to city officials, track down materials, ask for extensions, and generally get really ticked off at my brother. Once he got back, I, in the presence of my father, told my brother that he needed to see a therapist or in some other way address his lack of dependability or I would not go into business with him. He agreed and said he’d already talked to his doctor about getting a referral. Over the last year, I’ve asked a couple times if he’s made any progress with getting help, but he’s always said he was waiting on insurance or for an appointment, etc. Over the last month he’s gotten shaky again, being less and less responsive. Then two days ago, I found out he was leaving the country the next day for two weeks. He never told me. I found out from my mother. We once again have a project left in the lurch, making other people scramble. He left one of our crews short a member (he gave his guys only one work day of notice) and another employee is scheduling things that he should have scheduled. And I’ve come to discover that he’s put off scheduling a kick-off meeting for another project for the past three weeks, ignoring the emails from an angry PM for the state. How do I deal with this? I know I don’t want to be in business with my brother under these circumstances. I said that last year, and I meant it, and I set a boundary… and here we are and it’s time to enforce this boundary. I know all that, but I don’t know what to actually do and what to actually ask for. My dad sees all this, and is supportive of me. My brother has been doing this to my dad for nearly a decade, and I think my dad is even more fed up and upset than I am. My dad is also a bit of a hothead and a dictator. He wants to straight-up fire my brother. I don’t know. Maybe that’s best? But my brother has good qualities, good skills, and he is an owner and he is my brother. What about a PIP? A leave of absence? A change in role, take him out of leadership? Or did that ship sail last year? Part of what is so hard is that I love him. And he’s falling apart at work because of very real, very challenging stuff in his personal life. The other part is, I lived the same childhood as my brother. We had an alcoholic mother and my parents went through a terribly messy divorce, and all that created issues around communication and confrontation and self-worth and shame for all of us (issues that I’ve worked hard to overcome through my own therapy and coaching). So I’m deeply empathetic to why my brother is the way he is. And I don’t want to blow up my relationship with him or my sister-in-law. But I can’t do it like this anymore. And ultimately if we keep going like this, the relationship is already destroyed because I’m so frustrated and angry. And I could work with him, somehow, probably, if he would just communicate with me — if he had just told me he was going to be on vacation, that he had been ignoring these emails, that he was stalling out. But we’ve tried saying, “Please, for the love of everything, just communicate!” for nearly a decade, and nothing has changed. It’s never really gotten better, except for that brief period three years ago. I’ve read through your archives, looking for family businesses hitting similar issues, and this and this really hit home. We’re experiencing these issues, the hit to morale and people talking about leaving based on family members being treated differently. So I know we need to change and I know there is no way to do it without this being sad and painful. Any advice you could offer to help me figure out some options to move forward that fall between “keep doing what we’re doing and getting the same result” and “fire him as soon as he steps off the airplane” would be much appreciated. My brother gets back in two weeks, and I need a game plan for what our conversation is going to look like. You have a few choices. You could give him one final warning: if this happens again, he’s out of the company. He can retain his minority ownership interest, presumably, but he can’t work there. Or you could figure you already gave him that warning last year and it’s happened again anyway, so it’s time to part ways now. But did you give him that warning last year? It sounds like you told him that you being in business together was dependent on him seeing a therapist, which is a different thing. And I don’t think that’s the right requirement since he could see a therapist regularly but still continue jerking you around, and it would be just as impossible to continue having him as a business partner as it is now. So if you give a final warning now, don’t pin it to therapy. It certainly sounds like therapy would be a wise step for him, but that’s up to him. The part that you control, and the part that’s at the crux of this, is that you’re not willing to be in business with someone who periodically disappears without notice and lets major projects slip. So that’s the part to attach the ultimatum too — if that happens again, he’s out. That said, I don’t think you’re obligated to give him that warning. Your conversation last year made it clear how disruptive his behavior was and how strongly you felt about its impact on your partnership, but he’s still done it again. If you’d rather just be done now, that’s fair and you can be. A third option is that you lay out what will and won’t work for you and for the business, and then ask him to decide if he can commit to meeting those needs or not. You could simply say in very plain language that you’re not willing to accommodate another instance of this so if he wants to stay he needs to commit to XYZ and if he messes up again, he’s out. Ask him to be realistic with you and with himself: does he genuinely believe he will pull it together and sustain that with no additional mess-ups or, for the sake of your relationship, should you both be pragmatic and acknowledge now that it’s not going to work? It’s okay to be forthright with him that if he recommits but then repeats this anyway, it will affect your relationship — in fact, that it’s already affected your relationship and you hate that because you love him. That’s true and he deserves to know that; you shouldn’t be the only one grappling with that. But you’ve got to set a line, and make it clear what that line is and what happens if he crosses it. That doesn’t mean “fire him as soon as he’s out of the airport” — but it does mean a probably painful but necessary conversation about what you will and won’t put up with, and there shouldn’t be another one after this one. You may also like:my business partners won't fire their problematic family membersI started a business with two coworkers and I'm doing all the workmy brothers' wives are interfering in our family business { 201 comments }
