Performance Tracking and Feedback

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. HR wants me to give someone a bad review they don’t deserve, to cover up HR’s own mistake I am a manager for a small team of engineers. One of my direct reports was given a new role that was supposed to come with a promotion and pay bump this year. It turned out that our local HR did not have the authority to actually increase his payband and rebranded the new role as a “lateral move.” Now reviews are due, and I am being told to artificially give another person on my team a bad review so that we can give a larger raise to the person who took on a new role. It feels really bad and unethical to do this. Especially sinc…

A reder writes: Over the past few years, my responsibilities have grown well beyond my original job description. I now manage procurement end-to-end, track budgets, support multiple project managers, and draft reports. This expansion has happened informally — no title change, no pay adjustment, and no formal acknowledgement of the shift in scope. What’s making it harder is that after four years in the role, my team lead has openly said they don’t really understand procurement. As a result, I often feel like I’m operating without informed oversight or support, yet I’m still accountable when something is questioned. Recently, I attended what I thought was a general catch…

Here are three updates from past letter-writers. 1. A medical tech repeatedly proselytized to me I had an appointment with my doctor this morning and told him that one of the techs had made me uncomfortable by repeatedly discussing her religious beliefs with me even after I directly asked that she not. I used the phrasing a couple of commenters suggested — that she essentially was telling me that if I accepted Jesus into my life, my mental health would improve. My doctor thanked me for telling him, apologized for my experience, and said that he would make sure that this behavior would not happen again with me or other patients. Interestingly, he did not ask me which tec…

It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes: I work in a field that leans heavily towards freelance gig work these days, but I’ve been lucky enough to work in-house for a firm since making a career change into this industry six years ago. I’ve done a bit of freelance on the side here and there, but not a lot, and I haven’t been self-promoting as a person who’s looking for work because, well, I wasn’t! I had a full-time job that I loved! Well … now I’ve been laid off as my firm downsized, and I’m going to have to go freelance on pretty short notice. Obviously I’ll be job searching as well, but it’s hard to overstate just how much this industry is based …

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I’ve run out of a patience with a rude coworker I’ve run out of patience with a difficult coworker, Mary. I’m one of the few people who has to deal with Mary in person, and my work is closely tied with hers. She’s entry-level while I’m mid-level, but I’m not her manager or supervisor. She has difficulty completing her work, which causes many problems for her. I have tried mightily to be her friend and mentor for the past few years, but her struggles continue. We’re locked in a difficult dynamic where I have to sit back and watch her flail, and I bear the brunt of her complaints. On a personal level, most people find h…

A reader writes: My fully remote company just announced that our mandatory, weekly, hour-long, all-staff Zoom meeting will now be required to be camera on and mic on for all 60+ attendees. It seems like they’re trying to recreate the feeling of us all being in person. However, to me, and to I imagine a lot of people, the new requirements sound like literal torture. This seems like a perfect “push back as a group” situation … but I don’t know how to do that in a remote setting. While I suspect my manager would also find this new requirement bonkers, I’m not so sure about his boss. I’m mostly an independent contributor, so I don’t have much incidental interaction with oth…

Breakups are miserable under the best of circumstances. But when the person you’re breaking up with is also a coworker, welcome to a new layer of hell: instead of getting distance, you still have to see each other every day, smile politely in meetings, and pretend nothing is wrong while coexisting professionally in an office that now feels charged with history. At Slate today, I wrote about office breakups. You can read it here. The post you can’t go no-contact with someone you share a printer with appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

