my friend was horrified that I asked an interviewer what the job pays

by Alison Green on August 11, 2016

A reader writes:

I work in media. About a year ago, I saw a job listing for a position at a prestigious company that looked like it would be a good fit, so I reached out to a contact who worked at the company, she passed on my resume to the hiring manager, and they invited me in for an interview. The interview went extremely well — I answered their questions to their satisfaction and asked a few of my own. My final question was about the salary range — it hadn’t been mentioned on the job listing, and I wanted to get a sense of what they were offering. Both the manager and the other employee who were interviewing me seemed a little taken aback that I had asked. They were at a loss for words and finally said, “We’ll have to talk to HR and get back to you.”

I was telling a friend who works in tech about this the next day and he looked aghast. He couldn’t believe I’d asked the salary — he believes that’s totally verboten until they’ve actually offered you the job. I completely disagree — I think an interview is not just a company evaluating you as a potential employee, but is also you evaluating them as a potential employer.

Is this a matter of different etiquette in different industries? Should I not have asked? (In the interest of full disclosure, they finally told me the salary after I’d completed another round of interviews and a skills test. It was less than I was being paid in a lower position at my current job. I withdrew my name from consideration, saying that I couldn’t afford to take a pay cut, which was true. The hiring manager reached out to me afterward and told me she’d really enjoyed talking to me and that she hoped we could work together someday.)

So, this is a really ridiculous convention of hiring processes, but it’s also one that I think is changing.

It is very much true that — totally inexplicably — a lot of people who hire believe that it’s the height of vulgarity for a candidate to ask about salary. They think that it indicates that you’re only interested in what they can do for you, and not in the job itself. They get extremely upset when candidates have the audacity to bring money into the conversation before the employer deigns to do so. (There are some examples of this kind of thinking here.)

This is, obviously, ridiculous. Most people work for money, and the amount that a job will pay is highly, highly relevant and can be one of the most clear-cut deal-breakers there is. It makes zero sense to act as if it’s some sort of mortal sin to try to find out if you’re in the same monetary ballpark, even though doing so can save both sides tons of time if it turns out that you’re not.

But that mindset is very much around.

However … I think it’s changing. I’ve noticed many more candidates bringing up salary themselves in the last couple of years. I’m really curious to see if that trend picks up; my hunch is that it will.

There are still plenty of interviewers who will be shocked — shocked! — by questions about salary though, which means that you have to decide whether you care if you turn some of them off by asking about it before they bring it up. I think it’s quite reasonable to bring it up before investing serious time in a hiring process but not everyone agrees with me, so you have to decide whether you’re willing to risk some employers being horrified at your offensive money-grubbing gall.

(That said, even people who bristle at it are generally more accepting of asking about salary early on if you’d need to travel a long distance for the interview or take significant time off work, or if a recruiter has approached you rather than the other way around. More on these exceptions here.)

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you might get paid more if you take a vacation, your brain wants to procrastinate, and more

by Alison Green on August 11, 2016

Over at QuickBase’s Fast Track blog today, I take a look at several interesting work-related stories in the news right now, including what the data says about why you should take a vacation (it may make you more likely to get a raise or bonus), how to beat your brain’s natural proclivities toward procrastinating, and more. You can read it here.

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interview with a budget and money coach

by Alison Green on August 11, 2016

Lynne Somerman is a regular reader here, and she’s also a budget and money coach. I asked her if she’d do an interview here about her work, and she gracious agreed. Here’s our Q&A (and here’s her website).

So you’re a budget and money coach! Tell us more about what that means — what kind of work do you do with people? What does a typical client engagement look like?

In a nutshell, I’m a budget and money coach who’s passionate about working with women entrepreneurs. I help people work through both practical issues and the fear, blame, and shame we have around money. I believe that budgeting is an act of self care and that they change lives.

I primarily work with small business owners, and what I do for them is a combination of the practical (setting up and maintaining their budget, keeping their accounts up to date) and what essentially amounts to money therapy. My clients and I meet regularly to discuss their goals, progress, their successes and failures, and how they’re feeling about how things are going. This can mean some tough love conversations, some celebrating together, and a lot in between. For some folks, we end up spending a lot of time talking about the things that block them from success financially — things like fear, shame, and blame. For a lot of female entrepreneurs in particular, I help them to stop “playing small” and charge what they’re worth, admit they need help, things like that.

What does “playing small” mean?

I mean that I bring a clarity for my clients about their money that helps them be bolder and wiser about their decisions and their next moves. A lot of people come to me saying things like “I don’t know if I can afford X” where X is to give themselves a raise, to hire an employee, or to take a risk on a new product or service. I answer those questions for them, freeing them to do things like charge what they’re worth and take the risks that help their businesses grow.

What do you think is behind people’s fear of charging what they’re worth — that no one will pay it? That they’ll be laughed at?

I think both of those play into it a lot, particularly for women. I think it really comes down to impostor syndrome, something you talk about on your blog a lot! Just like putting together a resume or negotiating salary, I think the tendency can be towards downplaying your value — “well I did X but I was part of a team” or “My clients all say they think I do a great job for them, but they’re probably just being nice.” Another part of it is that people think “If I charge that, I won’t get any clients and then I’ll never be able to do this at all!” which is a fear I know I’ve had, and which I haven’t found to be true. It is so, so hard to state your value, ask for what you’re worth, and then close your mouth. But, I’ve gotten a lot of courage from reading your site over the years to do just that! On the occasions when I’ve had potential clients hesitate at my prices, it’s always, always been about not knowing whether they could afford it and never about whether my service was worth it.