coworker derails meetings, employer wanted a weekend interview, and more by Alison Green on November 11, 2024 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My coworker constantly derails meetings I have a coworker, Mary, who does not know how to stay on topic or when to stop talking. It’s like she thinks a meeting is a time to discuss everything and anything tangentially related to a person’s position in our org, and so I have to plan that any meeting with her will run over unless I cut it off. In meetings I’m leading, I’ve learned to say, “We will need to table that for another time” when she gets off track. But what do I do in meetings where I’m not the one leading? For example: we’re on the same committee for fundraising for an event. That is our job. We meet once a month. Every month, Mary derails the meeting with suggestions for the event, ideas for activities (many of which are absurd, like making vendors wear costumes, etc.). Usually the actual agenda for this meeting is handled in 20 minutes, so the next 40 are dedicated to this coworker and her questions. My boss is the one leading this meeting, and I want to support her in her work but I also want to offer to step up and say, “Do you need help with shutting Mary down?” It’s not really your place to ask your boss if she wants help shutting Mary down. There are some manager/employee relationships where you could ask that, but they’re very much the exception rather than the rule, and generally if you had one you wouldn’t be asking. But there are lots of ways where you can nudge your boss in that direction herself. For example, when you’re done with the agenda but Mary starts to go off-topic, you can say, “Before we get too far off-topic, is there anything else on the agenda we need to cover or should we wrap up?” You can also say at the start of the meeting, “I’ve got a hard stop at (time) but I think that’ll be enough for everything we need to cover.” And during the meeting itself, if Mary begins a tangent, you can say, “I think that will take us pretty far off-topic” or “Could we focus on X and Y, which I think are the highest priorities to sort out right now?” (You can’t say that if you’re the most junior person in the room, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.) Also, if your boss is scheduling one-hour meetings when a half hour would do, you can point that out to her: “We’ve been scheduling these for an hour but typically cover our agenda items in much less time and the second half never seems as productive. Could we experiment with scheduling for 30 minutes and see how that works?” 2. Company wanted me to interview on a weekend for a Monday-Friday job I am a research scientist currently looking for new roles. One company I applied for called me back to wanting to discuss my resume in detail before potentially scheduling an interview. It was late on a Friday afternoon. I was in a meeting and missed their call. They sent me an email asking me when would be a convenient time for a chat. When I saw the email, I responded saying I would be free Monday. They then emailed me back saying that if I wanted to, they could phone me on Saturday or Sunday. These are standard 9 to 5 jobs I am applying to, so is wanting to talk on a weekend a red flag that they will have poor work/life boundaries? I am fine working overtime on some occasions but not all the time. It’s not a red flag screaming at you not to proceed, but it is a sign to gather more information as you do. It’s possible that this is an indicator that everyone there works horrible hours and work will be constantly bleeding into your evenings and weekends … but it’s just as possible that the person who emailed you works non-standard hours themself, or is about to go on leave and is trying to squeeze in a few interviews before they go, or thinks candidates appreciate interviewing during non-work hours so they don’t have to take time off, or they’re a rare workaholic in a culture of people with better boundaries. It would be foolish to ignore what this could represent, but at this point you don’t know which of these possibilities is most likely, so your job is to take note of it and ask questions about the culture and typical hours as you progress through their process. It also would be fine to ask during the interview, “I recall you asked about doing our initial interview on the weekend. How often do people on this team work on the weekends?” 3. Talking at work about an emergency gay wedding I was originally planning to have a wedding next fall. However, due to recent events, my fiancée and I have decided to get married in late November. The reasons are twofold: (1) My fiancée is currently employed by a federal program that the incoming administration is planning to eradicate, and I don’t want her to be left without insurance. (2) We are both women living in a conservative state. The federal ruling on gay marriage has also been named as a possible target in the next four years. This was always our plan if the election went the way it did. I have a reputation for, let’s say, non-impulsivity at work. Also, I have mentioned that part of the reason we were waiting until next fall was that my only sibling is currently abroad. So this will likely come as a shock to anyone we didn’t share our plans with beforehand. I like my coworkers; I like my job. The atmosphere is a friendly one, where good news is comfortably shared. I don’t