Ask a Manager

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

1. Working from a one-bedroom apartment with a baby and nanny

I work in tech and have worked remotely for my whole career. I live in a one-bedroom apartment and my desk is tucked into a corner of the living room. This setup has worked great for the past five years, living with my husband. We had our first child three months ago and my maternity leave is ending soon. We have in-home childcare arranged (combo of nanny and grandparents).

I want to continue breastfeeding my child and I’m wondering what you think of trying to work from home in my situation. The (maybe ridiculous) logic is that pumping would take at least as long as just feeding him directly, and would be much less fun. Of course we would have backup options for when meetings conflicted with feeding times. My job is less than 20% meetings, and I can take calls from the common spaces in my building.

The two downsides I see are: it would be harder to get deep focus time, which is part of my role, and I’m not sure how unprofessional it will seem. I started this role three months before my parental leave and made a good impression, but I know I’m kind of starting fresh after being out for so long.

I do have other options for workspaces, but they are far enough away (5-10 minutes) from home that I would have to figure out other milk logistics.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts — are there other important downsides I’m missing? Is it just postpartum hormones convincing me that this is reasonable?

Oooooh. It’s going to be really hard to work in a one-bedroom apartment while your baby and nanny/family members are there. Maybe if you could work in the bedroom with the door closed and a clear agreement not to disturb you … but it’s going to be pretty tough. Working from the living room with that set-up sounds nearly impossible, unless they’re going to be away from home for most of the day every single day. It’s not just noise; it’s the close proximity and being aware of everything that’s going on (some of which you are going to have Opinions on).

If you’ve got an option for a workspace five minutes away, that seems pretty good in comparison.

2. I’m a new manager and people keep quitting

I’m about four months into a new executive role, overseeing a small team of knowledge workers. When I started, there were 12 of us. Today, we’re down to eight.

The previous team lead had a very different style than I do. More hands-off, from what I’ve heard. People were frustrated with the lack of guidance and team development. So that’s what I’ve focused on. All the feedback I’ve received from my team has been positive or, at worst, constructive. But I realize they may not be totally forthcoming with complaints.

The first couple of resignations were easy to blame on my predecessor. They were probably already job hunting when I took over. But now, I’m starting to worry that it’s my fault. I know there aren’t enough details here for you to confirm or deny that fear. But, I wonder if you were in my shoes, how would you figure it out? What would you do to preserve the team that’s still standing?

Talk to people! A lot of people won’t give candid feedback to their managers even if it’s explicitly requested, so you have to shape the questions strategically to draw it out of people. For example: If you could change one thing about your job or your team, what would you change? If you could change something about our workflow, what would it be? How would you improve the way we do X? Etc. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to get honest and useful answers. Also, if you have any gut feelings about areas that might be problems, ask about those; for example, if you’re worried people think you’re too hands-on, ask about that: “I know when Jane was here, people were frustrated that they weren’t getting enough guidance. When trying to address that, there’s always a risk that the pendulum could feel like it’s swung too far in the other direction. How are you feeling on that front?”

Keep in mind, though, that it’s possible that a lot of the team started job-searching while the old manager was still there, and that could be producing offers now — in other words, it might not be that they’re fleeing you, but that this is a natural part of the aftermath of a difficult manager.

Related:
how to get your staff to be more honest with you

3. Video interviews with a group of competing candidates

What fresh hell is this?

Fortunately, it’s not a hell that I myself am living in, but a dear friend of mine is.

She’s applying for highly paid, highly skilled, fully remote sales roles and she told me that it’s now standard practice in this industry for the early interview rounds to be via video call (okay so far), as a group (NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE).

The usual format appears to be eight candidates, each answering four questions (not sure if they all get the same questions; I presume they do) over three minutes. And when it’s not your turn to talk, you sit and listen to the other candidates answer their questions whilst you wait for the sweet release of death.

The kicker? These companies are selling it as a bonus because it allows candidates with a less traditional background to “shine” beyond their resume and experience, which is absolutely impossible to achieve in any other format than a group video interview. They then whittle the pool of candidates down to three, at which point you’re allowed the privilege of a personal video call. Am I right in thinking that this is totally bonkers?

