Ask a Manager

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

1. Shouldn’t we mute ourselves during group calls?

Our org is working remotely right now. A few times a week, I’m on calls with my boss and two coworkers. During these calls, I keep myself muted when I’m not one of the people in the conversation. For example, if my boss and a coworker are talking about a project they are working on that I have zero involvement in, I’m not really in that conversation and will mute myself. When appropriate, I’ll unmute for a few seconds to add in encouraging responses to indicate I’m listening and engaged. (This is not to fake that I’m listening and engaged; I am actually listening and engaged.)

Over the past few weeks, my boss has started commenting on me muting myself. It’s happening repeatedly and often, to the point that it makes me equal parts irritated, uncomfortable, and worried/wondering why it’s become an issue. It usually sounds something like this: “Well, Jane is over there muted” or “Jane, you keep going on and off mute” or “Jane, do you know you’re muted?“ —all said when I’m not being addressed or am a party in the conversation. It may also be relevant that we don’t have videos on during these calls, and the comments aren’t being made to anyone else.

It’s obvious my boss doesn’t like it, so I know the answer to what to do is to stop muting myself. But my question to you is, is this weird? I thought muting yourself when not speaking was the norm. Or at the very least, it’s a sign of respect for the people you’re talking with so that your background noise doesn’t overtake their speaking.

For what it’s worth, our boss never mutes their end of the calls. We can hear them typing, audibly reacting to chats or emails, talking with their dog, muttering about the people walking by their window, etc. It’s distracting and a little demoralizing. Maybe I’ve started muting myself more without realizing it as a reaction to that? It’s weird to me that it’s become “a thing” and I’m wondering if my read on work norms is wrong, or maybe things have changed or evolved in the past year and I’m not aware?

No, you are right and your boss is the outlier! Muting yourself on a group call when you’re not actively engaged is usually considered proper etiquette, especially if you’re anywhere with background noise. If anything, most people have become more conscientious about muting themselves over the last year, with so many more group calls than previously.

Any chance your boss thinks you’re muting yourself for some kind of problematic reason — like that you’re actively doing something else instead of listening? It sounds like they have plenty of reason to know that’s not the case (you’re paying attention and showing signs you’re actively engaged), but the comments are oddly critical of a normal practice. It’s made all the stranger by your boss’s own aggressive lack of muting on their end (muttering about the people walking by their window?!).

In any case, your read on work norms is not wrong. Your boss just has a hang-up about muting for some reason. (You are right, though, you should stop muting yourself in light of her response.)

2. Can I say I’d only take a new job if I can be remote?

Late last year, I had the opportunity to interview at a dream company (it’s a huge, globally known corporation). I knew the hiring manager as we worked in the same division at a previous company. I was completely sold on this company throughout the interviewing process—great benefits, lots of room for growth, etc.

Their only concern was that I would have to move about five hours away from where I am now if I accepted the position. They were very clear that everyone would have to work from the office full-time once the vaccine came out, no exceptions. At that time, I assured them didn’t mind at all. I have family in that state and there were many job opportunities in the area for my husband.

Unfortunately, I did not get the role. I was pretty heartbroken about it. The feedback I got from the hiring manager was that it was between one other person and me, and they chose the person with more experience. I let them know that really liked the company and hoped they would keep me in mind for future opportunities.

A few months later, the hiring manager reached out and asked if I would be interested in reapplying for the role. At that point, I had already accepted a fully remote job and my husband also started a new job. It just was not the right time to pick up and move five hours away. So I politely declined and said I wanted to see things through at my new company for now.

What I wanted to say was, “Look, you want me, I want to work for you, but moving five hours is out of the question now. I will reapply if I can be remote full-time. You and I both know that I am a great fit for this company and that I am sure that we can make it work.” Maybe I’d say it more eloquently, but you know what I mean.

So many of my friends and family keep asking me why I didn’t just go ahead and ask. There really wasn’t anything for me to lose. But I feel like that’s a completely delusional ask. Do you think it’s totally inappropriate to ask something like this? Leadership was very against remote work throughout the interview process and could not stress enough about reopening the second employees got vaccinated. If someone was very clear about their requirements, I shouldn’t try to negotiate.

