Performance Tracking and Feedback

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader asks: I work for a small company of 25 employees. We still call ourselves a start-up (with all of the cultural elements that brings), but we’ve been around almost 10 years now. The founder believes “titles don’t matter” and it’s more important to focus on the responsibilities each person has. So most people have their official title as basically the department they work for (business development, software engineering, etc), although the management team does have official titles. Do job titles matter? Am I wrong to feel that I want my growth recognized through a new title? I answer this que…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: What are your thoughts and the etiquette around getting drinks with coworkers when you’re in leadership position? I’m a female, on a younger side, in a leadership role at a small-to-medium size organization. We recently had a company event, after which 5–10 people went out for drinks and stayed for a couple of hours. It was just great to see some colleagues that are often in different locations, and most of them do not report to me. A while later, an exec mentioned that he thought it was inappropriate to go out drinking with subordinates. I understand that colleagues may not always …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. My new boss coughs all over me I’ve just begun a new position and as a result, have been working closely with my new boss as she trains me. Things are mostly going well — except she is constantly coughing on me! Directly on me! As in, I feel her breath on my bare arm as she coughs into my skin while leaning over me to see my computer screen. When she does bother to cover her mouth, she coughs into her hand … which she then promptly uses to grab my mouse. She also left a used(!) tissue on my desk. I’m coming down with a cold and it’s not hard to put…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: My office is next to a person who swears a lot during the work day. I assume it’s frustration with his computer, but a least a couple times an hour I’ll hear an onslaught of expletives coming from his desk. It’s pretty disconcerting to hear and it’s also really distracting. Otherwise, he’s a great person to work with but I’m not sure how to approach this. What should I do? I answer this question — and two others — 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 re…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I work in an office with two full-time employees, a manager, and 80+ contract employees. Jane, the other full-time employee, and I both support the contract employees in vital, yet different ways. Let’s say that she schedules appointments, and I process payments. Each office in our company has a scheduler and a payment processor, and while both are technically hourly, each cohort has different duties and perhaps a different culture. Payment processors have many more responsibilities than schedulers, and both are occasionally asked to pick up an outside task or six. Here’s where thing…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Here are three updates from past letter-writers. 1. Does using humor risk undermining me as a manager? Thank you so much for responding to my question! In truth, I didn’t even consider the possibility that using too many self-deprecating jokes would alter my employee’s perception of me, I was mainly focused on the quantity of my jokes. After I submitted my question, I thought over my interactions with them, and came to the conclusion that I was being way too silly, that my nervousness was manifesting as non-stop joke after joke, which had a strong possibility to detract from maintaining a professiona…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Perks for remote employees only Our company works mostly remotely. Employees who live locally come in one day a week. A few departments’ employees are allowed to live elsewhere in the country (this rule does not apply to all departments). Several times a year, all staff are required to come into the office for the full week. Employees who live outside the area get paid hotel rooms near the office, and expense all of their meals. Local employees, however, are required to pay for their lunch every day, as well as the additional costs of commuting for …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. CEO is making two finalist candidates have dinner with him at the same time Wondering if you can tell me if this situation is as crazy as I think it is. My company is hiring for an executive level role for an office we are standing up in a new state. This role will report to our CEO and it’s important we get the right person in place. We’ve narrowed it down to two final candidates, they have interviewed with other C-suite employees, and the feedback is similar on both candidates (both would likely be great in the role). Our CEO wants to take them bo…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I am a mother of three young children. Several years ago I took a step back in my career to work in a less high-pressure environment. The shift was incredible for my work life balance — I am much more present with my children, rarely bring home work stress, and am able to regularly take time away to volunteer at school events. We are financially secure and the money is decent. However, this organization frequently is a mess. I regularly find myself flabbergasted at how things that wouldn’t be an issue at other jobs become Big Things at this organization, requiring multiple meetings a…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Recently in my office, corporate buzzwords have picked up like crazy among my colleagues. Sometimes it feels like senior management’s entirely vocabulary is only buzzwords. In a presentation last week, for example, a director said that a “new piece of work is a runway to manifest our brand value proposition.” What does that mean? Now my peers are using the same buzzwords in presentations, and they’re seeping into meetings and conversations. Another example that makes my eye twitch: Suddenly everyone is using the word “solutioning,” as in, “Thanks, Matt, for solutioning our IT request…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: About a year and a half ago, I was forced to lay off multiple employees. I was truly heartbroken to see most of them go. But there were two employees I swore I’d never hire back. They both did fairly decent work, but were bullies who fed off of one another’s bad behavior. They were constantly in my office explaining why they’d said something nasty to one of their coworkers or why they’d ransacked another’s belongings. They were also blatantly disrespectful to me. One was far worse than the other, though. Now that we’re hiring again, employees have contacted me and asked for their job…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I went on a work trip and thought it went well. On the last day, I woke up to hear my senior teammate bashing me. We shared a wall, and it was paper-thin. I snore, and it’s something I’m embarrassed by, but there’s nothing I can do to control it. My teammate said he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep for the whole trip and accused me of doing it on purpose so I