A reader writes: I’m a manager of a four-person team, on which I was previously an individual contributor. The four team members work in cubes in an open office area and my office is down a nearby hall. We’re a casual office, and the team generally gets along well. While each person has their own accounts and tasks, they interact with each other throughout the day, chatting and discussing work. The issue is two members of the team, Peach and Daisy. Peach is very open with her mental health struggles and is an open book on most anything but can be emotionally volatile. Daisy, who sits next to Peach, tells me that Peach is constantly on an emotional rollercoaster. She say…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Can we refuse a massage appointment for a sex offender? I am a front desk coordinator in a clinic that is part of a large healthcare system. I schedule appointments and assist patients who come in to see providers of various departments, including massage therapy. Recently, I saw an alert about a patient who was scheduled to see a particular massage therapist that indicated he had been discharged from another clinic in the same healthcare system for sexual harassment. Part of my job is to review past appointments for patients, and I saw that in his written scheduling request, he self-identified as a convicted sex offen…

A reader writes: My workplace occasionally recognizes staff birthdays, but isn’t consistent. Sometimes there’s cake, sometimes bagels, sometimes nothing, and it’s often a last-minute announcement which can be frustrating to people who already have food planned out for the day. Someone brought up the idea of bringing back a past practice: the monthly celebration of all January (for example) birthdays in one go. This could allow for consistent “observance” of birthdays, planning ahead on whether you bring a lunch, and less worrying about the impact on the budget. I know not everyone feels the same way about their birthday so I turned to AAM for insights on how to start s…

A reader writes: My workload is mostly comprised of overflow tasks from other departments. I generally like this because it gives me a variety of things to do. I regularly deal with four managers. Three of them are good to work with. One, Alex, is … not. While the others always do a capacity check-in with me (asking if I have the bandwidth to take new work on), Alex regularly assigns me things without asking at all. It is not unusual that I will go on lunch and come back to a bunch of new tasks waiting for me with no discussion prior to assignment. The things Alex assigns me have exceptionally short deadlines, are often missing key pieces of information, and are often …

A reader writes: I work in a cubicle office and bring a trained, medically necessary service dog named “Betty” to the office with me. I allow her to socialize with coworkers on breaks, and she is very loved in the office for how friendly and adorable she is. She also adores her coworkers and thinks everyone is her best friend. Unfortunately, a new coworker, “Sarah,” has been repeatedly ignoring service dog boundaries with Betty over the last six months. These boundary violations include taking Betty out of my cube while I’m on work calls or distracted, removing her leash in public work areas without asking, entering my cube without permission to interact with her, and …

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Job application asked about age and caregiving responsibilities After hundreds of job applications in my career, this is a new one for me. I came across a required question on the application asking, “Do you have caregiving responsibilities such as childcare, eldercare, or disability care?” They added an asterisk stating, “We are building an organization that supports people in their many unique life situations. Knowing this information will make our hiring process, benefits, and professional development equitable and inclusive.” I find this question intrusive and I don’t believe their stated reason for asking it. Am …

A reader writes: I have a weird, complicated relationship with my boss, Amelia, who is part of the C-suite. We have very different working styles. We are both from the same Latin American country but both of us live and work in the U.S. Last week, she asked me to join a call with her and the CEO of our company in another country. The CEO suggested Friday but Amelia said she was taking that day off and suggested Monday instead. Monday was a holiday for both her and me, but she was traveling to a different country so she was going to be working anyway. When I pointed out that it was a holiday, she said, “Oh come on, it’s only 30 minutes.” This made me feel like my day of…

A reader writes: I was recently promoted to a director role, and one of my direct reports is my former boss who hired me into the company, “Tom.” Tom was a great boss in the eight years I worked for him. He’s an all-around terrific manager who coaches well, provides clear goals, gives flexibility to meet those goals, provides opportunities to learn and grow, advocates for his team, the works. After a few years working for him, a promotion opened up and Tom urged me to apply. I got it, became his peer, and built my own effective team using his style as my model. Last year, our department director positioned opened up. Tom and I both applied. I impressed our relatively n…