Anyway, I must be off as I have a busy day. Rather than going on separate dates with the men I matched with on dating apps (who has the time?), I’ve invited them all to the same bar at the same time so that I can quickly whittle the pool down to the ones that are worthy of a solo meetup.

Yep, utterly bonkers. And the alleged rationale doesn’t make any sense — there’s nothing about answering questions in front of a group of competitors that would allow non-traditional candidates to “shine” any more than answering those same questions in a one-on-one interview. It’s just faster for the interviewers if they can block off a single time slot and force all their candidates into it together. It’s ridiculous.

Mildly related:
I was held hostage and insulted at a group interview of 45 people
should we have job candidates do group activities with each other?

4. Should I apply for a job with the possibility of a large pay cut?

I’ve been in my current job for over a decade. It’s a good job, I like and get along with my boss and coworkers, I have PTO and medical insurance for me and my spouse. But I am burnt out​, and would like to be doing almost anything else as long as it’s something​ else.

My very first job fresh out of college 20 years ago (sigh) was in a field that I loved. But I did not want to go right back to school and get the graduate degree that might have helped me in that field, and so drifted into my current job after a few years. Now a full-time position in my original field has opened up near me, the first one I’ve seen advertised in years, and I am excited at the thought. From my past experience, I know the job would offer PTO benefits more or less equivalent to what I have now, and probably medical insurance for my spouse and I would be cheaper! However, the salary listing starts at $10K less than I’m currently making, and goes up to only slightly more than my current annual salary. The listing also mentions that any hires will start on the lower range of the salary, and be eligible for merit-based raises and bonuses every year depending on their work.

Is this worth applying for? Even if I’m able to argue for my past experience, that was long ago, and I doubt they would immediately jump to the higher end of the salary spectrum if I asked. We have a mortgage, we have bills to pay, everything is expensive right now, and I don’t know if the benefits would outweigh the serious pay cut.

Apply and see. Part of this depends on what you’re earning now; a $10K paycut is very different if you’re earning $45,000 than if you’re earning $145,000. If you’re closer to the latter, I’d say that cut is absolutely worth it to get out of a field you’re burned out on and back to a field you love. If your salary is closer to the former, it’s probably not — but it’s still worth applying and seeing if you can get them close to your current salary. Maybe you can’t — but if this the first opening in the field you’ve seen in years, it seems silly not to apply and at least see what’s possible.

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

1. Our off-site includes a body fat analysis

I started a new job recently and I’ve been invited to join an off-site in a few weeks time, in another country.

At a briefing meeting this week, our group was given a preview of the agenda for the off-site, which is a combination of working sessions, outdoor activities, and group meals.

However, the agenda also includes a two-hour slot for an InBody test — which, for those not familiar, is a body composition analysis that provides a detailed breakdown of body weight in terms of muscle, fat, and water. It’s been presented as an “optional,” “fun” activity. Even so, am I off-base to think this is a completely inappropriate thing to have in a work setting? Most worrying, it’s also been mentioned as a “traditional” activity, which now has me wondering about what sort of culture I’ve ended up in.

You are not off-base. This is inappropriate in a work setting.

It’s optional, so skip it. If anyone asks why, say “Oh, it’s not my thing” or “No real interest” or “I’ve always figured that’s between me and my doctor.” If you’re comfortable with it, you also could ask some coworkers about it — “they said this was a traditional thing — what’s up with that?” Who knows, maybe you’ll hear the CEO loves it and no one else participates, or that at least a bunch of other people think it’s weird. I wouldn’t necessarily conclude you’ve ended in a completely messed-up workplace culture; lots of companies have This One Weird Thing We Do. But I can see why you’re alarmed.

2. We have to use six PTO days to take a five-day vacation

Several years ago, I worked for a company with a vacation policy I found truly bonkers. I worked at the corporate headquarters of a large regional chain. Everyone at the corporate office was salaried and exempt and worked a standard 40-hour work week, Monday through Friday. It was incredibly rare to work late (and no one worked on weekends). We got three weeks of PTO a year.