How did you get into doing this?

I like to say that I’m only good with money because I used to be terrible with money, and that’s completely true. I do this because I’ve been there, and I know how awful it is, and I have spent years teaching myself how to get out of a dark place money wise. I taught myself about mundane things like credit scores and also worked a lot on my emotional responses to money (i.e. terror and avoidance). I started sharing what I’d learned with people and found I loved seeing how it changed people’s lives. It started with friends and family members and grew from there.

Are there common patterns that you see come up over and over with people?

The most common issues I see, that I work on with every single client, are a lack of awareness which usually leads to anxiety, and a thought pattern that tells people that budgets are all about restriction and being frugal.

In terms of awareness, I have learned that most people think they don’t make enough money and that’s the root of their money issues; in reality most people I work with have enough money but they spend too much because they don’t pay attention. Often, they don’t pay attention because they’re afraid of what they’ll learn. It’s very cyclical. There’s a lot you can do about this (namely: a budget), but I think the single most powerful thing anyone can do to take charge of their finances is to record every penny that goes in and out of your life. It’s like money meditation. Your goal here isn’t to change in a big way what you’re doing – the same way meditation asks you to notice your breath without asking it to change, necessarily. Big changes like paying off loads of debt will likely take more work, but I’m always amazed by how much can be accomplished by just paying attention to it. I started out carrying around a small notebook and just jotting everything down. No categorization, and I never looked at it after the day was over. It didn’t take long before things started to change.

A lot of people believe that budget is a four-letter word. It has a big negative connotation, and it can feel like a prison sentence. It feels inflexible and restrictive, it feels like someone is telling you what to do, and it feels like you’ll never be able to do anything fun again. What I teach people is that budgeting is an act of self-care. When I work on my budget I try to come at it from a place of loving detachment, rational and fact based. For me, a budget is all about reality layered with priorities. When I want to spend money on something, I take a look at the budget (not at my bank account) to determine whether I can spend it. It’s not about restriction; the budget is there to reflect my own goals and decisions back to me, and I can change it if I want. Also, I always encourage people to put things in their budgets that make them happy. I had one client who loved breakfast burritos; it went in her budget so she could eat them guilt-free.

I feel like having savings is one of the nicest things anyone can do for themselves — the peace of mind that it brings you to know that you have a safety net if you need it is worth so much more than any purchase I can think of. I feel like people should get the same high from saving that they might get from buying a new iPad or eating really delicious chocolate. What do you think holds people back from looking at it that way? (Obviously there’s a huge caveat that some people are in such difficult financial situations that they really don’t have the option to save, but I’m talking about people who are.)

I think most people think of saving “for,” but not saving for savings’ sake. The focus is always on the eventual spending of the savings, other than personal finance gurus who advocate for having 3-6 months of emergency funds saved before working on anything else financially, which frankly seems pretty daunting to most people. I also think a lot of it comes from the way we talk about savings culturally, and that it’s become the norm to not have much in the way of money stashed away — “everyone’s doing it” mentality. There’s also this cultural image of people who save as miserly homebodies who never have fun. In fact that’s why I named my business The Wiser Miser — I’m all about turning that image on its head.

To some extent I think this is made worse because people don’t save, so they don’t know how great it is. I think it’s something you have to experience to understand. I’m a big advocate of building a one-month financial cushion as quickly as possible, which is often a stretch but much more doable than 3-6 months, and which is usually enough to get you through a major car repair, home repair, or other short term issues while you focus on other things like debt. I can’t describe how amazing it felt when my manager pulled me aside one time a few years ago to say they’d made a mistake and I wouldn’t get paid that week — and I honestly didn’t care.

How long does it typically take for someone to start changing their thinking around money once you really buckle down with them and start focusing on it?

This depends so much on their own commitment to it, but I’ve seen results in as little as a few weeks, and some folks never make it happen. Making long-term perspective shifts usually takes a few months. Like any hard new thing, it is exciting at first and then you start to lose momentum, so breaking through that can be difficult. That’s where having an accountability partner (a spouse, friend, someone like me, or an online group of budgeters — of which there are many) can really make a difference.

Do you think there are differences between the problems people run into with managing their personal money and the problems they run into managing their money as entrepreneurs? I’d love to hear about that if so.

The biggest difference is that entrepreneurs spend money on things that they’d never spend money on if it was “their” money vs. belonging to the business. Stuff like trips that are only tangentially business related, lots of cool software that they use one time, and especially spending on coaches and consultants. Ironic that I’m saying that, as someone who works as a coach for entrepreneurs, but I see a lot of wasted money here. With personal money, it really is more a lack of awareness of what they’re spending, along with some nickel and dime money wasting. Usually when you bring someone’s attention to what their personal money is doing, they see what they want to change. Business money, on the other hand, is very easy to justify spending.