want to vanish for a week and a half and come back with a new last name like it’s a secret, but I’m also not comfortable “bringing up politics” at work. I was wondering if you could provide a script for how I can tell people I’m going to get married without it seeming like a rushed, secretive caper, and what I should say when people ask why I’m doing it this way? (They have asked.) I want to be able to enjoy the fact that I’m getting married, to share it with the people I see every day, without it being a dirty little secret or political landmine. The fastest, simplest explanation: “We want to get married while we know we still can.” That’s not bringing politics into work in an inappropriate way; it’s a clear statement of the situation you and many others are in. If you’re not comfortable with that, you could also just say, “Our plans changed and we decided to do it now!” People may be surprised, but they’re unlikely to be shocked; people move up weddings for logistical reasons all the time. They’re also likely to take their cues from you; if you’re cheerfully matter-of-fact about it, they likely will be too. And you really don’t owe any more explanation than that — I don’t mean that in a chilly way, but at the end of the day these are work colleagues and it’s normal not to get into the level of personal detail that you might share with close friends or family. And as for announcing it initially — “We’re moving our wedding up! I’ll be out (dates) and when I’m back I’ll be Valentina NewLast Name.” I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. 4. My company is not prepared for the overtime change in January I work for a pretty small company (about 20 employees), all remote workers around the U.S. Most of us are salaried, making around $45,000-$50,000 per year, so the exemption threshold change in July did not affect anyone but the change in January will affect almost everyone. I asked our HR about this over the summer, and they said that I shouldn’t be working overtime, so it won’t affect anything. But our company does multiple conventions and events every year; it would be a huge logistical change to prevent anyone from working overtime during these. They are easily 50-60 hour weeks under the current set-up. And my understanding of the law is that even if we aren’t working overtime, we’ll need to maintain timesheets. What should or can I do? Is this worth pushing, or should I just wait until January 1 and see how it plays out? Background for readers: An increase to the salary level that makes you exempt from overtime is set to take effect on January 1. If it goes through, it would mean that your employer would be required to pay you overtime (time and a half for all hours over 40 that you work in a week) unless you earn at least $58,656 annually — up from the current threshold of $43,888. (Exceptions include teachers, doctors, and lawyers, who are always exempt.) For now, though, wait and see what happens. A group of states are suing to stop the increase and if a court puts it on hold, the incoming new administration is highly likely to scrap or significantly scale back the whole thing (as they did the last time they were in the White House). On the other hand, if courts don’t stop it, it’s scheduled to go into effect January 1, while the old administration is still in charge, and the new administration is unlikely to be able to roll it back immediately so it’ll be in effect for at least a while. In other words, it’s pretty up in the air right now, but it’s something to keep an eye on. If we get to December with no signs of it being halted, raise it again at that point. This time you should specifically point out your concern about overtime during conventions and events — and it would be useful to calculate how many hours you worked each week during those events in the past, so that your company has hard numbers to look at. Related: what the hell is all this talk of exempt and non-exempt about? 5. You never know what’s happening behind the scenes of a hiring process I’m a relatively new manager hiring for my third permanent position. I read your blog regularly and I was excited to apply everything I’ve been learning to the hiring process. I’ve been thinking through my requirements vs nice-to-haves, challenging my internal biases, everything. The position was posted a month ago, and I brought in four external people to interview after a phone screening. I was really excited for them and the opportunities they presented for the position. I was planning to be checking references next week and hopefully making an offer shortly after that. And then on the day of the last two interviews, I got an email from HR that there was an internal candidate who we needed to urgently consider because they will otherwise be laid off next month. My supervisor told me that we pretty much have to hire them unless there are massive red flags, as it is in the agency’s best interest to retain staff. Of course I am happy to help someone keep working and not be laid off, but I also feel for the external candidates. This radically altered the entire hiring process in a way that none of us could predict, and it was the worst for the external candidates who were now going to be rejected through literally no fault of their own. There is nothing they could have done differently. I know it is cold comfort for job seekers, but I wanted to share this story to illustrate that when you say “you never know what is happening on the hiring side,” it is really true. Thanks for illustrating exactly the sort of thing that can be going on behind the scenes that job seekers often don’t have a window into. When you’re agonizing over what happened with a job you thought you were perfect for, keep in mind that things like this can happen and you might never know about it! You may also like:a "thought experiment" is causing a cold war in my officea coworker prayed for my fiancé's death so we didn't invite her to our wedding ... and now there is dramado prospective employers expect me to take time off work for interviews? { 290 comments }