Nope, it’s not delusional. They reached back out and asked if you might still be interested. The honest answer is, “Yes, but only if I can be remote.” It’s okay to say that; they’re approaching you, after all! It’s fine to give them your real answer. If it doesn’t work for them, they’ll let you know.

(That said, there are a lot of downsides to being the one remote person at a company where everyone else is in-person: You’re likely to be left out of informal or ad hoc discussions, you’ll be the only person joining meetings remotely, you’ll have less visibility with your boss and other decision-makers, you probably won’t get a shot at as many opportunities as people who are in the office do … and it can feel a lot easier to cut you if cuts need to be made. You might be fine with all that in exchange for being able to stay remote, but make sure to think carefully about those downsides.)

3. My boss ghosted the candidate I recommended

My team was recently hiring for a position, and Rob, a former coworker of mine, reached out to let me know he was interested. I thought he’d be a great fit, so I put in a good word for him with my manager (who is the hiring manager). My manager, Jon, brought Rob in for an interview, and ultimately Rob made it through four rounds of interviews, one of which included a test that required several hours to complete.

A few weeks after that, Jon updated me that he thought Rob was still a very strong candidate, but that he’d realized he should talk to a more diverse pool before making a hire. (Rob is white.) That was the last I ever heard from Jon about Rob. This week, Jon announced to the team that he’d filled the role with someone who isn’t Rob.

Obviously, I’m not upset that they didn’t hire Rob, but what upsets me is that Rob says he was ghosted after four rounds of interviews and the time-consuming test and never even received a rejection email. I care a lot about diversity, of course, and am a woman of color myself, but I still feel frustrated that it seems like Rob was put through this whole process and then rejected due to something that had nothing to do with his qualifications. I also feel Rob was owed a rejection of some sort after investing so much time into the process.

I am not sure if I should let Rob know that the position has been filled (the person does not start for another month) or if that would be going behind my manager’s back. I am also not sure if there is anything I can say to Jon to indicate that I feel it was discourteous to ghost Rob. Am I out of line for thinking it’s discourteous to me, in addition to him, since I made the referral?

It’s rude to both of you. It’s rude to Rob, who invested significant time in the interview process, and it’s rude to you because your connections should be treated with care by your manager. This kind of ghosting of candidates is very, very common — but doing it to someone who a current employee recommended is particularly thoughtless. (For what it’s worth, it’s not clear that Rob was rejected over something that had nothing to do with his qualifications — it sounds like Jon wanted to ensure he had a diverse interview pool but presumably then chose the candidate he thought was the strongest. But either way, Rob deserved an answer.)

You could say to Jon now, “Rob has asked me about the status of the job and mentioned he hasn’t heard anything yet. Could you let him know you filled the position? I worry it could affect my relationship with him if he feels he was left hanging.”

4. A good experience with an interview presentation

Prior to an interview, I was asked to create a presentation about myself and my previous work. I found this a little weird and stressful, so I went looking for advice on your website and basically everything I found was negative or awkward experiences. Well, I went to my interview and it turned out to be really great, honestly the best and most enjoyable interview I’ve ever had. So I thought I’d write-in to tell you how interview presentations can be positive on occasion.

This was for a mid-career, highly technical and specific engineering role at a company of around 70 people. I was asked to put together about 5 slides: a slide about me (where I got my degree, my previous jobs), a slide describing the general technical skills I developed as a foundation in my prior jobs, a slide describing work I’ve done that applied particularly to the role I was interviewing for, and a slide or two about what I thought the key factors were for addressing the technical problem at the core of the role.

At the interview, it turned out that they didn’t want me to stand up and go through it all as a straight presentation. It was really a tool to provide some structure and guide the conversation between myself and the interview panel. On each slide I’d talk through it some, maybe pause part of the way through, they would ask me questions to get more detail, sometimes we would jump ahead or back a slide if the info they were asking about was on a different page. It was very casual and flowing.

All in all, the interview had the same content and questions as a regular conversational interview, but having the presentation at hand made me feel so much more relaxed. With the slides right there, I didn’t have to worry about completely blanking and forgetting something from my resume, and I was able to make sure I had an opportunity to highlight my most relevant prior experience without the interviewers needing to ask a specific question about it. I think it was also helpful on the side of the interviewers to have something displayed in discrete chunks instead of having to look down and parse through a whole resume at once. Plus it’s great for folks who have trouble focusing or absorbing information only through audio.