Can I ask you my own entrepreneur/money question? One thing I’ve struggled with as someone who now works for myself is how to know when enough is enough. You could have a good client base and the right amount of work and income, and so you turn away new work (because you don’t want to work around the clock) … but then if you lose a client, you might really regret turning away those clients earlier. In the past I’ve struggled with the temptation to take on more work than I really wanted, as a buffer for that hypothetical time in the future where some might go away… which of course left me working way too much, but nervous about scaling it back. Has anyone figured out how to solve this?

I may be biased, but I think you solve this by having a budget! It comes back to awareness. If you know how much money you need to operate, and you are able to build up some funds to cover the necessary things like taxes and payroll, along with things like saving to take a vacation or hire an employee, you’ll have a much better idea when you’ve got enough, because you’ll have your neatly laid out financial goals and they’ll all be met.

Additionally, over time I work with my clients to build a reserve of cash, usually equalling about 3 months expenses, which helps them as a sort of “no thanks” fund. So you get your reserve and then you get an opportunity that you’re not sure you want, but because you have money stashed away you, get to say “no thanks” to anything that doesn’t move you closer towards your goals, doesn’t feel right, or is simply more work than you want to take on at that time.

I’d say enough is enough when you are working the amount of time that feels good to you, you’ve got a few months cash in reserve, and your bank accounts are growing — even if your revenue no longer is.

I budget and I turn away clients, but I still just want all the money. I want to sit atop a pile of gold pieces and rub my hands together while I count them. That’s a separate problem, though. In any case, thank you, Lynne!

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staying in touch with old coworkers, how to help a lonely boss, and more

by Alison Green on August 11, 2016

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

1. Are offers to stay in touch with old coworkers really sincere?

I recently resigned from my first professional job post-university. I had been there nearly five years. Upon leaving, my manager and coworkers suggested things like “come back to visit sometime,” “feel free to drop by the office anytime,” “stay in touch and we’ll grab coffee,” etc. Are these invites sincere? If they are, I don’t want to shun them by not dropping by or staying in touch. But if they’re just meaningless platitudes, then I don’t want to be the clingy oddball who won’t leave her old boss and coworkers alone.

However, if they are sincere, how does one go about staying in touch with old job? How long do you wait post leaving to contact them? With what frequency do you stay in contact and go out for coffee?

They’re probably genuine. I mean, it’s also just a thing that people say when someone is leaving because it’s polite, but in most cases people are happy to follow through on it if you’re interested in doing that. It’s not an obligation — if you’d rather make a clean break, that’s perfectly normal too — but some people enjoy staying in touch with past coworkers and past offices, and that’s not weird to do. (It can also be really smart from a networking perspective.)

If you do want to take them up on it, typically it might mean getting in touch a few months after leaving for coffee or something along those lines. After that, you might meet up once or twice a year, depending on what you feel like. It really varies depending on the people involved, but monthly would seem like a lot, if that’s a helpful data point.

2. How to help a lonely boss

In January, I started temping as a lab technician. The labs are in the basement of a college and used for teaching students. In this basement, there is my office and my boss’ office. There are no other offices down here, and while there is some teaching being done in some of the classrooms, it is pretty quiet here outside of lab weeks.

This summer I was gone two months to work at a different summer job, but with an agreement to come back in time to prepare for the new term. I just came back recently, and I have just learned that in the two months I have been out of the country, my boss has been on sick leave most of the time. She confided in me that the isolation of our offices and the loss of her pet (both her sons have long since moved out and there is only her at home) contributed to her illness, along with killing herself with long hours.

She came back the same day as me, but only working half days and getting therapy. She also got a second desk up in the admin office so that she can ambulate between the two and get some more socialization throughout her work day. Of course, it is great that she is getting help, but I can’t help but feel for this lovely lady who is clearly going through a hard time. She has always been very kind to me and gives me great autonomy (not something often given to temps).

I want to help her. Initially, I thought I might invite her home to dinner with my partner, but is there anything else I can do? And is that even appropriate? I wanted to suggest rescuing a pet, but feel that might be overstepping a line. I know that to some, that sounds like saying that one pet is as good as the next, but that is really not my intention at all.

It’s really kind that you want to help her, but you also need to preserve professional boundaries. As an employee who she manages, you probably aren’t the right person to be inviting her to dinner at your home (although I don’t see anything wrong with asking if she’s considered another animal, if you want to).

Mainly, though, you shouldn’t start to feel responsible for her emotional well-being; it’s just not that kind of relationship, and if you start letting it become one, that can backfire for both of you. I know that that might sound callous (and certainly some people do successfully pull off social relationships with managers — they’re just more the exception than the rule), but your role in her life is employee, not friend, and that’s okay. Be a great employee, be kind and thoughtful within those boundaries, let her know that you appreciate her as a manager and a colleague, and keep things basically in that ambit.

3. Boss is pressuring employees into pushing her wheelchair around

How much assistance is an employer required to grant someone using a walker/wheelchair combination due to an injury for about a month? Our boss is expecting coworkers and people who she supervises to push her to meetings in other buildings. She stated she didn’t want to pay the additional funds for a motorized wheel chair. I’ve gotten out of it because I have back issues.

She has a habit of asking too much of the people who work for her when she suffers injuries. Some are afraid to say no because she gets quite ugly.