The weird thing was: if you took off a full work week of PTO Monday through Friday, you were required to use six PTO days, not five. The reasoning from management was that technically, we were all supposed to work a 46-hour work week (eight hours Monday through Friday, plus six hours on Saturdays), but they simply never enforced the “requirement” to work on Saturdays. And this policy only applied to taking off Monday through Friday—you could take off five (or more!) consecutive work days (for instance, Wednesday through Friday, then the following Monday and Tuesday) without having to use an extra vacation day for the Saturday you “missed.”

Neither the 46-hour work week nor the weird PTO policy was ever communicated before hiring, and it wasn’t documented in the employee handbook—people would find out about it through the grapevine or when they tried taking a week off.

Naturally, this caused a lot of anger among staff, but nobody would push back because management was very toxic and punitive whenever someone questioned authority (that’s a whole separate letter). People just accepted it or found some workaround to avoid losing an extra vacation day. In one memorable instance, a co-worker took PTO Tuesday through Friday, came to work on the following Monday, then took PTO the next Tuesday through Friday (they actually flew home to work that Monday, then flew back to their destination to finish their vacation!).

I know that in cases like this, the answer to “Is this legal?” is almost always “Yes, but it sucks.” But I’ve always wondered if this at least tiptoed up to the line of something shady (especially since the company was known for sketchy labor practices, like hiring long-term freelancers and treating them like employees). I also cannot fathom the reasoning behind such a policy — there was zero impact on workflow if someone took a Monday through Friday vacation, and we were never asked to actually work on Saturdays.

Can a company really require salaried, exempt employees to take an extra PTO day for a weekend day they are never actually required to work? And why on earth would a company do so?

What?! That’s one of the most bizarre policies I’ve ever heard in my 100 years writing this column, and that bar is quite high. (To be clear, there have been many far more bizarre occurrences. But as a corporate policy, this is up there.)

They claimed they had a 46-hour work week that no one was ever informed of and that wasn’t practiced because it was actually fake? And it was fake — as demonstrated both by the fact that no one ever worked Saturdays or over 40 hours a week, and by the fact that they didn’t tell new hires about it. If you have a policy of working Saturdays in a corporate job, you tell people about it before hiring them. They didn’t, because the policy isn’t real.

As for why a company would do this … I cannot imagine. Maybe a decade ago they really did work Saturdays and no one ever updated the policy once that changed (still pretty indefensible). Maybe there’s a sociopath in HR. Who knows.

But while there might be a state law out there that this would violate (California, is it you?), in most states this would be legal. No law requires your employer to give you vacation time, so companies can generally make up whatever weird rules they want to about it.

P.S. I’d bet money you shouldn’t all have been categorized as exempt though.

3. Should my resignation letter include 700 words on why I’m leaving?

I have decided to leave an organization that I have worked at for almost six years. I have some frank, critical feedback that I would like to submit to the organization’s leaders; it is a small organization and I have worked closely with them in the past. Is the resignation letter an appropriate place to outline the reasons why I am leaving? My current draft is about 700 words.

They have done exit interviews in the past, but not consistently, and I want to document my feedback in writing before leaving. I will not need them as references as I am quitting to work for my own business.

Noooo, don’t do it. First, a resignation letter absolutely is not the appropriate place to offer feedback. A resignation letter should be about two sentences and is used solely to document your decision after the conversation where you resign. Second, if you want to give that kind of feedback, I’d strongly recommend that you do it in a conversation, not in an unsolicited letter — but I’d even more strongly recommend that you reconsider doing it at all. If they were truly open to input, you probably would have had opportunities to give it earlier. Critical feedback shot at people as you’re walking out the door doesn’t generally carry a ton of weight or credibility, and it’s an investment of your emotional energy into a place that you’re trying to sever ties with.

(Also: don’t write off the possibility that you might want them as references at some point. Hopefully your new business will thrive and you’ll never apply for a traditional job again, but business ventures don’t always work out that way.)

Related:
should I tell the truth in my exit interview?

4. Did my teacher ruin my college applications?

When applying to college, I asked my high school history teacher to write a letter of recommendation for me. Our school had a system in place where the teachers would submit letters through an online portal. The student cannot view the letter until after submission, and only then if they request a copy.