Obviously this doesn’t work for every type of job, and frequently presentation requests are just unnecessary work that add nothing of value to the interview (and even in this situation I could see it going poorly if I hadn’t been given details on what they wanted for each slide), but in some instances it can be a tool to make an interview better than it would be otherwise. In the end, I got the job, accepted it, and so far have had a great month working at this company!

Thanks for giving an example of how these can go well! We tend to hear about the bad experiences here because people are writing in for advice (just as we tend to hear about the bad managers and the bad coworkers), but there are definitely times when presentations in interviews make sense and are set up well!

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

1. I’m earning less than someone who lied on their resume

I am perturbed by the fact I have worked my butt off for the last 15 years to get to what my salary is, and someone I know lies on their resume (who just started working about 5 years ago) is making more than I. Does HR not check backgrounds anymore? Should I push harder? I can’t lie, it’s more of an accomplishment deal for me. How should I move forward? Is this what people do these days?

No, this isn’t what people do. This is what one unethical person did. You presumably value your own integrity and not having to live in fear of a lie coming out and torpedoing a job you’ve already been hired for (which is very much a thing that happens) more than that person does. You move forward by recognizing that there have always been people who lie and always will be, and that that’s something you choose not to do because those aren’t your values.

But also — even without lying, sometimes people with less work experience than you might be earning more. Sometimes it’s because they’ve schmoozed their way into a higher salary than their work deserves, but sometimes it’s because they’ve genuinely earned it. The thing is to make sure that you feel you’re being paid fairly and competitively for the work you’re doing. Ignore everyone else (barring situations like systemic discrimination, of course).

2. A difficult client will only deal with one of my employees

I manage a small team of customer service/account managers. I’m after some help navigating a tricky situation. I have a long-term client who is quite particular and has dealt with one of my employees for a few years now. Recently, I’ve brought a new employee on board and we decided to transition this account over to her. The client sent me a polite, but very stern email after about one week requesting to be put back in the original employee’s hands immediately. Now, nothing really happened to prompt this, the new employee hasn’t done anything wrong, and our strategic goal for 2021 is to split up clients in a way that means she should be handled by the new employee.

I personally think it’s quite rude to demand someone be returned to your account, but I can’t see how I could refuse her either, which may be taken badly by my new employee!

I once asked to be moved to a different account rep when the one I’d been assigned was repeatedly misunderstanding requests and giving me information that was clearly wrong — and if I’d been told I had to stay with him, I would have taken my business somewhere else.

I don’t know what prompted your client’s request, but it’s not necessarily an unreasonable one. Before you conclude anything, you’ve got to find out what the concern is — either by talking to the client or reviewing the correspondence between the two of them or through whatever other means you have at your disposal. And then you’ve got to decide if the client’s business is valuable enough that you’re willing to move the account back to the previous person. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t — but if it’s a valuable account, sometimes you do things like that to keep an important client happy. (It’s also worth finding out what the previous rep’s secrets of success are with this account — maybe she’s just highly competent, but maybe she has certain approaches she uses that others could use too.)

Make the decision based on what makes sense for your business. And if you do move the client back to the old rep, be straightforward with the new hire about why. If this client is just picky and difficult and it’s not her fault, be honest about that. But if you find out that she wasn’t handling the account as well as the previous rep, explain that too — she’s new, so some of that is normal, and it makes sense not to saddle her with someone especially challenging while she’s still learning the job.

3. Handling things that aren’t my job when there are serious consequences if I don’t

I do some work as a court-appointed attorney for parents (and occasionally children) in child protection cases. The social services department in my county is, quite frankly, horrible. I frequently have to step in and take care of things that are (literally, legally!) their jobs. I’ve been doing this for about five years. It feels like their whole department has come the proverbial missing stair. Quite frankly, it’s burning me out.

I’ve tried pushing back and not doing it, but there are serious consequences when I don’t. For example, I’m not supposed to be in charge of finding placements for kids, but I historically have done so since nobody else will. However, the one time I pushed back and just didn’t help, a kid wound up sitting in juvie because “he was just too hard to place.” Needless to say, I wound up giving in and finding placement options. I’ve tried talking to the social services supervisor and the county attorney, and they just say that the social workers are “trying their best,” which seems uncredible since I’m able to find placements, services and resources without any of their tools. Do you have any ideas of what I could say or do to try and push back on this becoming my responsibility? I’m good at being assertive, I’m just not even sure what to say or try at this point.