Especially since it’s temporary, I don’t think it’s particularly outrageous to ask people for that kind of help if they’re capable of doing it, as long as people are free to say no. The issue here seems to be that people are afraid to say no and she doesn’t realize that she’s inappropriately pressuring them — that’s more of the problem than that she’s asking for help in the first place. (And I imagine if people had good will toward her, they’d be more inclined to say yes. It sounds like she hasn’t treated people well, which is playing into this.)

Since it sounds like this has come as an issue with her before, one option would be for you and your coworkers to talk to HR and ask them to talk with her about what her options are for getting the help she needs without making people who report to her feel pressured.

4. I want to take medical leave for depression but I don’t trust HR

I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety for 10 years and am currently going through a particularly low period that started about a year ago. I’m diagnosed and medicated, but I still go through very long periods where my mental health has a severe impact on my daily life and productivity. My boss knows and is understanding, though obviously he’d prefer for me to be available in the office rather than taking a lot of sick days or working from home as often as I do.

I would really like to take some time off to restart various forms of therapy and get my life back together so that I can be happy coming to work. However, when I consider talking to my HR department about it, I’m not convinced that my medical situation will be kept confidential. I am not at ALL gossipy at work (my social anxiety doesn’t allow it), but I hear literally everyone’s personal issues through the grapevine. My sister (who also works here) has spoken to HR about two issues in the last year, and both have made their way to me through the gossip channels after a few days. I don’t want to talk to my coworkers about my mental health. Ever. Even if I were healthy.

Obviously, this is a company problem and I’m already trying to find a new job, but my issues kind of make that difficult as well. Do you think I should just bite the bullet and tell HR, even though I know I’ll hear about it from everyone as soon as I return? Is there a way to take leave without explaining anything more than “a medical issue”?

If you’re planning to take leave through FMLA, there’s a certification process where your doctor will need to fill out forms with pretty limited information — just enough to demonstrate that you do have a serious medical condition that requires the leave.

FMLA also prohibits sharing personal medical information about a person taking FMLA leave. That doesn’t mean your employer won’t do it anyway — they sound lovely — but you could try to head it off when you talk to HR by saying something like, “I know that FMLA requires the reasons for my leave to be kept confidential. In the past, though, I’ve heard rumors about other people’s medical situations. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen and that the law isn’t violated. Can you help me ensure this info isn’t shared?” In other words, preemptively remind/shame them.

5. What does it mean to be salaried non-exempt?

I work in a non-exempt, salaried position. Previously I worked at a different company as a non-exempt, hourly position. So in general, I’m a little confused because I only ever knew the difference between hourly and salary and didn’t realize you could be non-exempt AND salaried. Can you explain what a non-exempt, salaried employee can expect with regard to number of hours worked vs paid?

Non-exempt salaried means that you get the same salary from week to week, except that if you work more than 40 hours in a particular week, you get paid overtime for that. But if you have a week where you work, say, 35 hours, your pay doesn’t get docked (that’s the salaried part).

For people who are affected by the upcoming change to the overtime regulations (and who will be becoming non-exempt when they were previously exempt), this is likely to be the best option for many of them.

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how to deal with a coworker in a small office who forces loud political rants on me

by Alison Green on August 10, 2016

A reader writes:

My colleague, “Lisa,” and I are the sole employees in a small designer showroom. There is a repair shop next door where our manager and other coworkers are. Most of the time, it’s just Lisa and I. I like her a lot. She’s very experienced and knowledgeable, and I’m grateful to her for sharing her knowledge. We’re in sales, so we’re chatty and get along well on a friendly level.

The problem is that Lisa is extremely vocal about her political views, and it’s a subject that comes up often. I don’t always agree with what she says, but she’s very passionate and gets herself worked up when she talks about it. She even talks a bit louder when on her soapbox. I don’t want a conflict, nor do I want to talk about my own political beliefs too much. She’s the type of person who, when incensed, rather enjoys starting an argument. I’m the opposite. I try to diffuse it with diplomacy and subtly changing the subject, as I’ve done in the past when this has come up. It doesn’t always work with Lisa.

What’s the best way to deal with this? I don’t want her to be offended, but I’m also tired of the political rants! She laid into me pretty good when I said I couldn’t vote for the candidate she supports.

I’ve tried to tell her several times that I don’t want to discuss politics at work, but the answer is always fairly defensive and something like “Well, you need to be informed. You can’t just put your head in the sand! These people are ruining our country!”

You might normally like Lisa, but in this situation she’s being a jerk. It’s rude to force political discussions on someone who has asked you to stop. And “I don’t want to talk politics” doesn’t mean “I intend to be uninformed and put my head in the sand”; it means “I don’t want to discuss this with you/at this time/in this context,” and it’s fairly disingenuous/obnoxious of her to pretend otherwise.

The way to get this to stop is to hold firm and not let her badger you into a conversation you don’t want to have. For example:

You: “Lisa, I don’t want to discuss politics at work. Please don’t continue to try to draw me into political discussions.”
Lisa: “You need to be informed. You can’t just put your head in the sand when the fate of our international rice sculpture treaty is at stake!”
You: “I consider myself well informed but I don’t want to discuss politics at work, so please stop. Can you do that?” (You could even skip the “I consider myself well informed” if you don’t want to put that up for discussion.)
Lisa: “These issues are too important to stay silent blah blah blah.”
You: “I am not willing to discuss this with you. Please stop. Anyway, have you seen the sales reports for last week?”