A reader writes: I have a new employee, Joe, who has been with me about six months. The headline is that he’s pretty terrible. He lacks knowledge, his work is slow and often wrong, he lacks attention to detail, shows no sense of urgency, ownership or understanding of priority, and requires constant hand-holding to even get close to completing tasks. There’s a lot to unpack about him but the short story is: I made a big hiring mistake and I know separately that I need to address it. This letter isn’t quite about that though. Recently, a distant relative of Joe’s wife’s passed away. That’s sad. He was sending me constant (and unnecessary) updates about it. We have a super…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Is it OK to compliment coworkers’ nails or haircuts? I believe that comments on people’s bodies are totally inappropriate at work, and in life in general. But if someone has changed their hair or has some cute nails (I myself do not do these cute things but notice them), is commenting on them in the same category as body stuff? Technically it is part of their body, but it doesn’t seem as bad to be “oh the magenta highlights are cool” or whatever. Should I stop commenting on haircuts and nail design? One school of thought is that it’s fine to comment on things that are obviously a deliberate choice — like a shirt or a …

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: The Uncoupling, by Meg Wolitzer. After the local high school performs Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, in which women decide to deny men sex in order to pressure them to end a war, the town’s local women pick up the habit themselves. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. The post weekend open thread – February 28-March 1, 2026 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

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. The post open thread – February 27, 2026 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. Intern won’t stop giving unsolicited “corrections” We’ve been dealing with a troublesome intern. He keeps giving senior members of the staff unsolicited advice, corrections, and “tips” about everything from life lessons to ways for everyone to do their work. He’s been told many times that it’s inappropriate and that other members of the staff are uncomfortable with it but he keeps doing it. How, as a manager, can I deal with this situation without making it difficult for the intern? I’m afraid I will shatter his self-esteem as it’s seems fragile despite the over-confidence. You’re not doing him any favors by dancing a…

A reader writes: I’m a 32-year-old professional on a niche team for a large corporation and have been in my role for four years. When I was interviewing, I was living in City A, a low-cost-of-living city that I really disliked. When I took my current job, they were clear that they allow my role to be performed from anywhere in the U.S., and I was hired at a salary consistent with my experience and then-geographic location. About five months after starting, I moved to City B, a much-higher-cost-of-living city. My director told me that while my move was no problem logistically, I would not receive a pay increase for relocating, as the move was my initiative and the compa…

A reader writes: I oversee a public-facing department at a nonprofit. One of our long-time program managers is an oversharer. This includes on social media, where she has in the recent past criticized two of our sponsors in long Facebook posts, which included phrases like “Corporation X needs to get their crap together.” These were criticisms based on her personal experiences, not related to work (think complaining about the customer service at Corp X when she was shopping there). Yesterday, she followed up with more complaining during a program meeting that included clients. I know she is connected to many of our volunteers and clients, as well as colleagues, on social…

In the comments on a recent post, someone mentioned that a boss once sent them home because they’d forgotten to wear a belt that day (“I wasn’t showing butt cleavage, but he wasn’t having it.”) Someone else mentioned a boss who expected people to rise whenever he entered the office (?!). Let’s discuss managers and offices with weirdly outdated expectations who appear to be from a far-off era. The post let’s discuss throwback bosses: managers with outdated work expectations appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. I saw my coworker’s pregnancy announcement on TikTok I was just scrolling TikTok, and a video from “someone you may know” popped up. It is a coworker of mine, whose number is in my phone because we sit near each other and sometimes need to coordinate watering plants and such. It turns out she’s a somewhat well-known content creator in a pretty wholesome and innocuous genre. The video I landed on was especially well liked, because she used it to announce her pregnancy. I’m very happy for her and would like to congratulate her! However, I don’t know if she would think it’s weird that I watched her video. I’m a man who s…

A reader writes: I’m hiring for some new roles in my team and this has generated some excitement from internal folks looking to grow in their careers. That’s great! I’m always happy to meet with internal people before they submit resumes/go through the formal interview process, it’s very much a part of our team culture. However, twice now, different internal candidates have scheduled a one-on-one with me during a time when I already have a meeting and am showing as booked! This has kind of thrown me for a loop (do they not know how to use our extremely basic common scheduling software? do they think I’m booked for fun and will reschedule for them?) and honestly given me…