Months after submitting my applications I needed to use this letter for scholarships and so I requested a copy. To my shock, I saw that my teacher had, in fact, used my older sister’s name repeatedly throughout the letter, instead of my own. All of the facts listed were the same, we both were 4.0 students, both class president, and both had this teacher for the same AP class, just two years apart!

I got rejected or waitlisted by every school I applied to. It has been almost a decade now and I still wonder. How bad of a mistake was this? Is this enough to reject an applicant on its own? Would it be worse in a professional context, rather than academic?

Nah, they’d almost certainly just assume the teacher sent the wrong letter. I doubt it was a major factor in your applications.

Professionally it might be a little weirder, although there too you’d generally assume the teacher messed up. (Although in most industries, written letters of recommendation for jobs aren’t much of a thing anyway, especially from high school teachers.)

5. Explaining why I’m leaving a job after 15 years

I’m struggling with how to best explain my decision to leave a company after 15 years of employment. The job had run its course and I was not making the money I should have after being there that long. I don’t want to appear negative or money hungry at an upcoming interview.

First, it’s not money-hungry to believe you should be earning more. But you’ve been there 15 years! You don’t even need to mention money; you can simply say, “I’ve been here 15 years and I’m ready to take on something new.” Everyone will get that. It’s one of the easiest answers to give and to understand.

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

1. Should I accept my employee just isn’t well suited to a task?

We are a small team of very silo-ed job types. Twice a year, for about a week each time, we have a meeting with lots of external stakeholders to review content for a textbook. The stakeholders are all subject matter experts (SMEs) and are focused on accuracy, completeness, etc. One of the roles in the review sessions is to serve as the note taker, capturing every edit the group of SMEs comes up with. This note taker is not an SME. There are a couple internal staff roles to whom this note taking has typically fallen. These are individuals who are not intimately involved with the crafting of content; they basically just come in and serve as the note taker these few times of year. I was one such person when I started in the role 10 years ago and I continue to do so now (although I am now in a leadership role).

We hired someone in late 2021 (Callie) to step into my previous role and now, based on tradition, she serves in the note taker role when needed. The problem is Callie is not good at this task. She has a hard time following along with the conversation, often needs one of the SMEs in the room to explain to her where the edit is to be made, requires a lot of time to ensure she gets the change correct, misses edits, etc. I have coached her on how to do this task better. Various SMEs have coached her on how to be better. SMEs’ patience often starts to run thin with her as a review session proceeds, most of all from the book’s managing editor, Paul.

Because this falls firmly in the “other duties as assigned” realm of her job description, how much can or should I focus on fixing this with Callie? Part of me feels like I should cut my losses and figure out an alternative for this task (for what it’s worth, an alternative will not be easy to come by for reasons that aren’t worth getting into here). The other part of me feels like it’s not unreasonable to hold her feet to the fire because the fact is this is a critical task and completing it doesn’t require anything that falls outside the realm of reasonable expectations.

A complicating factor that I know I need to ignore but just can’t — Paul (whose patience with Callie runs thin very quickly) is desperate for Callie to be better, as the clean-up work of things she misses/gets wrong often falls to him, but he also feels strongly that Callie isn’t putting in the effort to get better and that taking the task from her would reward her for poor performance. I don’t fully disagree with Paul, but also know that not every person is suited to every task. Help?

If she struggles to follow the conversation, she’s not going to be an effective note-taker, no matter how much you coach her on taking notes. If these meetings were more frequent, she might be able to get better over time, but twice a year? It’s unlikely to happen.

The big question I had reading your letters was: how’s the rest of Callie’s work? The issues you described — struggling to follow the conversation, missing edits, needing a lot of hand-holding on how to make changes — sound like they might speak to problems with her regular work too, unless it’s wildly different from what’s expected of her on these meeting days, so I’d want you to take a look at that. But if the rest of her work is great, stop making her struggle with something she’s bad at — and which isn’t working anyway, and which is taking up lots of time from other people to fix things for her, and where her work is frustrating everyone else — and find another solution. That’s not “rewarding her for poor performance” (and that’s a weirdly punitive way for Paul to look at it); it’s recognizing that she’s not the right person for this specific task.