If it continues after that, say this: “I’ve told you I don’t want to have this discussion. Can we talk about something else, or should I move to a different area of the store?” And then if she continues, you say, “Okay, I’m going to go dust the teapots near the front. See you later.” And you walk away.

If you feel rude about doing this — and you might, because when you’re a generally nice, polite person, it can feel jarring to draw such a hard conversational line with someone —  keep reminding yourself that she is the one being rude by forcing conversations on you that you’ve clearly asked her to stop. Polite people will be willing to stop the first time you make that request. If she refuses to respect what you’ve asked, that’s on her, not on you, and polite society supports you in enforcing a boundary and leaving the conversation.

Read an update to this letter here.

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my coworkers keep reporting my mistakes to my manager

by Alison Green on August 10, 2016

A reader writes:

My supervisor has been calling me into her office and telling me about mistakes I’ve made that she found out about from my peers who work with me. They are minor mistakes and I take full responsibility for them, but what should I say to my supervisor about being “tattled” on?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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I’m hearing secondhand reports of problems with an employee — but she denies them

by Alison Green on August 10, 2016

A reader writes:

I have had a number of members on my team come to me lately with concerns about one particular employee. They say that she takes long breaks, leaves early (she’s got a job where she needs to be in the office at set times), and spends too much time socializing. This came as a surprise to me as her output is within the normal range for my team.

I’m not in my office enough to observe the exact times she is at her desk, but I was concerned that I was hearing this from so many people so I brought it forward to her for discussion. She was clearly completely blindsided, felt totally betrayed by her colleagues, and didn’t have any ideas for what may have caused the perception or how to resolve it. Because she was so upset after our initial conversation and we weren’t getting anywhere with coming up with solutions, I deferred a follow-up meeting for a couple of days, but I’m not even sure myself how to address this. I did put forward some suggestions based on my observations, and feedback from other team members, but she didn’t really seem to be taking any of them in. If I have to continue to performance manage her I will, but her surprise was so extreme that it put this niggling worry in my mind that maybe the issue is with her coworkers, not her.

Of the coworkers who have reported these problems to, I have varying degrees of trust in them. I heard from four people about this — two have my absolute highest trust, one is newer and I’m cautious but overall think they have good judgment, and one has a tendency to stir the pot a bit. The two who I trust the most brought forward concerns that were verifiable, but not as severe. The pot-stirrer brought forward the most egregious concerns and ones that were harder for me to assess (in particular, that the employee in question had a tendency to leave the office early as soon as I’m gone for the day).

Because the employee in question says that this isn’t happening and you haven’t been able to observe it firsthand, I think you’ve got to do your own observations before continuing any further.

In general, I don’t think you were wrong to ask her about it without observing it yourself since you’d heard it from multiple people, two of whom you know to be highly trustworthy. (I wouldn’t take the pot-stirrer’s word for anything that isn’t being verified by those two trustworthy others, though.) But once she told you that the reports were wrong, at that point you’ve got to put the brakes on any further action until you find out for yourself firsthand. So for now, making further suggestions to her about how to handle this is premature — at this point, you just need to find out what’s really going on.

To do that, ideally you’d alter your schedule enough for a couple of weeks that you’re able to see firsthand what’s happening. If that’s not feasible — if your work means you need to be out of your office a lot — there are other ways of checking in, like finding a few legitimate reasons to call her during the timeframes people say she’s often not there. If you’re able to look at her computer log-in/log-off times, that may give you some useful data too. If you feel awkward doing this, keep in mind that it’s potentially in her best interests because if she’s right that the complaints are groundless, this will help show that.

Also, is there someone in your office whose judgment you trust and who’s senior enough — i.e., not her peer — that you could deputize as your eyes and ears on this issue for a couple of weeks? Ideally this would be someone who isn’t close to any of the original four people who talked to you (and thus not overly influenced by them or part of any brewing coalition) and who’s either your peer, senior to you, or just a notch below you (like an assistant director or a team lead). The idea would be to discreetly explain to that person what’s going on and ask them to keep an eye on what’s happening when you’re not around so that you’re better able to sort through this.

Normally I’d also say to look at your employee’s work output, but you’ve already noted that it’s where you’d expect it to be. And actually, if she didn’t have a job that required her to be in the office at set times, her good output could be enough info to settle this. But it sounds like her job requires her to be present regardless.

But definitely don’t keep pushing the issue until you’ve gathered more data. Based on the fact that some of this is coming from two highly trusted employees, I think it’s pretty likely that there’s something going on — but if they’re off-base, you could end up really demoralizing and even pushing out a good employee who didn’t do anything wrong. (Imagine being on the receiving end of this if she genuinely hasn’t done what people are accusing her of — that would be awful. And not even just awful for her, but awful for other people on your team who see it too.)

You’ve got it in your power to dig more and find out what’s really going on, and that’s got to be the next step.

Read an update to this letter here.

