our mediocre employee thinks we’re not promoting her because of sexism by Alison Green on April 15, 2026 A reader writes: I’m hoping for some guidance on dealing with an employee who is convinced she isn’t advancing because she’s a woman, but it’s truly due to her putting in barely adequate effort and believing that advancement comes from checking off boxes and “time served.” We’re in a creative niche industry that’s fairly evenly […] Read the full article →
is it wrong to hire a replacement before an employee is fired? by Alison Green on April 14, 2026 A reader writes: My company has a habit of recruiting and hiring a replacement for fired employees before the person has actually been fired. The replacement doesn’t start work until after the original employee is gone, but the company is recruiting and interviewing before they’ve told the person they will be out of a job […] Read the full article →
is it a bad idea to work for a first-time manager? by Alison Green on April 13, 2026 A reader writes: I need help in assessing the pros and cons of going to work for someone with no experience managing employees. I have over 10 years of experience leading teams or managing programs in IT and am looking at senior mid-level roles. I’m currently in the process of interviewing for a role that […] Read the full article →
how do I interrupt a monologuing coworker during a meeting? by Alison Green on April 9, 2026 A reader writes: I would love some feedback/advice for how to deal with a difficult colleague in a different department. We work with this department to handle legal matters for our group, so we have to liaise with him occasionally. He is a terrible communicator. Every time we meet, he goes on long, irrelevant tangents […] Read the full article →
our breast-feeding employee is spending too much time pumping by Alison Green on April 7, 2026 A reader writes: We recently hired a nursing mother with the understanding that she would be taking time to pump three times a day for about a year. She is being paid for the time used to pump. She was provided a comfortable private space in which to do so and she logs the time […] Read the full article →
my team wants to work from home, but some of them are terrible at it by Alison Green on April 6, 2026 A reader writes: I oversee a medium-sized department who are all required to be on-site, although we were remote for quite a while following the pandemic. My staff is pushing very hard for hybrid working, and while I am open to it, I have concerns. In the past, when that the majority of our team […] Read the full article →
how to respond to requests to “pick your brain” by Alison Green on April 1, 2026 A reader writes: A few years ago, I appeared in a series of videos about “how I got my job.” My job is pretty niche and there really isn’t a ton of institutional information about it yet, so it got a lot of attention. Since then, I’ve consistently gotten two to three LinkedIn messages per […] Read the full article →
my rock-star coworker will quit if she has to return to the office by Alison Green on March 31, 2026 A reader writes: I am a high-performing, respected, well-liked senior contributor on a 25-person team at a global tech company. Since Covid, we have all been successfully working remotely. Recently, the company has enacted a “hybrid work” policy, which for me means I am supposed to go to the office three times a week. Because […] Read the full article →
there’s only one way to get more money at work, and some people won’t do it by Alison Green on March 30, 2026 If you could earn thousands of dollars more a year just by having a two-minute conversation, would you do it? That might sound like an easy “yes,” but for a lot of people, the answer, surprisingly, is no. At Slate today, I wrote about people who literally never negotiate their salary when they’re offered a […] Read the full article →
is it OK to send work emails late at night? by Alison Green on March 24, 2026 A reader writes: As a manager, new parent, and generally busy person, I work some strange hours. For example, yesterday I was online at 2 am (as my daughter woke me up during the night and I decided to use some time to clear my work inbox ahead of a busy Monday) and 10 pm […] Read the full article →