Children’s service workers are notoriously overworked and under-resourced, so it’s possible that they’re genuinely stretched too thin to give individual cases the time and attention you can. In fact, having to triage resources in child protection cases is so common that I’d assume it’s happening here unless you have real evidence that it’s not — there literally may not be money to pay for the additional staffing they’d need to do a better job.

Readers who work in this field, do you have advice on concrete actions this letter-writer could take?

4. I don’t want to reconnect with a former coworker from a toxic job

I spent the past five years working in a toxic environment where I was completely miserable. I recently got a new job in the same field in a different state, and I am so much happier! Moving out of state was difficult but so worth it for my mental health.

However, I recently learned that a former colleague, Jane, will be moving to my city to start a job in my same field but with a different employer. It is a small and somewhat niche field, so our paths may cross even though we will not directly be working together. Jane and I were friendly at our old job, but I was privately not her biggest fan. She was very close with a high-up manager there (to the point where people thought they were having an affair), and he prioritized spending time with her over supervising his direct reports, including me, which caused my work to suffer. Thinking about having to see her just reminds me of the toxic and miserable workplace I was so anxious to get away from.

I am worried that when Jane moves here, she will reach out to get drinks or dinner. I moved jobs and cities to get a fresh start and really do not want any reminders of the job that made me so unhappy. Is there a polite way to blow Jane off without making it awkward if our paths cross professionally?

Yep — plead an overbooked schedule. As in, “My schedule is ridiculous and it’s hard to get anything new on my calendar right now. But if there’s anything you’re wondering about the new city, feel free to reach out and I can try to be helpful.” (If you don’t want to offer that last piece, you can change that sentence to, “But I hope you’re getting settled in and enjoying the new city! I really like Coffeeshop X and Restaurant Y.” The recommendations are optional, but including something of that sort helps soften the message so it’s a bit more than “I hope you shall never darken my path again.”)

5. Explaining why I’m staying remote without disclosing health information

The return to work after Covid has brought up a conundrum for me. I am vaccinated, but immunosuppressed with other major underlying conditions. I’m fortunate to have a job that I can do completely remotely and my boss has allowed me to do so indefinitely. My issue is that the rest of my office has started resuming in-person activities. Celebrations, lunches, etc. My company is not tracking vaccination numbers or asking for masking of unvaccinated employees, so I have opted out of any in-person events. However, my absence is being noticed by other employees. I am not forthcoming about my health problems and for various reasons have no desire to share this information beyond my immediate supervisor.

It is widely known that I have no children and if I claim to live with a family member who is immunocompromised it will just lead to questions about my spouse. The comments so far have been well-meaning and benign so far — “Hope to see you at [upcoming event],” “I look forward to getting together at [office celebration],” “Let’s meet up for lunch this week when I’m in the office.” I’ve been able to change the subject or use the phrase “I wish I could, but I’m still being careful.” But as time goes on I’m concerned this will become a perception problem that I’m not a team player. I am now the only employee opting out of in-person attendance at these events. It’s feeling more and more awkward and I’m getting the impression I’m being seen as antisocial and not wanting to join in on group activities, especially since I’m fairly high up in the company. There is one large event later this summer that I would normally be leading. Instead, I won’t even be attending.

I feel like my health information should be private, but I also think showing up as the only masked person and opting out of eating won’t be received well either. I am younger and appear healthy so medical concerns are not what people jump to. This feels like a rock and a hard place. How do you recommend I navigate this?

I get that you don’t want to disclose that this is health-related … but it’s by far the easiest way to handle it. You wouldn’t need to share any specifics; you’d just matter-of-factly say, “I have a health situation that means I need to stay remote for now.” You don’t need to provide details beyond that.

If you really don’t want to say that, you could stay very vague — “I’m staying permanently remote for now” — but you’re right that it risks becoming a perception problem. That’s especially true because you’re higher up; there’s a risk of it being seen as unfair, or as hypocritical if you’re involved in high-level decision-making in an office that’s bringing everyone else back. You don’t have to disclose that this is health-related, but you’ll likely get a much better outcome if people have a general sense of why you’re suddenly not there.