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my work friends are being weird about me resigning, pushy recruiters want “salary confirmation,” and more

by Alison Green on August 10, 2016

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

1. My work friends are being weird about me resigning

My question is about leaving my current (non-dream) job. I was hired at my current company at the same time as three other people. We are all just out of grad school with the same degree and around the same age, so we immediately hit it off. They become my “group” at work: I’ve become close friends with one of the women, and while I don’t often see the other two outside of work, we stick together at work events and go out for lunch. You know, work friends. The company that we work for is dysfunctional on a lot of levels (hence the job search), so that collegiality was one of the few bright spots of coming to work for the past six years.

I didn’t expect wailing and gnashing of teeth when I told my friends I was leaving, but I did expect…something. Congratulations, at least. Instead, I got a bunch of sour comments about my new company (“I’ve heard they’re really disorganized,” etc.). My last day is fast approaching, so I finally texted everyone suggesting a goodbye lunch or happy hour. They all agreed, but we can’t settle on a date because everyone’s too “busy.” I put that in quotation marks because some of the reasons they’ve offered for not being able to make a certain date or time are laughably bad.

I’m getting paranoid (maybe I’m annoying and people only pretended to like me!), but rationally, I know I haven’t imagined our friendship. So what gives? Is this a normal way to act when someone leaves? Should I say something, or brush it off and focus on my new job?

It sounds like the behavior of people who are unhappy with their jobs and frustrated that you’re escaping and they’re not. It’s an immature way to handle that situation, but that’s what sounds most likely.

It’s also true that it’s pretty common for work friendships not to last once you change jobs. Sometimes they do, but frequently it will turn out that the thing that bonded you together was work, and once you no longer have that in common, the bond fades, often quite quickly (not usually ahead of your last day though, so that may or may not be what’s happening here).

Still, though, if it’s really bothering you and you’re having trouble brushing it off, why not ask the person you’re closest to? Explain what you’ve said here and see what her take is on it. (She’s actually the one I’d expect more of a reaction from since you’re genuinely close outside of work, so it’ll be interesting to hear her perspective.)

2. Recruiters being pushy about “salary confirmation”

I have been dealing with IT recruiters lately, and they have mostly started conversations with “what are your salary requirements?” immediately after just giving me the name and location of the job! I make it a point to ask follow-up questions, have them send me the job description, and make sure they understand I will have several considerations to take into account, before addressing the range with which I’m comfortable. I usually throw out a high number just to see what they come back with.

Recently during this conversation, the recruiter asked if I would be interested in a $10 less per hour figure than I had thrown out — much to my surprise. I said it’s close enough to start an application process. But here’s the thing — she immediately sent an email asking for a “salary confirmation agreement” and has called me repeatedly to get me to respond “I agree” to an email doc that says “I agree to this salary for this position.” She called me three times within two hours, and re-sent the email another time. This kind of rushing rings many alarm bells for me, so I’ve paused completely.

Several other recruiters have also sent, or wanted to send similar emails — “So, are you saying for $x/hour you are interested? Can I send you a salary confirmation email?”

Is this…normal? I don’t know what about it worries me so much, but I just don’t trust anyone that hurries me!

Nooooo, not normal. Run away, run away. Someone who tries to get you to sign away your standing to negotiate — to commit to a salary before you’ve been to an interview and had a chance to learn about the job and the company and before you’ve had a chance to look at the full package of an offer (like benefits, which matter greatly) — is someone who wants to lock you into acting against your own self-interest. That is a huge danger sign, and those are not recruiters you want to work with.

3. Running into students’ parents at the gym

I’m a school teacher. I’m committing myself to a daily workout at the gym once the school year starts to keep up my strong summer momentum.

Should I be at all concerned or embarrassed about running into parents of my students at the gym? I don’t think it should be an issue, as I have a right to life my life, but the gym can be an awkward place — more awkward than, say, running into a parent at the grocery store or a restaurant.

Nah. I mean, I wouldn’t hang out naked chatting with them in the locker room, but beyond that I wouldn’t worry at all.

4. Putting a vegan mentorship volunteer role on my resume

I’m vegan. I’m happy and proud of that fact, but I’m also aware that it rubs some people the wrong way. A lot of people have never met a vegan before, and so their only impressions of vegans are negative stereotypes. When I tell them that I’m vegan, some people even start arguments trying to prove me wrong. This is why I like to get to know people a bit before I tell them that I’m vegan. Once they get to know me as a person, they can’t dismiss me as irrational, extreme, or whatever other image they have built of vegans in their head.

Should I include my experience mentoring new vegans on my resume? The mentorship program is a 22-day vegan challenge, with a preparation period and a graduate group. My role as a mentor/admin is to post the daily challenges, encourage participants, monitor the group to make sure that participants and other mentors follow the rules, speak one-on-one to participants and mentors who are struggling with the rules, refer health-related questions to the challenge’s dieticians, and to provide reliable, positive advice both from a practical and emotional perspective. It’s an international group, and so I often have to do research to find out what products are available in a different country or to translate my advice into French or Spanish. Going vegan is difficult not just because it involves changing habits, but also because friends and family are not always supportive. I think that providing emotional support in this area is the most important part of my position.

I’ve been volunteering with the online mentorship group for nearly a year and feel that it has greatly improved my skills in communication and leadership, and is evidence of my initiative and willingness to give back to the community. All of these skills are important in my field, but I worry that potential employers will read the word “vegan” and my resume will get thrown in the trash. Do you have any advice?