2. Talking on a cell phone at lunch

Cell phone etiquette has obviously changed over the years, but I have always operated under the general understanding that if your phone call can be heard by others, then you shouldn’t be having it. (When I dissect that belief, I’m not entirely sure I can precisely pinpoint why it’s there, to be honest, but it’s there!)

I work in a very small office with, on most days, only three-five people working in the same space. I have a coworker who almost always eats alone after everyone else has finished and always talks on her cell phone while she’s eating. She is not particularly loud, but because the office is small, it is possible to hear the entire conversation. This is no different than when we all sit down to eat lunch together: people talk loudly and others can hear. But I’m having trouble not being annoyed at the situation involving a cell phone! Am I holding on to an old belief here for no reason?

Yes, I think so! It’s true that it’s rude to have a loud cell phone conversation in an otherwise quiet space, and sometimes it’s rude to have one at all in a space where people don’t expect phone conversations to be happening at all. But an office is usually a place where people will periodically be on the phone; there’s no expectation that it will be a phone-free zone (usually the opposite, in fact). I’m guessing you wouldn’t be as bothered if it were a work-related call; it’s something about it being personal that’s feeling off. But unless the norm of your office is “we all work in silence and we’re expected to go into a private space for calls,” I wouldn’t call this particularly rude.

3. Internship’s dress code is painfully vague

I just received the full dress code for my internship that starts in a week, and I’m thinking through how to navigate it.

It reads as follows: “The firm has adopted ‘business casual’ and ‘client appropriate’ as the everyday minimum dress standard, including Fridays. The term ‘business casual’ is not clearly defined in the community, nor is there general agreement regarding its meaning. The operative goal is to choose attire that will promote, rather than detract from, the firm’s image of professionalism, sophistication, and dedication to our clients.”

I’m struggling with the lack of a “not allowed” list. At past business casual jobs, most employers have include a “not allowed” list in their dress codes, e.g no open-toed shoes, no visible tattoos, etc. Would it be gauche to follow up and just ask point blank for such a list? The reason I ask is that I do have visible (not offensive) tattoos, and I’m game to cover them with makeup and/or longer clothing, but would prefer not to if I don’t have to. Do you have thoughts/advice on how to approach this?

That is a confusing dress code, although you’ll probably have a much better sense once you start and can see how most people dress. Meanwhile, though, since what you’re wondering about is tattoos specifically, why not ask them about tattoos specifically? They may not have a “not allowed” list anyway — in fact, it sounds like they don’t, although someone would probably talk you through the do’s and don’ts if you asked. But it sounds like you have one specific thing you’re really wondering about, so ask about that one specific thing! It’s fine to say, “I wasn’t sure from what I read about the dress code if visible tattoos are okay. I have tattoos on my arms (or wherever). Should I plan to cover them?”

Alternately, you can cover them your first day and get more of the lay of the land then, or just ask someone in person at that point.

4. Should we be able to see how much PTO my boss really has?

I am new to the world of PTO and can’t seem to keep enough to do anything with my life. I work in a remote office, not the corporate headquarters, so we get forgotten about often. It seems like my manager always has ample PTO to take three-week vacations in addition to monthly requested days off while us little people are nickled and dimed for everything. As her director is not on site, it makes for an easy scam situation and I (and the rest of the team) are suspicious of her actions. I have no proof, but is submission of PTO a private matter? Or is there a record that should be available to us to ensure the PTO time she tells us matches her approved requests with her director? It’s pretty uncomfy.

No, you don’t typically have access to your boss’s PTO records. It’s also possible she has more PTO than you and your coworkers do (it’s not uncommon for people to get more PTO if they’ve been there longer or are in more senior positions). Or she could be scamming your company, who knows. One way to bring it to her boss’s attention is to have a plausible need to contact her boss about a work problem where you can mention, “Since Jane has been out for the last two weeks, we didn’t know who to go to about this…”

5. Can my resume say “Mage’s Guild” if I am a non-player character?

If my job was NPC who only says “They say there have been unearthly noises coming from the mage’s guild on nights when the moon is full,” can I just put “Mage’s Guild” on my resume?

I needed Twitter to give me context for this, but now that they have, the answer is no. You don’t work for the Mage’s Guild! You’re just a person saying you’ve heard there are problems there.