could transfer off the team. I don’t know where that came from — I’ve never indicated I wanted to leave. He also called me weird and nasty. I was shocked. Up until that point, he had been pleasant, engaging, and polite. My co…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: We work in a completely open plan office, and are a PR/ creative services agency. There are separate meeting rooms, and two banks of unused desks round the side of the kitchen which feel slightly separate from the main seating area and are often used for hot desking or ad hoc meetings. We are mandated in the office three days a week. The guidelines are for everyone to be in Monday and Wednesday (these are our anchor days), and for teams to make an effort to choose the same third day to maximize the chances for in-person working on office days. We’re a small staff of around 25, so on…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Was talking about a march for science too political for work? I’m hoping you can help settle a disagreement a friend and I are having about a situation that came up in my work today. I work as a physician at a large academic hospital, and my department had our monthly faculty meeting today. As part of the meeting, our department chair discussed the current state of NIH funding going to our department. We do a large amount of research and have a number of labs dependent on NIH grants that may be affected by the current administration. He told us tha…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers. * If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Today, during a screensharing session with my new employee, Barb, I saw something inappropriate on her screen and did not speak up. I was so dumbfounded that I just quickly wrapped up our call. I’m almost sure I saw her chat session with a coworker with explicit reference to private body parts. Both the screenshare software and chat software are part of the same company-provided system; it’s typically used for training and collaboration. Should I say anything to Barb? Or try to forget I ever saw anything? Since my view of the chat window happened very quickly, and I have no “proof,” …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I’m a recently appointed executive director who is hiring a number of people for newly created roles. In the past, I’ve hired but never had the overwhelming response I’m getting now. Much of it is coming through my personal channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and even my personal email. Our organization uses an electronic applicant tracking system and we are vetting candidates that way. More and more, I’m receiving messages non-stop, to the point where my wife and some former colleagues have received requests for my contact details. A few candidates have sent surly follo…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: This isn’t for my job, but it’s for a nonprofit organization related to my career that involves some level of professionalism. I’m afraid that I scared off a new member by coming on too strong to her. I volunteer at a STEM-related organization that mentors children. My position is at the state level, and a new person just joined at the group level. I met her for the first time at a regular group meeting. I’ll admit, I’m really attracted to her, but I still wanted to get to know her regardless of whether or not she’s interested. She’s the only other woman I know who’s in my field wit…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I have a senior role in a large architecture and engineering company, and my partner is an academic. I sometimes ask him for advice on how to handle a thorny problem at work and occasionally ask him to read something I’ve written. My partner, on the other hand, regularly asks for my help in core aspects of his job — putting together a spreadsheet to organize marking for courses, fixing up formatting on PowerPoint slides, shortening grant applications to meet word-count requirements, drafting sensitive emails, etc. My partner also often talks through ideas for papers, which I really li…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: This is a community organizing issue, but it is ultimately about working closely with someone where there’s conflict, and one where I think a professional approach might be most useful. I (they/them) am a leader in a social justice-oriented community organization along with someone I’ll call Paul (he/they). We have the same type of leadership position, and we’re both quite active so we communicate daily and are in meetings at least once a week. We’ve been in conflict for four months, since I told Paul that the way Paul interrupts, criticizes, corrects, scolds, and dismisses me and ot…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A salary negotiation success story from a reader: Due to a lack of backfills, I’ve absorbed the work of some attritions over the last couple of years and have been operating for some time as three raccoons in a trench coat. I’ve far exceeded expectations and have been recognized in performance reviews (although not raises — my company has been well below cost of living for some time, with my department averaging around 2% annually since 2020). Now the very rare event for my company has happened where they’ve decided to permanently promote the job level of my existing role — to take what I’ve made it i…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s hard to get real-world information about what jobs pay. Online salary websites are often inaccurate, and people can get weird when you ask them directly. So to take some of the mystery out of salaries, it’s the annual Ask a Manager salary survey. Fill out the form below to anonymously share your salary and other relevant info. (Do not leave your info in the comments section! If you can’t see the survey questions, try this link instead.) When you’re done, you can view all the responses in a sortable spreadsheet. Loading… View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers. * If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: My husband is a blue collar worker, and he’s very experienced in his field. A little less than a year ago, he decided to switch jobs. He went from doing residential work in people’s homes to commercial work on big buildings. He had over two decades of experience doing the residential side of things, but very little commercial experience. So, in some ways it was like starting over again and having to train from the ground up. At the time, he had two competing job offers: one with a residential company that was offering a slightly lower base pay, but more potential bonuses and benefits…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I’ve been a manager at my company for 13 years. I have a team of five direct reports and meet with them for one-on-ones every one to two weeks. We review projects, develop strategies for hurdles, discuss what’s working and what’s not, and where they would like to see their careers go. Recently we had our annual reviews where I create their annual development plans. These reviews are quite involved and build on conversations we’ve had throughout the year. At the conclusion of the reviews, a formal letter from HR is drafted with the annual salary increase and general “happy to have you …