It would be fine to include it a Volunteer or Community Service section, but I wouldn’t devote more than a line to it, unless you’re light on professional experience that demonstrates these same abilities. (I also wouldn’t play up the emotional support piece, unless you’re applying for jobs where that’s especially relevant.)

For what it’s worth, few employers are going to trash your resume because it includes the word “vegan.” I have firsthand experience with people’s weirdness about veganism, but it generally doesn’t extend to rejecting job candidates over it. So that’s less the issue here and more that it’s not going to read as substantial work experience in the way you’d want something to if you’re giving it serious resume real estate.

5. Is it weird to say “my staff”?

At home I’ll tell my girlfriend something about how my day was at work and I’ll say, “Oh yes, a bunch of my staff said to watch Stranger Things” or “I met with my staff about our website” or “My Queen of Teapots, Ele, said … about what we’re doing.” My girlfriend says that it sounds pretty terrible to say things like “my staff” since it sounds like I own them and that it’s weirdly hierarchical, but I’m terribly confused as to what I should say then! I’m the head of a department and have several direct reports and almost 20 people in the department.

“My staff” — and “my team,” “my group,” and “my department” — are normal things to say, especially when you’re talking to someone outside of your team. If you’re talking to your staff themselves, I’d generally go with “our team” or something like that … but “my staff” when explaining who you’re talking about isn’t all that different from the “my” in “my family,” “my friends,” or “my hairdresser.”

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my boss said inappropriate things about me to a reference-checker

by Alison Green on August 9, 2016

A reader writes:

I started job searching in earnest last year for a number of reasons — mainly, no raises despite glowing performance reviews over the past several years, no chance of a title change despite increased responsibilities, and no opportunity to move into a better position. (It’s a small organization.) I recently interviewed for a position I’m really excited about, and last week I found out that the employer was calling my references. Hooray!

I’ve kept my boss in the loop on my job search, so he was a reference as well. He’s pretty upset about my leaving because we work well together and I’m a good employee, but he’s been mostly supportive, despite the grumbling, and I knew he’d say good things about my job performance.

He had the reference call last week, and he wandered into my office afterward to let me know how it went. I was pretty horrified when he told me that he’d told the hiring manager — one of my would-be immediate bosses — that if they made me an offer, he’d make a counter-offer and it would be a “battle.” He also “jokingly” told her I was a drug addict. He said she laughed (I’m guessing awkwardly) about the drug joke, and that she responded to the counter-offer comment by saying that their department had recently lost a great employee as well, so she understood. Unfortunately, I don’t know what tone he made the mention of a counteroffer in — whether he was lighthearted or serious.

I was angry about all of it. First, the drug addiction joke — my anger over that doesn’t need explanation. But I was also incensed that he mentioned a counter-offer to her at all, when I have no intention of taking one (though gee, it’s funny how an organization can scrape up money or a new job title right when an employee is about to leave and no sooner…), and it’s really none of his business to mention it anyway! I would want to save talk of a counter-offer with my current boss, at which point I’d just turn it down. I’m sure he was trying to emphasize that I’m so awesome that he’d “fight” to keep me, and it’s great he thinks so highly of me, but I really didn’t want my potential employer to get the impression that I might try to use a counter-offer to get more money from them.

From the reference call the hiring manager had with a coworker after the one with my boss, it sounded like they were still excited about me despite the weirdness with my boss’s call, but what if (hypothetically) they’d been trying to decide between me and another candidate and ultimately pulled an offer to me because they didn’t want to get in some kind of bidding war?

It hasn’t even been a full week, so I’m not exactly panicking that there won’t be an offer coming, but I’m still pretty steamed. Am I right to be really annoyed about this? What should I do?

You’re absolutely right to be pissed off about it. Your boss made the reference call all about himself, when it’s not supposed to be about him at all. And while it sounds like the reference checker knew that he was joking about the drug addiction remark, that’s a ridiculous and wrong-headed joke to make on a reference call.

I don’t think you need to worry terribly about any of it, though. Employers are well aware that candidates’ current jobs might make counter-offers; it’s not like they’re going to be stunned or disturbed to learn that that’s a possibility. If it happens, it happens — they can deal with it. They know that candidates turn down offers for all sorts of reasons, and they know that counter-offers tend not to work on candidates who have made up their minds to leave for other reasons. So it’s very unlikely that they were thrown by his mention of that.

The way your boss conducted himself on this call did probably read as slightly loony to them — but that reflects on him, not on you.

I don’t think your boss is going to cost you a job offer here. That said, if you use him for a reference in the future, it would be worth saying, “Hey, I know you were joking around with what you told that other reference checker, but this is my livelihood and that makes me really nervous — so I’d really appreciate if you kept it serious with any other calls.”

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my coworker is a Twitter troll

by Alison Green on August 9, 2016

A reader writes:

I have a conundrum. A coworker of mine has said some pretty awful things on social media, and I don’t know what, if anything, to do about it.

I work with this person occasionally. When I was new and had to ask him a few questions about a project, I Googled him to check out his LinkedIn and so on, and the first thing that came up was his Twitter feed, with the company name in his bio. I added him to a list and went on with my day. In the past few months, though, his feed has turned into a fat-shaming Milo-Yiannopoulos-loving bro-fest. He removed the company’s name a few weeks ago — now it has something about “triggering supplicating millennial babies.” Ohhh kay. One of his most recent tweets crossed a major line for me: he used a homophobic slur, specifically to taunt people for being “too sensitive” online.

This guy is in a client-facing position and this Twitter feed is the first thing that comes up on a search for his name.

I don’t know what to do here. I find I’m still pretty upset by his taunt (which, I imagine, is by design), but really I barely know the guy — it’s more the knowledge that my company hired such a nasty person. Dude is a clear outlier, and he already got transferred out of one department for being …himself. I’ve removed him from my lists, naturally.

I feel like our PR folks need to be made aware, though, in case clients look him up and stumble across the hateful rhetoric and lack of judgment. It is a personal feed, but it’s also under his full, fairly unique name. I don’t know if I should confront him, given his broiness and general hateful attitudes – plus, I can avoid him at work, mostly. I also don’t want to remain silent in the face of hateful shit, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would take confrontation well. I don’t know if this is an HR thing, either — I can imagine that his tweeting will poison quite a few relationships.

Do I just need to let it go, try to avoid working with him, and move on? Confront him? Reporting him feels like tattling somehow, even though he’s the one who is being publicly awful and gross.

Most of the time I’m a pretty staunch advocate that what you do in your private life is your business. But that’s really only true as long as you’re not hurting anyone else. If you’re publicly spewing hateful, vile things about other people — and you’re doing it in this era’s equivalent of the town square — it’s fair game for an employer to have concerns about that.

That’s especially true when the employee in question has a client-facing job, and presumably has clients who belong to any number of the groups of people this guy is issuing slurs about. I mean, if you saw that your financial planner or your dentist was posting stuff like this online, would you happily continue taking your business to him? Most people wouldn’t, and that makes it reasonable for your employer to at least want to be aware of it.

And really, even if your co-worker weren’t in a client-facing job, it’s reasonable for an employer to have concerns about what kind of a working environment he might be creating for his colleagues — some of whom are presumably in the groups he’s insulting — and how well he’s able to work with them. (And it actually sounds like that already might have come up as an issue, if I’m interpreting your comment about his transfer correctly.)

All that said, before we go any further it’s reasonable to ask whether making this kind of thing fair game for employers means that we’re opening the door to meddling in other kinds of employee speech. Does it mean that an employer could take issue with an employee posting in favor of reproductive rights, for example, or health-care access? Does it mean that an employer could say “Well, clients will be uncomfortable knowing that you’re gay, so you need to stamp out all online references to your partner”? And if it doesn’t mean that, then why is it okay for employers to intervene when an employee is publicly advocating viewpoint X but not viewpoint Y?

Those are utterly valid questions and they’re important to ask, because if people have to fear employer reprisal, it could make them hesitant to advocate for social change, publicly support a particular candidate for election, or otherwise speak out on issues that are important to them. But in the case of your co-worker, we’re talking about hate speech and bigotry, not just any old political viewpoint that someone might not like. Hate speech and bigotry are different from normal political discourse; we’ve chosen to treat them differently as a society, and it’s reasonable to think that employers have standing to do that too.

So yes, most managers would say that it would be perfectly reasonable for you to give someone at your company a heads-up about this. I hear you that you’re worried about “tattling,” but I’d argue that that’s not really the right framework to use at work. In general, when you’re trying to figure out when a concern is worth raising to someone above you, the question to ask yourself is: How does this impact our work, and by how much? So “Jane posts on Facebook during the day” or “Cecil is always five minutes late” aren’t generally things you’d escalate, but it’s different when something truly does affect the organization’s work.

In this case, you’re not just personally annoyed by your co-worker’s views; you’re concerned about the impact that his posts may have on clients and people in your office. That’s a legit concern, and it’s one most bosses would want to hear about. If they don’t feel the need to act on it, then they won’t act on it. But if they are concerned about its potential impact on work and want to address it, you’ll simply have served as the conduit of information that (a) your company sees as a genuine work-related issue and (b) your co-worker is supplying quite publicly. (It’s not like you went snooping through his email and are forwarding private messages that he didn’t expect to have a broader audience.) And if they don’t end up acting, it will still be seen as a reasonable thing to have raised; they won’t view it like coming to them to report that your co-worker is hogging the microwave or something like that.

As for how to do it, you could simply say it this way: “This seems like a PR disaster waiting to happen, and I felt uncomfortable not bringing it to your attention in case it’s something you’d want to know about.”

I wouldn’t bother confronting your co-worker directly, though. That would make it more of a personal issue between the two of you (and he doesn’t sound terribly open to hearing alternate takes on his postings), and since you’re not in his management chain, you don’t have the authority to address it beyond that. If you happened to have a pretty good relationship with him, you could try saying something like, “Hey, have you considered that you might be turning off clients with your social-media posts?” or “You know, this is the first thing that comes up when you’re googled.” But absent any particular rapport with him, I’d leave it to people above you both to decide how to handle it. You shouldn’t have to convince or cajole him into addressing this, and you shouldn’t have to deal with his ire for confronting him about it (apparently you’d get called a “supplicating millennial baby”). Give your company a heads-up, and let them deal with it from there.

Originally published at New York Magazine.

Read an update to this letter here.

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